Healthy Digestion

The importance of the 1st phase of the digestive process is often overlooked. Known as the cephalic phase, it is influenced by smells, imaginations and also tastes. Physiologically, saliva secretion is triggered in the mouth and hydrochloric acid secretion in the stomach. These fluids are necessary for the chemical breakdown of nutrients. If they are not there in adequate quantity, you’re starting off digestion with a major handicap. The inadequate breakdown of nutrients leads to reduced absorption, thus less nourishment. Or larger compounds may be absorbed into the blood, which can burden the liver, incite immunological reactions and impede normal detoxification processes. Eat slowly and savour all the different flavours.

If you don’t have time to sit down, smell, admire, chew and enjoy your food properly, but rather are eating on the run, your nervous system is in all-systems-go or fight-or-flight sympathetic mode. This is not conducive to healthy digestive functioning. One detox tip for the digestive system is to simplify your intake when you’re unable to relax and enjoy food. Have a superfood smoothie. Nutrition packed, liquefied and delicious, these drinks are less taxing on an unprimed digestive system. Still, it’s important to remember the old adage: drink your meals and eat your drinks.

The process of ensalivation is paramount in digestion. Health experts such as Italian yoga master Vanda Scaravelli and Austrian detoxification expert Dr Franz Xavier Mayr suggest it’s not so much what you eat but how well you eat it. More specifically, how well your saliva mixes with the foodstuff and how well it is mechanically broken down by good chewing that enables acids and enzymes to work more completely on food particles further down the tract. Aim to masticate a minimum of 20 times per mouthful. Anywhere betwee
25 and 50 times is ideal. Refined food requires little chewing and is often swallowed after three or four chews, but even wholefood is all too often prematurely swallowed.

The enjoyment of a shared, relaxed meal goes well beyond healthy digestion and extends to healthy social experience and connectivity to the earth the food stems from. The religious traditions that emphasise saying grace before meals come from having gratitude for the energy of the earth, sun, soil, things and earthlings that contributed towards the production of the food. The Hare Krishna tradition makes their foods prasad, or blessed, before eating them, purifying them energetically before ingestion.

There are many scientific studies confirming the physiological benefits of gratitude, particularly in terms of longevity and depression. Perhaps saying grace, or at least reflecting with gratitude on your meal, has implications for digestive health and enhanced detoxification.

The tongue is used as a diagnostic indicator in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda. During a detox, one can often wake up with a thickened mouth and lining on the tongue. This is a detox reaction. The best management of this is to scrape the tongue every morning. Use a tongue scraper, a specially designed bent, flattened metal, often made from copper or stainless steel. Never brush the tongue, as it merely moves the waste around. The idea is to remove it from your body entirely.

What’s in your mouth has an impact on the levels of toxicity. Mercury is a heavy metal toxin that wreaks havoc in the body; it blocks numerous nerve pathways and is stored predominantly in the nervous system. If there are high levels of amalgam fillings, then every hot drink or hot meal, every bite down is potentially emitting small amounts of toxins that can be taken into the body. Ideally a gradual, well-managed removal of amalgams is a good detoxification step.