- The smell of food cooking stimulates the digestive system to prepare itself for the anticipated noshing event.
- About 15 minutes before eating, take a small amount of bitters, like gentian or wormwood. More on this in a blog about bitters.
- The food is here! Chew it well to further stimulate digestion and the break the food particles down so our stomach doesn’t have to do all the work.
- Take time eating and relax as much as possible.
- Breathe out whilst chewing to fully enjoy the flavours of the food and aid relaxation.
- Half way through the meal, take some HCl to help the ravaged stomach better digest its protein. ((The ravaged stomach: why? Quite unwittingly, we make life really hard for our digestive system. See #9. Add to this a lack of zinc in the diet which is a building block out of which the stomach makes HCl; the lack of HCl leaves the digestive system open to nasty bacteria which should really fry in the highly acidic soup in the stomach; drinking chlorinated water destroys good bacteria, antibiotics kill good bacteria, antibacterials in toothpaste kill good bacteria too; stress, which draws blood away from the digestive system. The list is endless.))
- Add natural salt in the form of Celtic sea salt or Himalayan sea salt to the food to stimulate HCl production and intestinal enzymes to help cope with cooked food. If we have a physically demanding job, or the weather is very hot (not the UK then!) we need more salt since when we sweat we lose salt. If the food comes pre-prepared or processed, then there will probably be enough salt already in there, although the quality of the salt will be low.
- Digestive enzymes and probiotics are best taken after the meal.
- Vary the foods eaten every day at each meal. I have been researching this topic, and our health went downhill when we started farming, a global event, about 10,000 years ago. As a result the variety of foods we eat has been shrinking steadily, meaning we eat more and more of the same foods year in year out. And this increases intolerance to those foods which puts a huge stress on the digestive system and ultimately, our health. Variety really is the spice of life.
- Try to avoid zooming about straight after a meal to keep the blood flow to the guts so they can do their job properly.