Tips to ease our digestion during festive season

• Eating slowly

It takes 20 minutes for our brain to realize that we have started to eat and to be able to send a signal of satiety which says: “You are not hungry anymore, you can stop eating! “. Hence, the faster we eat, the more food we will eat before getting this signal and realizing that we have eaten enough.

• Chewing well

30% of our digestion takes place in our mouth. In our saliva we have a lot of enzymes, the action of these molecules is to digest food. If we skip this step by swallowing our meal too quickly, we are going to overload what comes after, our digestive tract, which will have to take over an additional 30% of the digestion. If there is liquid food, such as a soup or mashed potatoes, instead of “drinking” or swallowing them very quickly we can keep them a little time longer in our mouth to benefit from the enzymes in our saliva. Festive meals are already quite heavy for your digestive system, so let’s make its life easier!

• Drinking a large glass of water 30 minutes before a meal

This will prepare our digestion as well as filling our stomach with some liquids, so that we will then tend to eat smaller amounts of food and maybe avoid a second serving.

• Avoid snacking between meals

When we eat between meals, our digestive system is never at rest. Indeed, it has not yet finished the digestion of the previous meal and some additional food is arriving again! We can easily understand that the key to a good digestion is to leave enough time in between each meal. That is the reason why snacking is not recommended.

• Eat fruit away from meals

We sometimes believe that if we eat fruit at the end of a meal, instead of a dessert, it will be lighter and easier to digest. Well, this is not really the case. Fruits are digested very quickly, in approximately 30 minutes, except for bananas. If we eat fruit at the end of a meal, it will be “trapped” by the meal itself and will remain in our digestive system longer than eating fruit outside big meals. This will cause fermentation with the following unpleasant symptoms:  bloating, gas, digestive heaviness and over time a disruption of our intestinal flora.

• Exercise

Moderate physical activity improves and eases our digestion. Let’s take advantage of the beautiful summer and the sunny days to go out for a walk on the beach and swim in the ocean, salted water being very beneficial given its purifying effects.

List of Natural Remedies

• Essential oils: Ginger, Cardamom or Coriander: 2 to 3 drops on the back of the hand and lick just before, just after and 30 minutes after the meal.
• Homeopathy: either Nux Vomica 5CH or Lachesis 5CH – 3 x 2 granules per day when needed.

In addition to the holiday season, this end of the year may also be a good time to think about the past year and perhaps, decide to leave behind what we no longer need and set up new habits, new choices and new decisions.

Wishing all good health and best wishes for 2021!