Digestion: The Key to Great Health
Let’s talk Bowel Movements shall we?
I grew up suffering from digestive problems and while many people including medical doctors tried to help, it wasn’t until I really cleaned up my diet, learned to drink healthy liquids away from my meals, replaced the friendly bacteria in my gut, and learned how to process my emotions that I finally started to heal.
I still have troubles occasionally but it is most often related to some emotional stress in my life and when it happens I know how to remedy it and get back on track.
I remember hearing something about how constipation runs in the family, and in hindsight, while that may be true, it is certainly not healthy and there are ways to improve it! Not addressing constipation means food is sitting in your colon fermenting, creating a layer of bad bacteria, over time leading to a whole range of problems from medical errors due to prescription absorption problems, to malnutrition, to cancer.
Most of you probably know whether you are constipated but change comes best when we get really clear on where we are and where we are going. So to find out your digestive speed or transit time, you can do do the beet test!
By eating 1/2-1 cup of fresh cooked beets, and then being willing to look in the toilet after you’ve used it, you can tell your transit time. If you see bright red pigment in your stools 12-24 hours after you’ve eaten the beets, you lie within the ideal range for transit time.
If it takes longer than 24 hours for you to see red in your stools, you’ve got slow transit time, or constipation. If it is less than 12 hours you have rapid transit which isn’t necessarily good either because when food moves through you that fast you don’t get to absorb as much nutrition as you could.
If you get the most common result, a slow transit time of over 24 hours, you’ll want to make sure you are hydrated with pure water, drinking at least 2 litres of water per day, away from meals. Increasing your fibre intake with foods such as chia seeds, ground flax seeds, vegetables, and berries.
I’m a big fan of colon cleansing too, but if you don’t address your diet it won’t help long term.
So go get yourself some local organic beets and give it a try! Information is power when put into action.