Diet & Digestion

Creating balance is an ongoing process that allows your body and mind to function in perfect coordination and harmony with each other and the natural environment.

Never before have we had such a strong need to live a balanced life, but relatively few manage to do so. A good number of guidelines for nutrition and digestion are presented here and are derived from the ancient science of Ayurveda and my own experiences of diet and digestion.

Regularly following the rhythms of nature and your body ensures that your body and mind can function with ease and optimal energy.

Regular Mealtimes.

• Lunch should make up the main meal of the day. Eat between 10 am - 2 pm. The best time to eat is when the sun is in its highest position.

• The evening meal should be light, since digestive power (AGNI) is low in the evening. There are very few digestive secretions after 8 pm. A heavy meal taken in the evening remains mostly undigested.

• Eat dinner between 6 pm -7 pm, so that the main digestion is completed before bedtime and does not interfere with your sleep.

• Eat your meals at about the same time every day, so that the digestive system can always perform at its best. Eating at different times each day makes it difficult for the body to produce the right amount of digestive juices required for each meal.

• Eat according to your hunger level. If you are not hungry, don’t eat. Wait until your natural appetite (digestive power) AGNI, has returned.

• Drink about 6 - 8 glasses of water each day. Fresh water is best, or filtered water from the tap is fine. Avoid drinking liquids with meals, and 1/2 hour before eating and 1-1/2 hrs after eating, since this dilutes digestive juices and interferes with stomach secretions.

• Sit down when you eat even if it is for a small snack. The digestive system is better able to secrete balanced amounts of digestive juices when you are eating in a seated position.

• Eat in a settled environment, any distractions from eating impairs the enjoyment of the food and the body’s ability to supply the appropriate enzymes for digestion.

• Different Foods, for Different Body Types.

Different foods have an almost immediate effect on the body. In fact, it is known that the body’s biochemistry changes within several minutes of eating a meal. You can easily verify the powerful influence that food has on your body through muscle testing.

If you eat something that is outright harmful to you, your stomach will signal indigestion. Some foods can be even more damaging than just causing heartburn.

To make it easier for you to figure out which diet and lifestyle are most beneficial for you, determine which body type you are.

Different people digest and utilise the same food in a different way. If a Vata and a Pitta type go to a restaurant and order the same meal, one of them may feel invigorated afterwards and the other one dull and heavy.

Since the three bodily intelligences (doshas) of nature are represented in our body uniquely and individually, each one of us has different requirements for the various nutrients contained in food. Our body is only able to utilise the nutrients of those foods that are suitable for our body type when in balance.

You don’t need to become fixated about sticking to certain foods, especially if you are not just one clear body type. However knowing your body type and knowing the foods best suited for you , can help you return to a balanced state of health.

Our Digestive Fire (AGNI) and Energies.

Powering our very existence is the life force Prana, or Chi, digesting your food is AGNI, and determining the movement of fluids and energy in your tissues, organs, muscles, and bloodstream are the three doshas (bodily intelligences), Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.

Each dosha is distinguished from the other by its type of energy, the biological processes it governs, and natural rhythms and cycles.

Disturbances in the natural energy that flows through your bodily channels and keeps you alive causes imbalances in digestive functions, waste disposal, and immunological processes. This eventually leads to a state of internal pollution and congestion.

The digestive process actually begins in your mouth. Here, food is pre-digested by saliva, which also signals your stomach, pancreas, small intestines, and liver, that a meal is on the way.

These organs then release the appropriate types and amounts of digestive enzymes and minerals needed to break down the food into the smallest nutrient components.

Not only is it necessary to chew every morsel thoroughly so that it is pre-digested properly, but research suggests that chewing also reduces the release of stress hormones.

Eating a meal - which means you are digesting calories - is usually a stressful event for individuals who are overweight. This in turn leads to anxiety, fear, and insecurity, which tends to make one chew even faster.

Once the food enters your stomach, your salivary enzymes continue to digest it in this organ for as much as an hour. Only then does your stomach begin to secrete its gastric juices - hydrochloric acid, enzymes, mineral salts, mucous, and water.

The acid kills harmful microbes and parasites that are naturally present in the food as well as harmful substances such as food additives and chemicals. Also, special enzymes are released to act on proteins.

Once saturated with sufficient acid, the food is pumped into the small intestine. This coiled-like tube organ is responsible for most of the chemical digestion and absorption of nutrients, salt, and water.

Simultaneously the liver pours in bile, and the pancreas contributes digestive enzymes, minerals and water to further break down starches. Bile on the other hand metabolises fats and proteins.

Metabolised nutrients are absorbed through the walls of the small intestine and pass into the blood, which carries them to the liver for detoxification. The rest are detoxified by the lymphatic system.

Refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, and chemical additives in processed foods and drinks significantly lower AGNI. None of these substances were intended by nature to be ingested and anything that is unnatural, and worse still, consumed regularly and in vast quantities, blocks the digestive fire (AGNI).

This is where the toxicity crisis and the beginnings of disease begin. When AGNI is low, undigested food cannot pass through the intestinal walls and into the bloodstream. It becomes a target for destructive bacteria and starts fermenting and putrefying in the intestines.

Food For Thought.

The mind - body connection is clearly demonstrated by the intestines. The cerebral cortex of the brain, which controls thought, is intimately connected with the digestive process. So, not only foods, but also thoughts need to be properly “digested” or processed so that they don’t cause us any harm.

Undigested thoughts have a poisonous effect on the body as a whole and on the digestive system in particular. Fear, anger, shock, trauma, anxiety and other negative emotions may be locked up in the cellular memory of the intestines for a long time and without any obvious indication of their presence.

Once they have reached a certain degree of concentration, they may suddenly erupt and alter one’s personality in a negative way. This can be damaging to the body as well. Either due to temperament or traumatic events in one’s past, an individual can become emotionally toxic. Old conflicts, traumas and toxic beliefs continue to fester long after they have subsided from the conscious mind. These thoughts and emotions can also be stored as poisonous compounds in adipose or fatty tissue.

In other words, if you feel frequently upset, angry, worried or simply unhappy, you are prone not only to suffer from “mental indigestion”, but also from physical indigestion. Imbalances of the intestines are characterised by holding on to things in our insides, regardless of whether these are undigested food or unresolved emotional conflicts.

The reverse is also true. If you are suffering from chronic indigestion or you regularly consume highly processed, refined and denatured foods, you begin to accumulate toxic waste in your intestines. The waste may give rise to nervouness, hyperactivity or any other emotionally imbalanced condition.

Food as Medicine.

The use of food as medicine is not just a treatment model that was almost common knowledge in the past, but it is now increasingly being recognised as a matter of survival.

Most chronic diseases share nutritional deficiency as the number one cause for the underlying degeneration of cells, tissues and organs. Instead of food being our best medicine, modern food production has turned our best foods into our most harmful poisons. Many among the younger generations have almost completely lost touch with the simple truth that, they are what they eat.

We are told heart attacks, cancers, and arthritic pains have nothing to do with the foods we eat. Instead we are told it is a disease, after a series of test that have no other purpose than to find a label and a corresponding drug or procedure to suppress the symptoms from which we suffer. The treatment consist of methods that make the symptoms disappear. If successful, the person is considered disease - free, at least for the time being.

Weight Gain - A Congestion and Toxicity Crisis.

It is a well-known fact that being overweight can increase an individual’s risk of heart disease, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, among many other medical conditions. Plus the excess burden placed on the body and its various systems and organs are only some of the complications that arise from carrying around excess kgs.

An individual who weighs more than their optimal weight for their body type is suffering from internal pollution, congestion of their internal organs, a toxicity crisis and is carrying around years and years of poisonous debris.

Chemical Warfare.

Enemy Number One of overweight individuals is processed foods, including fast foods, breakfast cereals, energy bars, pasta, and cakes. You pick them off the shelves, peel off the wrapper, eat most of them on the move or put them in the microwave.

They save you time, they taste delicious, and they are even ‘nutritionally enriched’. At least that’s what the label says.

They say start your day with a healthy bowl of breakfast cereal, with its bright colours and healthy ingredients.

Hiding behind labels such as ‘whole grain’, ‘high fibre’, and ‘nutritionally enriched’, are a selection of chemicals, present in all processed foods, ingesting chemical toxins into your bodily organs.

Starting with your liver, kidneys, intestines, and connective tissue. These chemicals, artificial colouring agents, preservatives, food flavouring agents, refined sugars, refined grains, trans fatty acids and even fibre from bran, and breakfast cereals could be escalating weight gain and taking your body to a toxicity crisis.

This is easily understood when we take a look at how the body deals with any type of toxins that enter the digestive system. The link between processed foods and weight gain is the liver.

This organ is responsible for more than 500 different functions, two of which are detoxification and burning fat. Apart from neutralising and making toxins harmless, the liver passes on some of the toxins (AMA) to the colon (large intestine) for elimination. It stores the rest to prevent them from entering the bloodstream.

When the liver can store no more toxins/poisons in the biliary ducts, these substances begin to back up into the bloodstream, which sets off another series of harmful reactions in other organs and tissues, including the brain.

Apart from increasing weight gain, additives and preservatives then lead to diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, asthma, arthritis and neurological disorders.

Excessive or excess weight is a symptom of disturbed digestion and metabolism. In addition, it is a sign of chronic toxicity in the body.

Trying to remove the symptom (excess weight) can be very harmful and disappointing if the accumulated toxins are not removed first. Most weight-loss programs do not address this vital issue.

The body has a natural resistance to losing excessive weight quickly because sudden weight loss could release a flood of trapped toxins into the bloodstream and even have fatal side effects, such as the collapse of liver functions, kidney failure, and heart attacks.

The body never behaves in an irrational way. Weight regulation has to begin by removing the root causes behind the metabolic problems responsible for weight gain.

The reason most overweight people cannot lose excess weight is not because of genetic flaws. It is well known that overweight people secrete more insulin. However, over-secretion of insulin is an effect of weight gain and not its cause.

And for that, most overweight people become insulin-resistant. When the insulin receptors of the cells block out insulin, blood sugar begins to rise. To deal with the increase in blood sugar, the pancreas makes more insulin to help remove it from the blood.

One way to deal with this dangerous situation is to have the body convert the excessive amounts of sugar into fat. The more fat a person has accumulated, the less likely he or she is to exercise, because this requires effort.

Also, exercising rigorously, as most weight-loss plans recommend, addresses the problem of excess lipid formation (fat), but they do not address insulin resistance or the reason why the body has become insulin resistant.

Insulin also inhibits the body’s fat-burning hormone, ‘hormone-sensitive lipase’. This hormone is responsible for releasing fat into your bloodstream to be used as fuel. Once this hormone is deactivated, the body can no longer burn fat for energy.

Instead, it must use amino acids and complex sugars (glycogen) stored in the muscles as fuel. This in turn will make you weak and excessively hungry and cause cravings. This creates an endless cycle of increased insulin secretions and fat generation.

To escape this vicious cycle, one must keep the body’s insulin secretions low. Low levels of insulin allow your body to produce large amounts of hormone-sensitive lipase, thus burning fat as required. This naturally regulates your weight.

Processed, refined and otherwise manufactured foods all increase insulin levels and thereby diminish the body’s energy reserves.

It is all very simple really, and does not require any major effort. Discovering and removing the root cause of weight gain is the only way to truly address this problem.

We live in a quick-fix world where we want, and even demand, tangible, visible and instant gains in everything we do. Somewhere along our journey to becoming urbanised and ‘developed’, we also seem to have lost touch with an intimate part of ourselves, the positive life force that is at the centre of our very being.

Weight Loss - Re-balancing the Body.

Every cell in the body, and the body as a whole, is constantly striving to achieve a state of balance or equilibrium. An overweight body is a body literally bending itself out of shape to defend itself from being poisoned. It is a body that is way out of sync with itself.

Everybody has an optimal body weight, one where the individual is not fending off potential threats and poisons. Losing weight the natural way means reversing the processes that led to a state of toxicity. It also means simultaneously creating an environment that is conducive to vibrant health.

Re-balancing involves many things. It means the ability to let go of past traumas to improve blood and lymph circulation, increasing immunity and restoring your internal organs to function as they were meant to.

It means healthy diet choices, getting enough sleep, and at the right time, and detoxifying the body. During the purification process, the body is purged of toxins through a series of internal cleanses. It is therefore important to remember that losing weight is not mechanical or mainly a physical process.

Losing weight the natural way is a mental attitude that involves a connection between mind and body. This is the most effective and lasting way to regulate weight permanently.

Once you make the mental shift, just as you once embraced a toxic state, it will now want to embrace good health and you will return to your natural weight. Once you go down this path, you will realise that there is no effort involved. It is a wanting that comes from within.

The best way to start re-balancing is to reverse the processes that led up to the toxic state. Being overweight is a disease of stored body toxicity, and before your body starts regulating itself, it needs to release the accumulated poisons.

This means detoxifying your body to cleanse yourself of the waste you have collected over the years. Weight regulation can start simultaneously, by re-balancing your lifestyle and beginning to incorporate healthy habits into your daily routine.

You may choose a pace that is comfortable for you, always keeping in mind that the more you are in tune with your body’s innate wisdom and the closer you are to nature’s rhythms (as close as modern urban life will allow), the sooner you will return to your optimal weight.

An effective natural way to cleanse and purify your body is to flush out poisons (AMA) from your digestive tract and organs of elimination—the liver and gallbladder, small intestine, kidneys, and colon or bowels.

This can be coordinated by an experienced natural health practitioner or Ayurvedic practitioner, where supervision and direction are definitely advised, there are also some precautions and protocols you need to take to achieve the best results.

3 Sources of Insulin Resistance - Type 2 Diabtes.