I have not written a non-recipe related post in a while & thought that it might be time because I have just rediscovered my digestive enzymes & I thought you should know all about it! Don’t worry, this is not going to be a ‘poo post’, thought do love a bit of poo chat, I will leave that up to my lovely friend Erin of Sweat Depot who writes a great article on poo HERE .
About 2 months ago I decided to see Sarah a naturopath that had been recommended by a few people I trust. I was a bit ‘meh’ about naturopath’s initially – I am not very receptive to what I thought would be someone telling me to rub basil into the soles of my feet 12 times a day & I’d be cured. I need science people. Lucky for me Sarah is ‘sciency’, does live blood analysis & knows her $hit.
So why? Well we all know I love a good self-experiment, but the reasons this time were many & varied. My guts are not right, I get bloated randomly (or perhaps not so randomly), I tolerate some foods sometimes but not others, I eat amazing nutritious food but I am often tired & lacking energy, but at the same time feel wired. I don’t sleep well though I sleep alot. My skin has gone to $hit in the last 12mths, I have never had pimples & now at the age of 31 I get them? That’s just horse$hit?!?! My hormones are all over the place & I constantly feel stressed over nothing & everything. Wow, I sound awesome. Who wants to hang out with me now?!
I will write a post about my trip/s to Sarah another time but that is all on the up & up slowly so high five to me. One of the things that became apparent through all of this is that my gut is not healthy & I need to support it. No matter how much nutritious food I put in, if my guts cannot break it down & absorb it I am literally flushing a lot of money down the toilet. Did you know that over 70% of your immune system in housed in your gut. Get sick all the time? You probably need to give your guts some love. Enter digestive enzymes.
Think about digestive enzymes like woodchoppers and the food we eat is like big logs of wood. If you are anything like me, you might hoover your food down with barely a few chews. You are essentially swallowing whole ‘logs’ of food. Now these dudes are employed by our bodies to chop down our food into little bits like kindling & allow the nutrients to become available so that we can actually absorb & use them instead of just pooing them straight back out. We have different types of enzymes in our mouth, stomach, large & small intestine that all play different & very important roles. If you are not producing enough digestive enzymes to chop up your food once you eat it you can see symptoms like bloating & gas, feeling full after only a few bites of food & undigested food in your poo, just to name a few. If you don’t break the food own you can’t absorb all the amazing nutrients!
There are a few reasons we might not be producing enough digestive enzymes. Diseases like pancreatic problems & Crohn’s disease will often cause issues but more common reasons include leaky gut, food intolerances & gut inflammation, low stomach acid & very commonly, chronic stress & anxiety.
How can you help get these digestive enzymes cranking? You can take digestive enzyme supplements… I have been taking raw organic apple cider vinegar every morning. About a tablespoon in 1/3 cup of water before breakfast. Apple cider vinegar has about the same pH as stomach acid. We need to have enough stomach acid to allow our bodies to properly start digesting our food and by increasing the amount of acid in your stomach you encourage the pancreas to release more digestive enzymes. Hooray for better digestion, less bloating, better bowel movements & great detoxification.
A few things to note- you want raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar (organic if possible), it should be cloudy. We want raw because it then contains the live cultures & enzymes that make it so effective.
Give it a burl, let me know how you go. That’s me done on digestive enzymes for today. Over & out.
0
Hi Shannon! I’m wondering if I might be able to ask you a few questions about this post via email – I’ve been having a lot of the same symptoms and would love a bit of guidance around what you’ve been doing to get to the bottom of everything. Any help or advice you can give would be fantastic. Hope to speak to you soon! Briony 🙂
Of course myfoodreligion@gmail.com
I have started apple cider vinegar just this week! So far I’ve had a little tummy upset but that was only on one day. I’ve been mixing mine with lemon and honey in warm water and sipping it every morning. I think the raw ACV tastes better than the processed vinegar. I hope I can stick to it for a month and see a difference in my tummy and abs like less bloating and more toning. Tosca Reno, an eat clean guru I admire says it’s good for the abs!
Awesome! Hope it helps you!