Gut Health Begins with the Right Eating Habits

In Ayurveda, digestion is associated with fire. Just like the fire, our digestive process engulfs the ingested food. However, if we throw uncombustible substances into the fire, the result is lots of smoke and vile byproducts. Similarly, if we intake food that is not conducive to the digestive process, the result is gas, bloating, constipation, heartburn, and so on. 

I am not going to focus much on food items that are conducive to the digestive process; however, the general suggestion is to employ your judgement and experience with different kinds of food and stay away from the poisonous stuff under the disguise of taste and convenience. Take the help of dieticians, if needed. 

Note: Intoxicants are labelled as poisonous for a reason. Any intoxication at any frequency would always deteriorate gut health, just like water is always counterproductive to the functioning of fire.

Everyone’s digestive system is unique, so experiment and find your resonating ingredients and stick to them. If you are exploring, then start with the simplest diet and progressively add one ingredient at a time to check if the gut stays comfortable. Allow some time, maybe a week, for observation.

When you eat, and how you eat, is as important as what you eat. The most effective cue for eating is obviously hunger. Eat when you feel hungry. As you start to maintain a disciplined lifestyle, a fixed time for your meals will gradually develop. There would be days when you won’t feel hungry at those designated times due to constipation, irregular sleep patterns, etc. Avoid ingesting food just because it’s time for a meal.

However, the general rules, if one needs to follow, can be
8:00 AM — Breakfast
1:00 PM — Lunch
7:00 PM — Dinner

The ancient systems of the world have advised the intake of only 3/4th of the capacity of the stomach. Overloading the stomach at any time should be avoided. Similarly, eating less than 1/2 the capacity of the stomach is not recommended.

They also advise avoiding all distractions, like watching TV, reading, talking, etc., while eating. Mindful eating and embracing the flavours, while chewing the food gracefully with gratitude, are the right practices for better gut health.

Effect of Mental and Physical Health on Gut Health

The right food habit is the necessary condition for good gut health, but not the sufficient condition. It’s time to challenge the layman’s view of the gut as an independent system. But in reality, it is an interconnected process that regulates other systems, while itself being regulated by others.

From your own experience of several instances of physical illness, you can recollect how your gut health was impaired due to sickness. Be it flu, muscle pain, or injury, the digestive system gets affected. On the other hand, when gut health is compromised, it manifests as fever, headache, and other physical symptoms. 

A proper exercise regime that maintains physical health through strengthening of bones & muscles, improved blood flow, managing weight, regulating the heart, lungs, and other organs, is therefore, essential for regulating a well-balanced gut, which in turn keeps physical health in check. 

Maintenance of the physical body is not only about activity, but the body also needs to rest. A harmony between activity and rest is essential to maintain its natural order. Sleep, therefore, is again a vital factor in overall well-being. As a rule, 8 hours of rest, 8 hours of work, and 8 hours of self-development, family time, hobbies, chores, etc., is highly effective.

If the body doesn’t get enough rest, the gut microbiome is affected; in other words, the beneficial microbes in the gut that aid in the process of digestion get disturbed. This results in the symptoms related to an imbalanced gut health, and the effects trickle down to further physical processes. 

Now, sleep is not only related to physical health. It affects mental health in equal measure, maybe more. Stress and anxiety build up, thus disturbing the physical bodily functions. The mind-gut axis, a bidirectional communication between the central nervous system and a layer of the nervous system found in the gut, immediately triggers the signal of imbalance, and then the chaos spreads to the gut.

Stress and anxiety from work, relationships, personal endeavours, and perhaps it’s easier to say from all facets of life percolate directly to the gut, and render it dysfunctional. You should now be able to identify the reciprocity of an impaired gut in the mind, manifesting as stress and anxiety. 

Art of Living a Healthy Life

Through this arduous talking in circles, all I want to highlight is the strong interconnection of these systems. What we call as “I”, in reality, is intricately woven processes that do not have an independent existence, but rather work in tandem. And a stable, balanced, and healthy life is an art of balancing these processes, just like a skilful juggler. 

Maintaining a healthy gut is not all about the gut in isolation, just like maintaining mental health can’t be all about the mind in isolation. 

Even as trivial as maintaining a water purifier requires care and attention, how can such a complicated system as your body-mind remain unsullied without your mindfulness? Not only that, but it also requires a deeper level of understanding about yourself. Relying on a doctor or external medicine all the time at the cost of negligence is as good as changing the diaper of a hungry baby.

It all begins with Mindfulness. Innumerable distractions and items of indulgence keep you from becoming aware of your body, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. You miss the subtle cues about your body and mind that are vital to attend to for a harmonious existence of all the processes. 

In the present world, a stable, disciplined life, which is essential for all the bodily, mental, and gut processes to function properly, is usually given up in favour of mindless consumption and gratification. But, setting them aside and building a strong will to become centred in yourself and listening to your body and mind is key in the process of rediscovering your health. 

Mindfulness makes you aware of discomfort and irritations at an early stage, thus preventing the cascading effects on other processes. Since you have a direct understanding of yourself, you are no longer distanced and respect your body and mind. You don’t take them for granted as objects to give you satisfaction through every means, but they become your very reality. You learn to take care of them in their true essence and not just carry yourself to a dispensary every time you fall sick. 

To enable this, you have to slow down and turn your attention inwards. You stop running away from the unpleasantness of your feelings from a sickness or mental state, but you stay with it, analyse it, and refine your senses to capture even the subtler feelings. You no longer distract yourself with another means of gratification. By running away from it, you are depriving yourself of all the care and attention that it needs to recover. When you throw the lights of your awareness at yourself, no darkness of greed, fear, gluttony, or laziness can survive.

Wish you a healthy body, gut, and mind.