Close your eyes briefly, take a deep belly breath and think about the feelings and qualities of the Autumn months. You may have thought of golden, orange and crunchy leaves forming a blanket over the grass or the perfect lightweight cardigan that gives just enough warmth for the cooling temperatures. On the other hand, your mind may have taken you straight to your local farmers market to explore the harvest of delicious produce specific to the March, April and May months. If so, you are the same kind of foodie as us!
Read MoreAyurvedic practices to enhance your health & digestion
Overall health and well-being is so much more than just the absence of disease or illness. It should include the state of our mental health, our senses, and what we are actively doing to nurture and care for our bodies to prevent negative disruptions - illness or otherwise. Ayurveda takes a very holistic approach to wellness, the article below discusses in more detail what we can do to support a healthy and happy life..
‘The healing tradition of Ayurveda teaches that health and wellbeing depends upon our ability to digest everything we take in from the environment. This includes not only tangible substances like food and drink, but also our experiences, emotions, and the impressions we take in via our sensory portals, namely our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin.
Agni is the Sanskrit term for the “digestive fire” that breaks down the food and other things we ingest from the environment, assimilating what is useful, and eliminating the rest.
When our digestive ability, or agni, is strong, we create healthy tissues, eliminate waste products efficiently, and produce a subtle essence called ojas. Ojas, which is a Sanskrit word that means strength, can be envisioned as the innermost vital essence. According to Ayurveda, ojas is the basis for clarity of perception, physical strength, and immunity. On the other hand, if our agni is weakened through improper eating, lack of activity, negative emotional energy or unhealthy daily routine, our digestion will be hampered and we produce toxins that get stored in the body. According to Ayurveda, this toxic residue, known as ama, is the root cause of disease.
Uncovering the Root Causes of Digestive Issues
Whether we are coping with weight issues or uncomfortable GI symptoms such as bloating, gas, or indigestion, often the underlying root problem is weak agni, or poor digestion. Unfortunately, in Western medicine, we aren’t trained to ask the key question “How strong is my digestive fire?” Instead, we concentrate solely on the foods going in. When a patient goes to a health care provider trained in conventional allopathic medicine, the treatment options for digestive issues are typically medications, which serve to control symptoms, but do not treat the underlying cause.
Even when a provider’s approach includes testing and the elimination of offending foods, this is still only addressing part of the problem. While this treatment addresses the agent (or food) being ingested, it doesn’t look at why it is not being digested properly. Although eliminating foods that are bothersome can often alleviate symptoms, it is often difficult for patients to continually avoid those foods. It can often begin to disrupt their quality of life. The Ayurvedic concept of agni allows us to expand the conversation into answering the most important questions: “Why did the body begin to improperly digest, or not tolerate, this food?” and “How can we both eliminate the offending agent and concurrently increase agni or digestive power?” This approach opens up the possibility of re-introducing the food at a future time, allowing the person to fully experience foods again.
Getting Practical
Ayurveda recommends a variety of practical techniques for keeping our digestive fire strong. Incorporating these practices into your daily life can strengthen agni and, in turn, facilitate weight loss, improve the metabolism of food, and minimise uncomfortable GI symptoms.
Here are six powerful ways to strengthen your agni:
Meditate on a regular basis. Studies are increasingly confirming the genetic changes that occur with regular meditation, which can help restore the body’s homeostasis, including the processes controlling digestion. To achieve maximum benefit, meditate for 20 to 30 minutes, twice daily, once in the morning and once in the evening. To get started with meditation or to deepen your meditation practice, please visit the Chopra Center’s Meditation Resource Library.
Do some form of daily movement. Whether it is a little yoga every morning, or a daily walk, a recent study published in Diabetes Care showed that a short 15-minute walk after each meal helped to control sugar spikes after eating. These short post-meal walks were more effective than taking a longer, 45-minute walk once daily.
Don’t overeat. When we eat more food than our stomach can accommodate, we cannot properly break it down. We also tend to produce more acid, thus causing reflux and indigestion. In addition, the amount of digestive enzymes produced may not be able to completely break down the volume of food ingested, which leads to more gas formation, discomfort, or bloating. Ayurveda recommends that we leave one-third to one-quarter of our stomach empty to allow space for our body to easily digest our meal.
Here is a simple way to gauge an ideal portion of food for a meal based on your body size: Cup your hands together with your fingertips touching, forming the shape of a bowl. The recommended amount of food for a meal is the equivalent of two of these handfuls of food. Of course, you can eat less than two handfuls if your appetite is smaller.
Sip on ginger tea throughout the day, and with meals. Ginger is known in Ayurveda as the “universal remedy” due to its many benefits for the body, and it has been used for more than 2,000 years to treat digestive issues. Ginger can relax the smooth muscle of the intestines, thereby relieving symptoms of gas and cramping.
A recent study in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology found that ginger stimulates digestion by speeding up the movement of food from the stomach into the small intestine, and helps eliminates digestive discomfort after eating. In addition, ginger can stimulate saliva, bile, and gastric enzymes to aid in digestion of the food that has been ingested. The researchers concluded that these beneficial effects are a result of phenolic compounds, primarily gingerol and shogaol, and various other volatile oils that are present in ginger.
Ginger Tea Recipe: Ginger tea is refreshing and easy to make. Just add one teaspoon of grated or sliced fresh ginger root to a cup of hot water. You can prepare a larger batch and keep it with you in a thermos bottle to sip throughout the day.
Eat your largest meal at lunchtime. Our bodies are most able to digest food at midday, when we are active. As studies have found, our digestive system secretes the highest concentration of “digestive juices” around noon, making this the best time to eat our largest meal. In the evening, our bodies are slowing down and preparing for sleep. If we eat our biggest meal at dinner, when our digestive fire is weaker, we will feel heavy and bloated and will be more likely to have difficulty falling asleep.
Focus on releasing negative emotions. You’ve no doubt noticed that your emotions influence your digestion. You may get heartburn when you’re under stress, lose your appetite when you feel sad, or become nauseated or even throw up before a big exam or presentation. A growing body of research is finding that the stress associated with unprocessed negative emotions can inhibit the natural digestive process and lead to chronic digestive issues.
As we now know, a complex, independent nervous system called the enteric nervous system (ENS) lines the gastrointestinal tract. Dubbed “the second brain” by Dr. Michael Gershon, a researcher and physician at Columbia University Medical Center, the ENS contains many of the major neurotransmitters that are found in the brain, including serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, norepinephrine, and nitric oxide. In fact, about 95 percent of the serotonin contained in the body at any given time is in the ENS.
This second brain controls our digestion and can work both independently and in conjunction with the brain in our head. Without getting bogged down in the details of this intricate system, we can briefly state that there is an intimate relationship between our brain and our gut, and our digestion responds to the thoughts and emotions. When we experience a situation that we interpret as stressful, signals from the brain can alter nerve function between the stomach and oesophagus, resulting in heartburn. With extreme stress, the brain sends signals to the gut immune cells that release chemicals leading to inflammation. This inflammation can then lead to malabsorption, and even food sensitivities if the stress becomes chronic. By learning how to manage stress and release emotional turbulence, we help our digestive tract to work naturally and efficiently.
Proper digestion, with a strong agni, plays a central role in our physical and emotional wellbeing. As Ayurveda recognises, we are not what we eat, but “we are what we digest.” By making choices that strengthen our digestive ability, we form the foundation for good health and vitality.’
Article Source: https://www.deepakchopra.com/articles/six-ayurvedic-practices-to-improve-your-digestion/
Article author: Deepak Chopra
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Nutrition to Support Mental Health
Our bodies are extremely complex. Far more than we often appreciate. At any one moment, there are thousands of different systems working in synchrony together, just to keep us functioning and performing our day-to-day tasks. It is therefore natural that such a complex organism requires the right balance, quality and quantity of fuel in order to keep it performing to the best of its ability. When we neglect our diets, it can very quickly take its toll on many different processes within the body, including our brain functioning – mood, concentration, energy levels, memory and so on.
So what dietary measures can we take to ensure we are supporting our mental health? There are many nutrients and dietary characteristics that play key roles in our brain and mood, this article will introduce the gut microbiome and omega-3 fatty acids.
The Gut-Brain Axis
Simply put, your brain and gut communicate with one another. Gut microbiota play an important role in these exchanges. The gut microbiome is an area that has been receiving a lot of attention recently. We have learned a lot about it but there is a lot to still be explored! What we do know is that our gut houses trillions of microorganisms with thousands of different species, some beneficial and some harmful, but in the healthy individual they coexist quite harmoniously. Each person has a very unique microbiome that is cultivated before we are even born and can quite quickly adapt to our changing lifestyles and conditions [1,2,3].
Changes in the diversity of our microbiota can actually directly affect our mood. Fortunately, diet is one way we can enhance our microbiome ecosystem. Our gut microbiota love prebiotics, which are readily available in many common foods. The same foods lower inflammation in the body, which can decrease the risk/ severity of numerous mental health disorders, as well as many other lifestyle related diseases [2,3]. In order to nurture happy & healthy gut microbiota, try incorporating more of the following prebiotic rich foods in to your diet:
A range of different colours and varieties of fruit and vegetable – ideally leaving the peels on where possible! Aiming for at least 5 serves of veg and 2 serves of fruit per day.
Legumes
Nuts and seeds
Wholegrains e.g. oats
Healthy fats e.g. nuts, avocado, olive oil
Probiotics can also be beneficial as they contain live microbiota. Probiotics are generally found in fermented foods such as; yoghurt, kimchi, kefir and kombucha. It is not essential to take a probiotic supplement if you are eating a varied diet, however, there are circumstances where one may be beneficial to encourage growth of healthy bacteria within the gut [2].
Conversely, a diet higher in processed, more indulgent foods has been linked to low grade chronic inflammation and gut dysbiosis (imbalance of gut bacteria leading to common digestive issues), which increases the risk of mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression, and heightened risk of other disease [2].
Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Omega-3 fats are also linked with lower rates of inflammation in the body and reduced levels of anxiety, depression and memory dysfunction [1]. They are essential for brain development and functioning throughout the lifespan. The brain consists of a high concentration of lipids (fats) and omega-3 fats play a key role in the structure of cell membranes.
Some countries that follow diets incorporating a lot of fish have remarkably lower rates of depression, which is thought to be partly influenced by the omega-3 content of fish and its role in brain functioning [1].
Find omega-3 in:
Oily fish e.g. salmon, tuna, mackerel, sardines
Nuts and seeds e.g. walnuts, flax seed, chia seeds
Plant oils e.g. flaxseed oil
Fortified foods
Not only is omega 3 great for our mood and brain function but it also promotes cardiovascular and ocular health.
The mechanisms of how different nutrients and dietary patterns influence our mood and brain function are also very complex and can be deeply explored. The above provides a brief overview of just two elements to take into consideration, again supporting the idea of a balanced, varied diet focusing on wholefoods. Stay tuned for further information!
Author: Belinda Elwin, Dietitian & Nutritionist
References:
1. Swaney S. Nutrition and Mood – What’s the Connection?. NSW: Nutrition Australia. Source: https://nutritionaustralia.org/division/nsw/nutrition-and-mood-whats-the-connection/
2. Harvard School of Public Health. The Microbiome. MA: The Nutrition Source. Source: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/microbiome/#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20family%20genes,of%20microbiota%20in%20the%20intestines.
3. Clapp M, Aurora N, Herrera L, Bhatia M, Wilen E, Wakefield S. Gut microbiota’s effect on mental health: The gut-brain axis. Clin Pract. 2017 Sep 15; 7(4): 987.