Is your digestion less than optimal? Do you often experience bloating or belching after eating? Do you ever have diarrhea or constipation? These can be signs of a digestive system that is not functioning properly.

Luckily, there are some easy steps that you can start implementing today to improve your digestion.

1) Look at and smell your food - get excited about it!

We eat in order to survive but, we should also be enjoying our food. If you aren't, what's the fun in that! We are visual beings and digestion actually starts in the BRAIN. When you get excited about your meal, you start to salivate and active enzymes in your mouth. These enzymes start to break down your food - especially carbohydrates - getting them ready for your stomach. The brain is in control of this response.

Try this exercise: picture your favorite meal or dessert in your head. Everything about it -- the taste, the smell, the look. Do you start drooling?! This is your brain activating the body's response to food, which initiates digestion.

2) Relax! You do not want to be stressed out when you are trying to eat.

Your body does not know the difference between your argumentative relative at Thanksgiving, watching an action movie while eating or eating on the run. All of these are examples of activities that can activate your fight-or-flight response – or your sympathetic nervous system. This is the nervous system that allows you to react to stressful events - it pumps adrenaline and ephinephrine into our veins in order for us to out run a tiger that is chasing us (unlikely, but you get the idea).

In order to properly digest your meal, your body needs to be in parasympathetic mode or the healing mode. When your hormones for escaping a threat are turned on, your hormones for digestion are turned off. Your body pulls its resources from your digestive tract in order for you to fight off an oncoming threat. Your digestive system is the last thing on your body's mind.

Before your meal, take a moment to relax, or say grace, before picking up your fork. This will help to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and increase your digestive capabilities.

If you really are having difficulty relaxing while you eat, try sitting on the floor – this helps you to feel grounded and relax.

3) Chew your food slowly.

The goal is to turn your solids into liquids. You really want to avoid large chunks of food from entering your stomach. If you didn’t know, your stomach does not have teeth! Your food needs to be liquefied when it reaches your stomach. This takes stress off your system and allows your meal to be more fully digested.

Also, your mouth is covered in nerve endings which allow it to communicate with the stomach. While you are chewing, you are communicating what needs to be broken down by the stomach – lots of protein? Increase the stomach acid, please! Also, your saliva is where your carbohydrates start to break down via salivary amylase. Your stomach does not break down carbohydrates, so if you are not properly breaking them down in your mouth, the next place they will be broken down is your small intestine. If you have any dysfunction here, you can experience bloating.

4) Take your time.

Make sure your meals are taking you at least 15 minutes to consume – bonus points for longer! This way, your stomach will have enough time to empty before receiving more food and will not be overburdened.

BONUS:

- If you want to further increase your digestion, you can also try adding 1 TBSP of Apple Cider Vinegar (Bragg’s) to your water during meal time. The acid in the vinegar will help to stimulate your normal stomach acid production.

- Consume a mixture of shredded Apple/Carrot/Beet (with lemon juice and EVOO) or a salad composed mostly of bitter greens before your main meal. The bitter tastes aid in ramping up digestion. Back when there were multiple courses at mealtime, usually a dish that would aid in digestion was consumed before other heavier parts of the meal.

- Taking Digestive Bitters before a meal is another way that you can ramp up your digestion. These are tinctures that contain bitter herbs that simulate digestion, similarly to the salads above. The bitters are the same concept but come in a multitude of flavors. Simply take a dropper full to aid in digestion. The ones that I prefer come from Urban Moonshine – the citrus one if my favorite!

https://www.amazon.com/Urban-Moonshine-Citrus-Bitters-Dropper/dp/B0031525NQ

HAPPY EATING!!