Have you ever thought about how your digestion really works? When I ask this question, the answer I get most frequently is, “not a lot.” This surprises me because the old saying “you are what you eat” may be truer than you realize.
When I was a kindergarten teacher in the 90s, I took this to heart and taught my class a unit on digestion every single year. By the end of the unit, each child had created a custom T-shirt that displayed their entire digestive system on the outside where they could see it, feel it, and truly experience it.
And to this day, I believe that teaching those children what was happening inside their bodies when they ate became something many kept with them long after their kindergarten experience expired.
So I ask myself: if five-year-olds can grasp the basic concept of how digestion works, why do so many adults have little understanding of the body’s most fundamental action?
What Happens After Food Passes Your Lips?
Did you know that digestion begins even before you put food into your mouth?
Many automatic actions begin the moment food enters into your energy field.
Salivation is actually the beginning of this beautiful story.
Saliva gets your digestive juices flowing; it prepares your gut to receive and begins breaking some of that food down.
Your teeth chew your food to help break it down further and prepare it to be swallowed.
After you swallow, rhythmic muscular contractions called peristalsis move food through the esophagus and into the stomach. There, stomach muscles, acid, and digestive enzymes continue breaking it down.
The partially digested food then moves into the small intestine, where digestive juices from the pancreas, liver, and intestine help continue this process. The small intestine is also where most nutrients are absorbed and moved into your bloodstream or lymph.
What undigested food remains makes its way into the large intestine. More water is absorbed at this point, and the remaining waste is eventually prepared for elimination.
How Digestion Affects More Than Just Your Gut
We are a compilation of nutrient blocks converted, stored, and delivered to all necessary places
throughout our body.
When we experience good energy, vibrancy, and balanced attention… that directly corresponds with a storehouse stocked with the proper nutrients, enzymes, and essential vitamins and minerals a body needs to feel its healthiest.
This is largely due to the food we eat, of course, but even more so to how our body uses that food.
Does it get where it needs to go and convert what it needs to convert so we have the strength and energy to live our very best life?
The nutrients that we absorb don’t just fuel the body, though – they also help support the brain.
In fact, a lot of evidence now shows food being an indicator of mood. There is good mood food and bad mood food.
So yes, the food you put in your body collaborates with how you feel in your brain.
You have no doubt heard that proteins are the building blocks of life. We also understand that vitamins, minerals, and amino acids from the foods we eat provide those building blocks as well as co-factors that your body uses for many processes.
Healthy foods provide this foundation. That is, whole foods like fruits, vegetables, meats, and foods
naturally high in fiber, legumes, lentils, prebiotics, and probiotics. The things humans have been consuming for a long time.
What About the Microbiome?
I consider the gut to be the core of your body. Everything else that surrounds it is connected like a spider’s web. So, what happens there (or lack thereof)… happens everywhere.
You have likely heard how much of your immune system resides within your gut. Current research
estimates that approximately 70% of the cells in your body connected to your immunity are found in the lining of your gastrointestinal tract.
A big part of this working machine is your gut’s microbiome.
Your microbiome is an ecosystem that invites trillions of microorganisms to live, interact with, and
support your immune system through this intestinal environment.
What Disrupts Healthy Digestion?
Have you ever had a nervous tummy or felt anxiety in the pit of your stomach?
The lowdown on this is that stress can disrupt digestion because a strong stress response literally changes how your body prioritizes its resources.
Chronic stress can therefore influence digestive function and the gut-brain relationship.
Stress is only one of the everyday factors that can affect how well we digest.
So, what are your eating habits actually like? Take a moment to think about this.
You are likely aware by now that what you eat and choose to put into your body greatly influences how you ultimately feel.
Eating patterns that leave you feeling bloated, gassy, or fatigued are definitely worth paying attention to.
Are you relying heavily on ultra-processed foods or added sugars?
When you eat, are you doing it calmly and chewing your food thoroughly?
Do you drink enough water, vary your diet, and get enough fiber?
5 Simple Ways You Can Support Your Healthy Digestion Now!
- Drink plenty of quality water every single day.
- Move your body (a moving body helps make a moving bowel).
- Get in plenty of whole food fiber.
- Minimize ultra-processed foods and excess added sugar.
- Try for whole food meals as often as you are able.
If I could provide only one health suggestion, it would be to support and optimize digestion – every single time.
This is really about prevention.
Pay now or pay later….
Because digestion is much easier to support than it is to fix.
I know digestion isn’t really that ‘sexy,’ so to speak, but sometimes when you understand what is
happening behind the curtain, it is no longer such a mystery.
And if you are one of those people for whom this got your juices flowing, so to speak, and you’d like to learn more… There are so many good books out there, but here are a few of my favorites:
Eating Alive: Prevention Thru Good Digestion by Dr. Jonn Matsen, N.D.
The Mood Cure: The 4-Step Program to Take Charge of Your Emotions – Today by Julia Ross,
M.A., Author of The Diet Cure
- About the Author
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Cece James BS, HHP, CAWK, Clinical EFT Certified Practitioner , Certified Toxicity & Detox Specialist
Cece James is the founder of the Institute for Healing and Holistic Living. She has been in the field of health and wellness for almost 3 decades. She is passionate about her mission to bring healing strategies to others and create a loving culture of self-care.
Cece supports individuals and families facing chronic illness or other health challenges as well as empowers those who are interested in learning to navigate the terrain of whole foods, holistic lifestyle, supplements and the use of various natural remedies.
She truly believes that everyone has what they need to heal inside them right now. Through experience and conversation, she explores the various ways in which a holistic lifestyle can enrich and integrate into any current view of health and thus optimize ones true balance and vitality.
