Give Your Gut A Break
When you are a young kid, and even into your 20’s and for some of us into our 30’s, you can usually eat almost anything and never have any real problems with your tummy. When we get older, the gut no longer has the power to stave off the horrors that can come with eating the wrong thing at the wrong time of day. This can deeply effect all that we do, from sleeping correctly to keeping gas from making us a public spectacle.
Proper digestion is a must if we are to have happy tummies in our older years. There is a lot of information and many programs out there that are designed to help you make sense of food and its effects on your whole person. The problem is that many of them are confusing and often give conflicting advice. The real truth of the matter is actually quite simple. If we just think scientifically about our guts, we can get along a lot better than most people today and we don’t have to just “put up” with the constant problems many of us have dealing just with our digestive systems.
The linchpin to understanding our digestive systems is that our tummies are not designed for complex meals. One type of food makes a certain demand on the digestive system and another makes quite a different type of demand. We certainly can digest all sorts of different types of food, but this doesn’t mean that the job should be done all at once. Protein digestion, for instance, takes place in the stomach and requires a highly acidic environment. Starch, however, requires a highly alkaline environment. This also takes place in the mouth and in the small intestine. Vegetables and fats are also digested in the small intestine and require a mild alkaline environment.
It’s no stretch of the imagination to accept that if foods that are digested differently are included in the same meal, then havoc will ensue. Somewhere, somehow, there will be incomplete digestion of something if digestive necessity is mixed in its purposes. What you cannot properly digest, will be digested by harmful microforms. Compromised digestion paves the way for the little bad creatures in your gut to grow and become stronger, and when they do, they then produce lots of sticky mucus. Got a problem with mucus? This is one of the ways to control it.
How do we usually eat? Meat and potatoes, fish and chips, chicken and rice, burger and fries, and just about any type of sandwich. The Earl of Sandwich knew not what he was doing in combining multiple types of food in what was considered a nifty way to make a meal short and convenient. All these examples are an abuse of your digestive system, and when you reach middle age, your gut cannot fight off the effects of a lifetime of an abused gut. YOU HAVE TO DO IT MANUALLY. Combining sugar and starch and sugar and protein leads to the same problems. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are of Satan, and you should know that they are like a cruise missile for your digestive tract.
So what is the answer? In any meal it is important to mix no more than four foods from no more than two types of foods. Three vegetables with one protein or one complex carb are good examples. For instance, steamed carrots and a tomato salad with noodles. Choosing fewer foods provides a light load on the digestive system. If you use only one protein per meal, and only one complex carbohydrate then you are doing well, and your tummy will thank you.
If you concentrate on consuming foods that are high in water and low in sugar, you can go a long way to helping your gut heal itself, and you’ll sleep better too. This helps to automatically eliminate the problematic foods. The water in the food assists in the digestion and also increases the proper balance on the blood of alkaline and acid components. If you consider the makeup of your body, 70 percent water, 20 percent natural oils, 7 percent protein, 2 percent sugar, then foods that reflect this combination will be much easier on the body.
Keep in mind that you are trying to keep animal protein and starch separate, and sugar, including fruit, should be kept away from any combination. Low sugar, high water vegetables combine with everything. They are fine with protein, starch and oily foods, and even with other vegetables.
Starches can mix with veggies and low-sugar fruits. But no starches are to be combined with animal protein, and this includes starchy veggies too. Lemons and tomatoes are quite acidic and yet they make the body more alkaline, therefore they can be considered very helpful for the digestion of starches. Bread, pasta and potatoes should be eaten along side veggies and not fish.
Animal protein mixes well with veggies or low sugar fruits, but not starch, acids or oils. Vegetable proteins combine with all low sugar, high water content veggies and fruits, and also good oils. Have fish with veggies and not grain, no bread. No rice either, fish should be served with a bed of greens , even if they are steamed. Never cook veggies that are still alive, you kill the benefits of veggies by cooking them.
High sugar fruit should be left to itself, or not eaten at all. No fruit with protein, starch, veggies or anything oily. The good fruits of digestion are: lemon, lime, raw tomato, avocado, bell peppers of all colors (red bell peppers have the highest vitamin C content), and non-sweet grapefruit.
Seeds, nuts and avocado, all great sources of healthy fats, can be combined with plant and animal proteins, starches or even high sugar fruits. Keep the fish away from the oil and butter, use lemon juice, salsa, or herbs; your tummy will thank you.
You may not like to hear it, but the veggies you get from the Earth are the best thing for your body and they were made to be so. There are a few fruits which are also the best for you, but you have to keep in mind the fructose sugars contained in much of them. Fruit is great for repairing the body when it needs help, but it will make you bloat if too much fructose is consumed too quickly. Veggies build the body and keep you in balance, so it makes sense that they combine with each other well and also should be more and more a major part of your diet as you grow older.
Any combination of meat and starches, this includes those tasty onion rings, is murder on the gut. If you are not 15 years old, you need to stop this sort of thing right now. Acids block the production of ptyalin, a component of saliva that is necessary for starch digestion. Potatoes, bread, pasta, and even whole grains, break down into simple sugars in the body. Adding a high sugar fruit, even in juice form will layer sugar on top of sugar (and acid on top of acid). Want to shut down your immune system? Catch a cold on the bus or subway? Fill up on this kind of sugar combination and you will be defenseless for about five hours as your system literally quits functioning. Oils will also slow starch digestion, but is not a major problem if the starch is only 20 percent of the alkalinizing meal. Don’t avoid healthy oils, they can neutralize acids in the blood, and this is the best news possib
le for us all. Animal protein in the stomach produces acid. Sugars and starches make even more acid in combination with protein. This leads to indigestion, heartburn and gas. Oils will slow the digestion of animal proteins and this causes constipation and acid reflux, heartburn and gas. Gas, gas, gas!
Most fruits are very high in sugars, the fructose I have mentioned before. They produce a lot of acid. With protein combined this is an invitation to major acid over production. Starch and fruit is double the sugar. Which means that if you eat starch and fruit together, the starch will prevent the digestion of the fruit and you can have rotting fruit in your digestive tract in no time at all. Nice, huh? Fruit and oil leads to constipation, and a wasting of nutrients. Remember that fruits are cleansers and healers, veggies are builders, so asking your gut to do different jobs at the same time can make you old before your time. You are what you eat and how you eat. Could you be killing yourself slowly with the wrong combos of foods?
You might not consider this, but choosing a drink with food can be a problem too. Just leave the drink aside, don’t wash down food with a drink, even water. Cold drinks can shut down the digestive fire needed in the belly and interferes once again with the ultimate purpose of what your body is designed to do. Drink water way before the meal, like a half hour or so, it can dilute the digestive chemicals that will be needed. Eat your juicer foods, with a higher water content first in a meal. Veggies and salads are actually good appetizers and help with the heavier items to come later in the main dish. A little warm water after a meal can also help with the digestion.
Remember, you have been taught wrong in the area of food consumption. Marketing companies have only been interested in your wallet and not your well being, despite what they say. If you have a big tummy problem, and just go to the acid control section of your drug store to see how much of an industry has been born from digestive problems, then you need to give yourself a break from the old ways of thinking about the relationship of your tummy and food. Advertisers sell image, not truth. You suffer from their lies designed to take the money from your pocket. Once you are ill, the doctor then gets his cut, and he may have to cut YOU. Find the truth, and the truth will set you free. ;-)
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