Your Digestive Health Today
A digestive health is one of the pillars of overall health and obviously as a nutritionist I am fascinated to understand the relationship that the route of digestion and absorption of food has with all the rest of the body, were it not for the respective nutrients or unwanted compounds being part of our body. Just the simple (but complex) fact that there is a brain-intestine relationship already demonstrates the complexity of our systems.
Who has never felt a stomach ache or a slight bowel movement before an exam or butterflies in the stomach before a special date?
Yes, and this relationship is a two-way street.
The brain influences our digestive tract (and exists in our digestive tract in the form of the enteric nervous system), but the opposite also happens and so what we eat influences how our brain functions. And the brain runs everything. The enteric nervous system that exists in the gut is our second brain.
We are a very complex machine. Unlike other machines, which simply stop working when something is not right, we have the ability to adapt, the body "finds a way" to work, it goes into imbalance, until one day it doesn't work anymore... and we are diagnosed with chronic gastritis, inflammatory bowel disease, cancer... usually when unpleasant symptoms appear.
Feeling good on a digestive level implies:
digest food well and absorb nutrients;
not having an active intestinal disease;- having a balanced intestinal flora.
For this, we need:
Eat real food, as natural and colorful as possible;- Don't be afraid to eat fatty foods, but choose good fats (monounsaturated like those in olive oil or polyunsaturated like those in oilseeds or fish);
Eat an anti-inflammatory diet even without an associated disease;
Use probiotic foods;
Drink enough water and ingest soluble and insoluble fiber;
Eat slowly and in as calm an environment as possible (do you eat fast and not even sit down, or do you eat while watching the news or the feed of your favorite social network? you should probably change the way you approach eating;
Limit the intake of pesticides and other compounds;
Have frequent bowel movements (debatable how often), with "normal" consistency(type 4 or similar);
Assess nutritional status from time to time to act preventively;
Get age-appropriate screenings like colon cancer screening, or before the recommended age if there are family cases, digestive symptoms, or polyps.
If you experience stomach discomfort such as abdominal distention, aerocolia (frequent burping) or diarrhea, constipation, heartburn, or even if you have unintentionally lost weight, are going through a period of severe fatigue with no apparent cause... these are all reasons to assess your digestive health... holistically.
Because each patient is really unique.