The Way to Your Health Starts With Your Stomach
Updated: Aug 29, 2019
Yes, I changed the old saying that goes, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” with the title of this post. This saying actually applies to all of us as the stomach and entire digestive system is actually the way to our health and emotional well-being as well as our heart! Our digestive system is one of the ways we can not only give love to man but also our family and ourselves every day.
Often called our second brain, the digestive system plays a major role in our health. This system is so smart and influential it can indicate how well our immunity is holding up, what our sleep quality is like and how our body uses and stores energy. This system is also a key influence to our emotional health going so far as to trigger feelings, instincts and memories through our relationship with foods and circumstances we find ourselves in. As a result of this complex interconnection of our digestive system to the rest of our body it is often the very place we can turn to when looking for answers to our health problems or wanting to improve our overall health.
When we are working to improve our health, a lot of people start by changing their diet or beginning an exercise program. These are great changes to make but often not what will jump start our results. It can in fact become a miserable change with discomfort in our stomach, cramps and loose stool or even constipation. I’m not saying we should not eat better and exercise more but before or in combination with those changes we need to seriously look at our gut health so it is equipped to align with the healthier choices we want to include in our life.
Your Gut’s Morse Code
Do you frequently have heartburn or indigestion?
Do you have regular solid bowel movements?
Do you frequently crave sugar or salt?
Do you have a stomach that makes constant noises even though you’re not hungry?
Does your stomach hurt or is it hard when you press on it? Does it hurt to lay on your stomach?
Do you frequently have gas, bloating or water weight?
Even when we eat a proper diet we can suffer from stomach issues as a result of our body needing help digesting foods. With so many preservatives, fake coloring and other unhealthy ingredients in our food, including our healthy foods, our bodies often do not have the proper amount of enzymes to break down foods and turn them into energy our bodies need. Add in stress, emotions, hormones and overall physical health and you have a perfect recipe for gut health problems. Some of these can be small like an occasional bout of heartburn to major like irritable bowel syndrome.