Foods to Improve Digestion

Food. We need it, we can’t live without it.

But if our digestion isn’t great, food can feel like an adversary.

Some foods we might fear, or want to avoid. Perhaps we know that the foods we crave so much are making us feel below par. It can be a constant distraction, something we feel the need to plan for, control, measure or restrict.

We’re all unique and so food may make us all feel differently. But many people might experience some of the following:

• constant tummy trouble

• indigestion

• acid reflux

• trapped wind

• bloating

• constipation

• feeling like food hangs around way too long so you feel sluggish all day

But what if we flip our view of food on its head? See food as a medicine, rather than making us reach out for the over the counter medicines?

Over two thousand years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Hippocrates was quoted as saying “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”

Well before modern science, medicine and technology, it was known that our bodies are built to naturally maintain balance in health, and that nature provided everything we needed for our bodies to thrive and heal from illness and injury.

Although food may trigger uncomfortable symptoms, and it may be partly down to what has been done to the food before it reaches our plates (think chemicals, pollution, processing, radiation and GMO, for example), this is only part of the whole picture. A whole host of lifestyle and environmental factors influence your digestive health, and narrowing the causes down to work out what do can be equally complicated.

While you may suspect a food intolerance or some other underlying health issue that may take some time to identify, there are plenty of healing foods you can try NOW to help relieve some discomfort.

My Top 10 Foods to Improve Digestion (rather than using over the counter medications to dampen your symptoms!):

1. Bitter foods, including rocket, kale, radicchio, dill, dandelion greens and citrus: These encourage the production in the stomach of a substance called gastrin, which stimulates the production of:

• stomach acid and digestive enzymes which help break your food down

• and bile which helps you to digest fats

Use these at the beginning of a meal, to prepare your gut for digestion. A bitter greens salad dressed with some olive, hemp, or cold pressed rapeseed oil is ideal.

2. Dandelion tea and peppermint tea: also bitter, teas can also be used as a digestive after eating. Peppermint has been shown to calm down the involuntary spasms that some people experience after eating as a wave of cramp-like feelings in the abdomen. For some people the effect is comparable to prescription anti-spasmodics used for irritable bowel syndrome.

3. Oats: a gluten free grain, great for slow release energy, containing fibre which can improve bowel movements and beta glucans which help calm the immune system. But their star quality is that they help to coat and protect the gut lining, giving it a chance to repair itself. Some people prefer gluten free oats, grown and processed in environments which ensure they can’t come into residue from other crops, such as wheat. But the protein avenin can be too similar to gluten for people with coeliac disease.

4. Bananas: these are high in potassium which helps peristalsis, the wave of muscle spasms in the gut which push food through. Full of pectin which aids digestion, insoluble fibre which bulks out your stool (a good thing!) and soluble fibre which forms a gel in your stomach, making you feel full for longer and slowing down energy release. The fibre also feeds your good gut bacteria and may also stop harmful bacteria from sticking to the gut lining.

5. Kefir: available in dairy, coconut or water form, home made or shop bought, kefir is full of probiotic (friendly) bacteria. These bacteria may not take up residence in the gut for long, but as they pass through, they can displace and move the less friendly bacteria on. People who have an overgrowth of gut bacteria may experience some gurgling or bloating at first, so it is worth trying over a few days or weeks to see if this settles down. Kefir made from dairy has already had most of the lactose broken down by bacteria, making it digestible for lactose intolerance.

6. Water: it almost always appears somewhere on every list! Water is needed for lots of chemical reactions in the body, including those that break foods down and release energy and nutrients for them. And of course, it hydrates the stool so that it can pass through easily. Aim for two litres a day, mostly between meals.

7. Chia seeds and Ground Flax Seeds: high in fibre and Omega 3 essential fats, these are great for relieving constipation. Try adding to porridge, muesli, smoothies, or as a chia pudding.

8. Fennel: used therapeutically for respiratory and other infections, it is also very soothing for the gut and stimulates digestion. Enjoy cooked, added to a salad, or use the seeds to make a tea. Shop bought fennel tea is also available.

9. Apple cider vinegar: anecdotally, most people who use it to improve digestion find that it does help. But if you have too much stomach acid, this might not be for you. You can either add it to a glass of water before a meal, starting with a teaspoon and working your way up to a tablespoon, or you could mix it with some oil and dress your bitter greens salad above.

10. Lots of plant foods: increasing the quantity and variety of fruits and vegetables is one of the best things you can do for your health, and there are so many to choose from! Diversity in your diet, paired with a gradual increase in fibre, will help to balance your microbiome.

If you would like to find out how nutritional can help with your digestive health, contact me at info@victoriabellnutrition.co.uk

How to Get Rid of Bloating

Bloating is no fun. It can interfere with what you do and how you enjoy (or don’t enjoy) life. Can you relate to the following?

• You cannot sit through a day at work without being uncomfortable

• You avoid eating before a big night out to fit into your clothes

• Your favourite foods cause your tummy to swell

• You spend most of your time feeling uncomfortable and the last thing you feel like is exercise

If so, bloating has started to interfere with the choices that you make and how you live your life.

Finding out what is causing your bloating is often not a quick fix. Over the counter and prescription medications may help in the short term, but they do not deal with the root cause. Similarly, working out your trigger foods can help you to reduce the bloating, but living with dietary restrictions longer term is also not the answer.

Gut Bacteria and Micriobiome

It helps to understand what might be causing the bloating. Often the balance of your gut bacteria or microbiome, may be involved. Most of your gut bacteria normally lives in your colon, or lower intestine. Further up in the small intestine, there should be a lot less bacteria and even less in the stomach.

Most of the bacteria is commensal, meaning that it has important jobs to do for you, including:

• protecting you from invading organisms such as viruses, parasites and harmful bacteria

• helping you to digest foods such as carbohydrates, including the lactose in dairy

• an active role in absorbing some nutrients and synthesising vitamin B12

Your commensal bacteria especially likes to feed on carbohydrates by fermenting them. As a by-product, gas is produced which you don’t tend to notice with a balanced microbiome. Some carbohydrates are much quicker to break down, which makes them more accessible to your gut bacteria.

If you eat a lot of sugary foods and refined carbohydrates such as white flour products, bacteria can overgrow but so can yeast such as candida and the more harmful bacteria! Even an overgrowth of commensal bacteria can contribute to bloating, especially if that bacteria has travelled up into the small intestine.

Lifestyle can also affect your microbial balance. Lack of sleep, poor stress tolerance and lack of exercise can all tip the balance so you not only start to experience tummy troubles, but can become more susceptible to illness.

If you’ve seen your doctor about your symptoms and ruled out any more concerning reasons for them, working with a nutritional therapist can help you to settle your digestive system so that bloating no longer blights your daily life.

My top 10 tips for getting rid of bloating:

1. Stay hydrated by aiming for two litres a day of fluids, ideally mostly water. Tea, coffee, herbal teas, and watery soups all help towards your intake. But…

2. Keep drinks away from your meals, because large quantities of liquid dilute your stomach acid and give your body a much harder job to digest your food. Tea especially can slow digestion down, because the tannins in the tea bind to pepsin which is an enzyme you need to break down protein.

3. Slow your eating down, chew your food as much as possible which makes the most of the digestive enzymes in your saliva. If you can eat as many of your meals as possible in a relaxed environment and with less distractions, you will be priming your digestive system to do it’s job.

4. Eat 2-4 regular small meals and keep snacks to a minimum – 1-2 per day if needed rather than grazing throughout the day. The period of fasting in between meals allows something called your Migrating Motor Complex (MMC) to activate. The MMC is an automatic wave of muscle contractions throughout your intestines, which not only helps push food down, but bacteria which belongs lower down in the colon. Given the chance, bacteria can travel up into the small intestine and wreak havoc.

5. Keep a food diary and record the timing of your meals and when your bloating happens. If you tend to have lots of foods together in each meal, try having less different foods in one sitting so that you have a better chance of identifying your trigger foods.

6. Another option is to try eliminating dairy or gluten for a week and noting your symptoms throughout the week and when you reintroduce the food. Give yourself three or more days before trying the other food to eliminate and go through the same process.

7. Carbohydrate rich foods, even the healthier plant-based ones may cause bloating. Stick to complex carbohydrates such as brown rice, whole grains (if they don’t add to the bloating), sweet potato, celeriac, and wholegrain pastas. Sourdough which has already been fermented may also produce less bloating than regular wheat-based bread.

8. Keep sugary snacks and drinks to a minimum and swap where possible for protein-based snacks such as nuts, nut butter, eggs or fish. A small banana, fresh berries or an apple with nuts or nut butter is a good combination.

9. Get up every hour or so from your desk and aim to include some walking, stretching or other physical activity every day.

10. Prioritise sleep and take steps to improve your sleep quality with a calm uncluttered bedroom, turning off screens an hour before bed and avoiding sugar, caffeine and alcohol in the evenings.

There are plenty more measures you can take to work on your bloating, too many to fit into one blog! Adopting as many as possible of the above steps will get you on the right path to resolving your symptoms.

If you would like to understand how nutritional therapy can help you to resolve your bloating, feel free to contact me at info@victoriabellnutrition.co.uk.

Managing Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Discussing something as personal as your bowel movements or constant bloating and discomfort can be embarrassing for many. So it may not be a surprise that people often self-diagnose IBS or avoid seeking medical attention for months or years.  But IBS is the most common functional gastrointestinal disorder in the developed world, affecting up to 1 in 5.  It is more common in women than men, with typical onset in the teen years and twenties but it can also affect children.

The condition is classified into several types; IBS-C (predominantly constipation), IBS-D (predominantly diarrhoea), IBS-M (mixed) and IBS-A (alternating).  As well as diarrhoea and constipation, other common symptoms include feeling like you haven’t been able to empty your bowels fully, abdominal cramps and bloating.  Other symptoms may include anxiety, depression, tiredness, nausea, heartburn, frequent urination, headaches and muscle pains.  IBS can have a big impact on daily life, including work, exercise, enjoying eating and sleep.

 
It is advisable to seek a diagnosis of IBS with your doctor, and there are certain symptoms that should always be investigated as soon as possible.  These include bleeding from the rectum, unexplained weight loss, persistent fever and malaise, an ongoing change of bowel habit for no obvious reason and sudden changes in digestive symptoms over the age of 50.  Investigation of these and the symptoms above is vital to rule out any other conditions.

 
There is no one known cause of IBS and it is considered to be a chronic disease, without a cure.  Many factors can contribute to it including genetics, diet, stress, poor sleep, trauma, gastroenteritis and antibiotics.  Many medications may be offered to address symptoms such as antispasmodics, laxatives, antidepressants and sleeping tablets, but often resolution of one symptom may result in a new side effect. 

 
It is however possible to take natural measures to calm and control the symptoms of IBS and significantly improve quality of life.  The first step is to look at what the underlying causes of the symptoms may be and where possible, remove triggers.  Nutritional therapists are trained to help work through this process with their clients and support them with a nutritional protocol.   There are many steps individuals can take, such as the following:
 

·       Identify any dietary triggers of IBS symptoms.  For some this may be a case of eliminating dairy and/or gluten, or it may involve lots of different foods such as those high in FODMAPs (fermentable carbohydrates).  An elimination diet may be required to identify which foods trigger symptoms and by following many of the other steps it may be possible to reintroduce some of these foods later on or build up a degree of tolerance.
 

·       Involve some daily movement such as walking or gentle yoga and aim to introduce some more intensive exercise one to three times per week.  Exercise that is enjoyable is best, and it is important not to exercise excessively as this can exert stress on the body and exacerbate symptoms.
 

·       Load up on lots of fresh vegetables and some fruit each day, although if you are experiencing severe bowel symptoms you may wish to build up gradually.  A good guide is to fill half of your plate for lunch and dinner with vegetables in a range of colours and include 1-3 portions of fruit (great choices are apples, stone fruits and berries) daily.
 

·       Consider the health of your microbiome (gut bacteria) by introducing a good quality probiotic.  We need to feed the good bacteria with lots of good quality plant foods (see above) and weed out the bad by limiting sugar, refined or trans fats and processed foods. If budget allows, a diagnostic stool test can also be useful in identifying pathogens, parasites, low levels of commensal bacteria or insufficient digestive enzymes.
 

·       Use bitter foods to stimulate digestion such as rocket, watercress, artichoke, or apple cider vinegar.  Chew food slowly and sip water with meals rather than drinking lots as it dilutes stomach acid.  Drink tea and coffee away from meals as they can bind to certain proteins and minerals and contribute to acid reflux.
 

·       Drink lots of water, aiming for 2 litres per day including teas.  Drink an extra glass of water for every cup of coffee.
 

·       Consider aspects of your life which are causing you stress, if possible implement some new strategies to prevent overload such as asking for help, letting go of commitments that no longer work for you and finding moments in your day to rest or do something enjoyable.  Time spent outdoors, hobbies, massages and meditation or breathing exercises are all great choices.

·       Spend time with friends and family and if you would like to, consider joining local groups or a class to connect with people.
 

·       If you feel that it would help you, consider other therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), emotional freedom tapping (EFT), counselling, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, massage, reflexology, homeopathy or aromatherapy.
 

IBS can be quite hard to come to terms with if the diagnosis is fairly recent, but with 20% of the population affected by it you are not alone.  With lots of time focussed on your self care, you can work towards regaining your energy and getting back to enjoying life.
 

If you would like to know more about how nutritional therapy could help you, contact me at info@victoriabellnutrition.co.uk 07873 121616.