If your digestion isn’t great and/or you’re worried about gut health or food intolerances causing “inflammation,” bring the power of eating psychology to your plate.
As a Nutrition Therapy Practitioner (NTP), I was trained back in 2012 to support clients through an elimination diet as the “gold standard” to find out what foods may be causing your digestive challenges or health conditions.
Elimination diets were preferred over the popular and common use of the IgG Food Panel (which are now sold on infomercials for $99 which should scream red flag 🚩right there my friend).
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, Immunology explains why they don’t recommend the IgG Food Panel Testing here.
So is an elimination diet the answer to improving digestion, inflammation, intolerances?
In many client cases an elimination diet isn’t necessary, could mislead you and could even be harmful. Here are a few reasons why:
- They can leave you with very little to eat – not eating enough calories or missing key nutrients to nourish yourself properly.
- They can harm your relationship to food, creating disordered eating and leading to an eating disorder.
- They are hard to do because they are strict and stressful.
- You might feel a symptom because you learned that X food can cause your symptom. Your belief can create the placebo effect.
- And you might feel a digestive symptom that may have nothing to do with the food itself.
TAKEAWAY:
The Metabolic Power of Relaxation is the missing piece to your digestive and metabolic health. How you eat and who you bring to the plate could be the cause of why you’re not digesting food properly, causing discomfort, and “inflammation.”
The Stress, Digestion, Metabolism Connection
“The key to understanding the stress metabolism is the central nervous system (CNS). The portion of the CNS that exerts the greatest influence on gastrointestinal function is called the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This aspect of the nervous system is responsible for getting your stomach churning, the enzymatic secretions in the digestive process flowing, and keeping the dynamic process of nutrient absorption into the bloodstream on the move. The ANS also tells your body when not to be in digesting mode, such as when there’s no food in your belly or when you’re in fight-or-flight response.
Two subdivisions of the ANS help it accomplish its dual task of digestive arousal and digestive inhibition: the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches.
The sympathetic branch activates the stress response and suppresses digestive activity.
The parasympathetic branch relaxes the body and activates digestion.
It might be helpful to think of these two parts of the nervous system as on-and-off switches.
Simply put, the same part of our brain that turns on stress turns off digestion. And conversely, the part of the brain that turns on the relaxation response turns on full, healthy digestive power. Eating nutritious food is only half of the story of good nutrition. Being in the ideal state to digest and assimilate food is the other half.”
- Institute for the Psychology of Eating
Ready to get started strengthening your digestive fire to metabolize any food better?
Stress, Digestion and Metabolism (FREE PRINTOUT)
Want to print out a copy? Just shoot me an email and I’ll send it directly to your inbox!
Have a question about the Metabolic Power of Relaxation and how it can help you improve your digestion and metabolism? I’d LOVE ♡ to hear from you. Tanya