Foods that you can’t digest tend to linger in the colon. You may have heard the aphorism “You Are What You Eat.” That’s true, to a certain extent, but perhaps it would be even more accurate to quip “You Are What You Assimilate.” In other words, you need to extract the nutrition from your chow, and successfully eliminate the rest, for the food to have been truly useful. Some basic tips on maximizing your chances of healthy assimilation and proper elimination are:
- Chew your food thoroughly; make it a slurry in your mouth, mixed well with the saliva before swallowing.
- Eat sitting down with no other distractions except light conversation.Please do not read the paper, or watch TV, or argue, while eating. Besides being uncivilized, these other activities are not conducive to priming the parasympathetic nervous system. Eating and digesting don’t mix with adrenaline pumping (sympathetic nervous activity)
- Eat breakfast
- Eat at regular intervals
- Get done with dinner 2 hours before bedtime (another way of saying don’t eat late!)
- Eat right for your type. For those not familiar with the work of Peter D’Adamo, ND (“Eat Right for Your Type”, Harper Collins) here’s a thumbnail sketch:
- Type O: protein at every meal, but NO WHEAT. Focus on meat, veggies and fruits
- Type A: soy and fish for protein; avoid DAIRY and red meat. Plenty of veggies
- Type B: dairy is OK in moderation; avoid CORN, CHICKEN and SOY.
- Type AB: (rare) fish and veggies, rotate grains, most like Type A.