If you’ve been experiencing bloating, fatigue, aches, or having bowel movements less than twice a day, your digestive system may be out of balance. Simple habits and choices can remedy these symptoms and improve your overall well-being. Let’s explore how you can improve your digestive health naturally.
Stop Doing The Things That Make You Constipated
While it may seem apparent, many people don’t address the habits that contribute to their health problems. For digestive issues, poor diet and sedentary lifestyles usually cause sluggish bowels and constipation. Medications can also have constipation as a side effect, so checking prescription labels is essential. Examining your daily activities may help you understand and address the root cause of your discomfort.
If You Are Currently Constipated, Remove The Blockage
Changing your lifestyle, while essential for prevention, takes time and won’t provide immediate relief if you’re currently constipated. In these cases, removing the obstruction to free your bowels is crucial. Options include castor oil, citrate of magnesia, and saline enemas. Additionally, a simple abdominal massage can stimulate bowel movements.
Correct Your Digestive System
Years of poor diet, inactivity, stress, and medication use can severely impact your digestive health. Improving your diet, exercising, and managing stress are important factors in rebuilding your digestive system. Additionally, supplementation with digestive enzymes and probiotics can be beneficial, as our bodies produce fewer enzymes as we age. You can try digestive, liver, and gall bladder cleanses to help restore your digestive health. One such cleanse is The Colorado Cleanse, but others can be researched online.
Adjust Your Consumption Of Food And Beverages
Diuretic beverages like alcohol, beer, soda, sugary drinks, tea, and coffee can dehydrate the body and result in hard, pebble-like stools. Certain foods like pork and cheese can similarly slow down digestion and increase intestinal transit time. Increasing your intake of filtered water, whole-grain fiber, fiber-rich fruits, and dark green leafy vegetables aids digestion and bowel motility. If your schedule permits, try adding one or two servings of a bulking agent like psyllium husk fiber in water to help balance your fiber intake.
Adequate magnesium levels are also essential for proper bowel function. Foods containing magnesium include halibut, tuna, artichokes, bananas, figs, buckwheat flour, wheat flour, oat bran, barley, cashews, and almonds. You can also supplement with around 400 mg of magnesium daily if you struggle to get enough through your diet.
Move Your Body Every Day
Exercise is an inexpensive and straightforward way to maintain proper digestive and bowel health. Daily activities like walking, jogging, yoga, or swimming, help break down food, increase energy, stimulate digestion, and boost metabolism. All of these factors positively impact the speed at which food is broken down, absorbed, and moved through the digestive tract.
Reduce The Stress In Your Life
Stress can wreak havoc on our health, affecting our digestive systems and causing problems like irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, metabolic syndrome, diarrhea, and stomach ulcers. Minimizing stress in your life is critical for overall health, including digestive health. Consider exploring techniques like qigong, reiki, acupuncture, herbal therapies, relaxation response, meditation training, biofeedback, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) reframing, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).
Other Considerations
If you maintain a healthy lifestyle but still experience digestive issues, consult with your healthcare provider as health concerns like Crohn’s disease, ovarian cysts, and nerve dysfunction can be the underlying cause. In most cases, however, achieving proper digestion and bowel elimination can be as simple as making minor lifestyle changes, which will ultimately lead to increased energy, less pain, and a renewed zest for life.
