How To Improve Digestive Health

Maintaining your digestive health is just as important as maintaining your heart health, bone health and the health of the rest of your body. The digestive system breaks down the food you eat into the nutrients your body needs. If you neglect your digestive health, your body could run into digestive problems like abdominal pain, cramping, constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, and nausea. Some of these digestive problems can be reduced or avoided entirely by improving your diet and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. By following simple tips you can improve and maintain your digestive health more efficiently.

Tips For Better Digestive Health:

1. Eat High Fiber Diet

• Fiber can help your Gastro Intestinal tract stay regular, improve cardiovascular health and regulate blood sugar levels. Fiber is found only in plant food. It's the part of the plant that is not digested in the human body. It's important to eat foods containing both soluble fiber, such as oat bran and beans, and insoluble fiber, such as whole-wheat products.
• Soluble fiber mixes with water to create a gel-like consistency, this slows digestion to help the body absorb more nutrients and remove substances like cholesterol. Eat foods rich in soluble fiber like oats and oat bran, nuts, legumes, peas, and some fruits and vegetables such as dried plums, apples and carrots. soluble fiber also controls your cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
• Insoluble fiber does not mix with water but adds bulk to stool and helps move food through the digestive system. Whole grains (especially wheat bran), skins of fruits, dried plums and many vegetables (cauliflower and potatoes) provide insoluble fiber. Increasing your intake of insoluble fiber will improve your bowel movements  and prevents constipation.
• High fiber foods are generally low in calories and they will also help you control your weight, lower your blood sugar and cholesterol levels, and reduce your risk of hemorrhoids (swollen and inflamed veins in the rectum and anus that cause discomfort and bleeding).

2. Drink Plenty Of Water

• Healthy digestion requires adequate fluid intake. The fiber in your food and water will increase the efficiency of your digestion by helping to soften and break down foods so your body can absorb the nutrients. It will also soften your stool and make regular bowl movements easier.

3. Eat More Fermented Foods

• A healthy digestive tract contains many species of microorganisms which help break down food. Fermented and cultured foods are high in good bacteria and eating them will help you regenerate and balance the bacterial community in your digestive system.
• Eat fermented products like yogurt or kefir on a daily basis, to strengthen the immune system, treat irritable bowel syndrome and maintain a healthy digestive system.

4. Exercise Regularly

• Exercise for at least 30 minutes every day. Exercise will reduce stress, control your weight, and help your intestines to contract normally, moving food through your system. Regular exercise will help the food move easily through the digestive system and reduce constipation.

5. Eat Less Fatty Foods

• Processed foods contain high quantities of sugar, salt and fat. Fatty foods tend to slow the digestive process, prevent us from being hungry for healthy foods and they cause irritable bowel movement and constipation. When these fatty foods pair with high fiber foods, it makes the digestion easy.

6. Eat Meals On A Regular Schedule

• Consuming meals on a regular schedule will keep your digestive system in good condition. Try to eat your breakfast, lunch, dinner around the same time each day.

7. Quit Smoking And Alcohol

• Excessive smoking and drinking leads to inflammation of the stomach lining, ulcers, cramping, bleeding, abdominal pain, heartburn and acid reflux. By quitting smoking and drinking you can reduce the risk of ulcers and cancers involved with the digestive system. 

8. Manage Stress

• Stress has a direct effect on digestive health. Stress can cause the passage of food through the digestive system to slow down or to speed up, which can cause abdominal pain. The digestive enzymes will be released in smaller amounts when you are under stress, thus leads to improper digestion, irritable bowel syndrome and constipation.
• Yoga, meditation, pranayama, listening to soothing music, massage, baths and other relaxation techniques can help you to handle stress and maintain proper digestive health.

9. Adjust Eating Patterns

• Avoid eating late at night or right before bedtime. It helps in reducing acid reflux and heartburn. Frequent, small meals keep your digestive system busy without overloading it.

Conclusion

Your lifestyle is directly impacted by the foods you eat and the lifestyle you live. By following the above tips your digestive system will work efficiently, improving your overall health. Consult a physician and seek their advice before changing your diet and lifestyle.

How Skipping Meals Is Unhealthy

Majority of people tend to skip their meals, giving various excuses. Some people skip their meals occasionally but some people skip their meals regularly thinking that if they eat fewer meals, they’ll take in fewer total calories and lose weight more successfully. Although skipping a meal on rare occasions is harmless, skipping meals often does have negative health effects. Skipping meals regularly have long-term effects on the body and even contribute to the development of some chronic conditions. By skipping meals, you don’t get any closer in developing a healthy-looking body. In fact, doing it might make it even harder for you to get rid of the extra weight.

Effects Of Skipping Meals On Health

The effects of skipping meals on health is explained below:

1. Weight Gain

• When you don’t eat for a long, it turns the hunger to craving. In this situation, the spicy, peppery, frozen, oily and fried eatables attract more. Craving leads to overeating and insensible eating. This leads to more calorie intake, which boosts weight gain.

2. Lowers Nutritional Levels

• Cutting back on meals means cutting back on opportunities to consume adequate amounts of the vitamins, minerals, protein, and essential fatty acids our bodies need in a day. These dietary components are vital to many body processes such as growth and development, disease prevention and overall well-being.

3. Drop In Blood sugar levels

• When you skip a meal, you don’t supply your body with the fuel it runs on. Consequently, your blood sugar levels drop and the body experiences a shortage of energy.
• Sticking to a healthy eating routine can become much more difficult when you skipped your last meal. So you start craving unhealthy snacks just to bring those sugar levels up.
• When your sugar levels drastically fluctuate between highs and lows, your dieting efforts get seriously compromised. Also, insulin – the hormone that regulates glucose levels – gets disturbed. There is a chance that you are contributing to the development of diabetes later in life.
• The drop in blood sugar level due to skipping meal makes your body releasing hormones to compensate for low glucose level. It causes an increase in blood pressure and affects the arteries, making them narrow. 

4. Impairs Concentration

• Glucose, which your body obtains by breaking down nutrients in the food you eat, is the primary source of energy for your brain and central nervous system. When you fast for several hours or more, the supply of glucose to your brain dwindles.
• Within four to six hours of your last food intake, the brain starts experiencing a fuel shortage, you become tired, sluggish, moody and irritable and your cognitive functions are affected, and you might have difficulty with attention, memory, concentration and general mental performance.

5. Slows The Metabolism

• When you skip meals, your metabolism slows down. As a result, the food transforms into fat more readily and gets deposited in all the places you don’t want it to be.
• When your body enters into starvation mode, it looks for new sources of energy. Your metabolism starts transforming fat into energy. This might sound like a good plan, but can have health consequences that include nausea, constipation, fatigue, kidney stress, low blood pressure. fat more readily and gets deposited in all the places you don’t want it to be.

6. Miss Your Exercise Session

• When you are physically and mentally feeling unwell, this affects all other areas of your life. Like you might want to give your exercise session a miss, because you’re simply not feeling energetic enough to do it. Or, you start craving unhealthy snacks just to bring those sugar levels up.
• Even if you push through your fatigue and hit the gym, skipping a meal can leave you feeling terrible through your session.

7. GERD, Gas, Bloating

• The digestive juice is responsible for proper functioning of digestive tract. They work in form of digestive enzymes and from chewing process, they kick-start to perform their action. Missing meals not only causes lack of nutrition, but also decrease the formation rate of digestive enzymes. Their insufficient quantity results to poor digestion, triggering gas and bloating.  
• Gastro-colic reflex also causes irritable bowel syndrome or diarrhea.

8. Bad Breath or Chronic Breath

• When you skip meals regularly, the chemical reaction of ketoacidosis starts. In this, the body chemicals break down and develop an unpleasant, odd fruity odor.
• Empty stomach reduces the amount of saliva production. Saliva helps to flush away the unwanted bacteria in tongue, gums and teeth; less formation of saliva leads to dry mouth, which results in bad breath.

Conclusion

Skipping meals sets your body for a slower metabolism and crazy hunger pangs that are tough to resist. Lose weight by eating smaller, healthier meals throughout the day. Make sure to eat high-quality, nutrient-rich food: lean protein combined with carbs from whole grains and some monounsaturated good fats. Ramp up your workouts so you burn more calories, as well. In order to maintain a healthy lifestyle and set your body up to succeed, focusing on consuming more nutritious, well-rounded meals is necessary for overall health.