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The Importance of Healthy DigestionExcerpt from Mom Energy, by Ashley Koff, RD, and Kathy KaehlerIs your belly talking back to you? Does it call out to you in the most awkward moments? Have you been exercising and eating right, but your belly hasn’t changed shape—or worse, it’s expanded? Any and all of these are signs that you’ve got an unhappy belly. And it’s time to take matters into your own hands—well, almost.It’s important that, if you have chronic (that means regularly occurring) digestive complaints, you speak to your doctor so that he or she can evaluate you to rule out anything being wrong, functionally speaking. If you are like so many of our clients, you will get the A-OK from your doctor, which can be bittersweet because it’s great knowing there is nothing seriously wrong, but you also know that your belly’s blabbering is seriously causing disturbance in your life (and clothes!). And even if your doctor discovers something and prescribes a treatment protocol, eating right will be a core part of your plan. Digestive complaints—gas, bloating, reflux, constipation, heartburn, irritable bowel, pain, diarrhea, or a wonderful combination of all or any of these—are signs of imbalances that your body wants you to tune in and correct, like yesterday. Your belly doesn’t want to be sluggish, overworked, and underpaid, or moving so fast it’s out of control and leaves you spinning. Digestive disturbance means that nutrients aren’t getting where they should—either to your cells for energy and repair work, or out of the body because they don’t belong. So an unhappy belly is something that deserves your attention ASAP. Don’t be ashamed, for you’re not alone. More than 80 million people in the United States suffer from digestive disorders, which happen to be the second leading cause of missed work behind the common cold. The role of digestion on energy levels is sorely overlooked, yet it literally could be “the guts” of moms’ problems with low energy. An occasional bout of heartburn or constipation is often easy to tolerate and disregard, but these ailments are far too common these days and are doing more energy-depleting damage than we think. It doesn’t matter what you take in (how good it is); if your inner machine isn’t working, you won’t achieve optimal energy. A healthy gut allows energy to flow. It acts as a center of gravity for all things energy related. In fact, your digestive system is way more than a processing plant for food; you’ll soon come to learn that it’s really the heart and soul of your immune system. It’s pretty much the defender of your entire well-being. First and foremost, digestion is your body’s energy packer. It must work for the body to work. The best efforts fail in a compromised digestive system. We increasingly work with clients who forget to consider the health of their digestive system in addition to what they eat and how often they engage in physical activity. It may seem like common sense, but far too often the gut’s overall health goes unnoticed until you’ve got a serious problem on your hands that makes it obvious, such as illness or disease. Although we have many barometers we can use to tell us when something is wrong, such as blood pressure or heart rate, tummy trouble is a quick and easy telltale sign of the body experiencing an imbalance. It’s the body’s way of saying, “Pay attention to what’s bugging you!” Many of us can go along without figuring out the culprit for digestive problems, especially if those problems are covered up with frequent use of medications that dull symptoms, but do nothing to address the underlying culprit. What doesn’t take long, however, is realizing how the unhappy belly makes us unhappy. So it’s really no surprise that the solution to our energy problems are sometimes as easy as fixing a poorly functioning gut. After all, your gut is arguably the most important ingredient in your overall energy equation. Your gut is also intimately involved in some intensely emotional business that factors into your energy equation: We rely upon our gut instinct to tell us the right thing to do! Who hasn’t experienced a gut reaction to people who offend or delight us? Who hasn’t felt sick before giving a speech or confronting a superior? We do a gut check when facing a challenge and congratulate ourselves when we display the intestinal fortitude, or guts, to take it on. This is all for good reason, as your gut is synced up with your brain. Just think about how a bout of intense fear or panic can liquefy your innards—or, more commonly, when a cramp or brief wave of nausea alerts you to a nagging anxiety your mind had been working so hard to suppress. There’s a good reason your gut and your brain communicate so seamlessly: every class of neurochemical produced in the first brain is also produced in the second. Stress hormones present another kind of chemical that acts as the primary go-between for these two brains. When the brain detects any kind of threat—whether an impending layoff or a dustup with your spouse—it shoots stress hormones to your gut. Sensory nerves there respond by adjusting acid secretion and shutting down both appetite and digestion—a throwback to more dangerous times in our past, when we needed to summon all our resources to stand and fight, or flee. The result may be a nagging stomach ache or a full-blown bout of gastrointestinal (GI) distress. Suffice it to say our guts are very complex systems, which play into so much about us and our capacity to feel energetic.
Ashley Koff, R.D., is an internationally renowned registered dietician with the proven ability to demystify the science of nutrition and communicate the importance of a healthy lifestyle to clients in a way that instills loyalty and trust. Find out more at AshleyKoffRD.com.
Kathy Kaehler, creator of the healthy living online membership club Sunday Set-Up™, celebrity trainer to Julia Roberts, author, entrepreneur, spokesperson, and mom, has devoted her life to helping people live happy, healthy, and fit lives. Beyond imparting the latest in fitness workouts, this lifestyle expert has tackled such subjects as food organization, meal planning, exercising successfully at home, managing menopause, and keeping it all together while staying fit, sexy, and dialed in. Find her at KathyKaehler.net.
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