Calming Digestive Tract Woes With Your Mind

Meditation - Visualization for Healing Your Gut Health

All Disease begins in the gut.                                                                                                                                                                           Hippocrates

Health begins in the gut. The reverse is also true: disease begins in the gut. Taking steps to reduce the angst in your life reduces the angst in your gut. Over the long haul of life... this is a gut healing gift to yourself!

1. Grab a blanket or two, maybe a yoga mat, and some pillows or props to make yourself comfy.
2. Lie down on your back supporting your head and knees to keep your lower back happy.
3. Take at least 5 slow deep breaths. Simply focus on your breath moving into and out of your body. Relax. Let go. Be at peace.
4. Take 5 more slow deep breaths sending the breath directly to your digestive tract. Feel your breath enter and exit the digestive tract. Feel your breath's energy swirl within the digestive tract.
5. Relax and just breath normally letting your mind stay calmly without thoughts.
6. Slowly bring your body, mind, and spirit back to the room. When you feel like returning to life... get up and get going keeping this peace and relaxation with you. 

When we are stressed, tension happens. This tension in the gut slows and impairs digestive function. Over time this gut tension, angst, contributes to ill health symptoms in your digestive tract.

When we calm the mind and bring healing energy (breath) to the gut, we relax the angst that builds up in the gut and the body as a whole. Relaxation, meditation, visualization, breath work... all ways to bring healing energy to your gut (to your whole body, mind, & spirit!).

Going Deeper with Gut Healing Visualization

Practice the above simple visualization for several days. When you are comfortable with the above technique... try this:

1. Gently observe and learn the above chakra chart. Simply remember where each chakra is located (top of head, between eye brows, throat, heart center, belly button, just below belly button, under pubic bone).
2. Lie down on your comfy blanket or mat, supporting your knees and head.
3. Take at least 5 slow deep breaths, quiet your mind, relax.
4. Breath deeply now and each time take your full breath (inhale & exhale) to your chakras, one chakra/one breath at a time. Start at the crown chakra (top of head).
5. Take a deep breath directing the flow of breath (in and out) to each chakra down your body.
6. Relax.
7. Finish with a few more slow, gentle breaths.
8. Slowly bring your body, mind, and spirit back to the room. When you feel like returning to life... get up and get going keeping this peace and relaxation with you. 

To create a bit longer calming the gut angst session:

1. take 2 breaths directed at each chakra.
2. swirl the breath, life force energy, at each chakra.

Another Deep Relaxing Gut Healing Technique

Are you a reiki person?  If so after finishing the above relaxing visualization try this:

1. Visualize yourself on a massage/reiki table.
2. Do a mini reiki session on yourself through visualizing yourself on the table and standing next to the table doing the reiki. Hold your visualized hands over each chakra (reiki hand positions) for one or two long, deep breaths.
3. If you have the time... flip yourself over on that table and do the back side hand positions as well, finishing the visualized reiki treatment in the traditional reiki practice sequence.

Try this visualization (or either of the above relaxing visualizations) when lying in bed and unable to sleep. Conscious breathing and relaxing visualizations are a fine way to calm down your body, mind, and spirit for better sleep and better moving through your daily life.

Healing the gut is a great first step in healing so many health challenges. For natural Gut Healing Guidance & support, check out my online course:

Healing Your Gut For Lifetime Vitality

Bone Broth: What Is the Hype?

Jar one: bones soaking in apple cider vinegar

Jar two: finished bone broth

I originally wrote this for the Potsdam Food Co-op's August 2016 Newsletter.

Perhaps you remember your mom or grandma feeding you chicken soup when you were ill. Most chicken soup, stock, was made with the bones, cartilage, and the hunks of attacked chicken meat. (If you are vegetarian or vegan… don’t bail on me just yet. I have plant based gut healing suggestions as well. Bare with me on this bones thing.)

Animal bone broths have been used for hundreds of years, thousands really, for their nourishment and healing benefits. People inherently knew the healing benefits of the daily food and life choices they made. Modern living somehow now requires scientific proof that what we are doing is worthwhile. Research into the benefits of bone broth is available and plenty to satisfy the scientifically inclined.

After the long soak and simmer to make bone broth (recipe to follow), the resultant gelatinous and slightly fatty liquid contains valuable minerals and nutrients in a form your body can easily absorb, circulate in your bloodstream, and be taken in and used by your body cells. These nutrients include amino acids, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, silicon, sulfur chondroitin, glucosamine, collagen, and a variety of trace minerals and other nutrients.  The gelatin in bone broth supports gut lining health, gut lining healing, and proper digestion.

Bone broth has been proven to help with infection fighting (why Mom and Gram gave you chicken soup when you were sick with the cold and flu). Bone broth contains amino acids that easily nourish the body on the cellular level. L-arginine and L-glutamine are two nourishing amino acids present in bone broth that decrease inflammation in the gut (and whole body inflammation) assisting the immune system in its never ending job of fighting infections and inflammation.  L-glutamine is known for its gut health enhancing properties. L-glutamine helps to heal and seal the lining of the digestive tract, your gut. More L-glutamine information coming up.

Many issues of modern living (antibiotics, hand sanitizers, modern wheat-gluten and dairy, chlorine and fluoride in drinking water, household chemicals, cosmetic chemicals, glyphosphate and other industrial agricultural chemicals… the list is never ending) create inflammation in the gut. An inflamed gut lining creates problems that allow undigested particles of food, chemicals, microbes, etc. to directly enter into the blood stream. This happens because the gut inflammation creates a diseased small intestinal condition medically named increased intestinal permeability.

This dis-ease of the body’s small intestine is more commonly known as Leaky Gut Syndrome. The small intestine has junctions that are very tightly packed together. These tight junctions serve a wonderful purpose by keeping unwanted particles (chemicals, bacteria, viruses…) in the digestive tract to be dealt with and passed out in solid waste OR food digested down to the smallest particles* to be absorbed, circulated, and used for cellular nutrition.

·         *Carbohydrates to simple sugars

·         *Proteins to amino acids

·         *Fats to fatty acids

The issues of modern living, mentioned above, create inflammation that irritates and erodes away at the gut and loosens these tight junctions. When these junctions are loosened all hell breaks loose in the body. The above mentioned substances pass through the now loose junctions directly into the bloodstream. This is not meant to be. The substances are meant to be digested first, cleaned up by the liver, and/or pooped right out of the body. When they slip into the circulation because the junctures are no longer tight to keep them where they belong… your immune system goes postal on them. Antibodies are created to combat these substances that are seen as foreign invaders, antigens. The next time you eat or take in one of these substances, the substance moves into the bloodstream through the loose junctures setting off the immune system (The immune response to this now problem food or substance actually happens before the food even reaches the intestines). This time the immune system has the antibodies ready and war is waged on the substance, the assumed antigen. Over time the body wears down from this cycle of inflammation, gut juncture loosening, seepage of the unwanteds into the blood stream, and a result can be that the body starts attacking itself (auto-immune issues).

Above 2 photos used with permission of Tracy Harrison – http://www.wildlysuccessfulhc.com/  Photo #1 shows tight junctures and loose junctures in a simplistic drawing.  Photo #2 inside of small intestine showing a very blown up view of the thousands of villi covered by millions of micro-villi. These villi are where the junctures exist.

My gut story is a very simplistic explanation meant to assist in the understanding of what in the body is going awry.  An inflamed gut lining contributes to leaky gut syndrome and the resultant food sensitivities and allergies, auto-immune conditions, and many other inflammatory body issues leading to a host of dis-ease. (Dis-Ease being a lack of ease in the body; lack of health.)

L-Glutamine, contained in bone broth, is a gut junction healer. It helps to soothe the inflamed gut and heal the loose junctions back to their tight junctions. Tight junctions are immune and whole body health enhancing.

Now you know some substances and habits that can contribute to leaky gut issues and how bone broth plays a crucial role in the healing of this condition. It is time to tighten up junctions everyone; time to learn how to make bone broth. (Again, I have added vegetarian and vegan suggestions to mimic, as closely as possible, bone broths healing benefits to your gut and body’s health.)

Making Bone Broth: 

By the way… bone broth Cafés are now quite popular in metropolitan areas.

Bone broths are made with fish, chicken, turkey, beef, pork, and lamb bones in water. Different animal bones and tissues have different nutrients and benefits. (Buffalo, venison, rabbit, wild bird bones are fine as well.) Use only bones, cartilage, feet, tails, etc. from pasture raised or wild animals. Never use bones from commercially raised animals (factory farm animals) that are given anti-biotics, hormones, and/or fed genetically modified feed (corn, soy…).  You are what you eat and animals are what they eat. If unhealthy substances were used in the raising of the animals, those substances will be concentrated in the animal bones and body tissues, and therefore concentrated in your finished bone broth.

1.  Put slightly meaty bones, cartilage, feet, tails, etc. (they do not have to be stripped clean of meat) in a sauce pan or big soup pot (if you have a lot of bones) and cover with water, just enough to cover bones well. I break up the bones as best I can and squish them down into the soup pot bottom.

2.  Add a generous tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar (ACV) and cover the pot.  If you are doing a big pot of bone broth use more of the ACV. For estimation purposes I use a heaping tablespoon of ACV for a whole chicken’s pot of bones.

3.  I soak the bones in the vinegar water for at least an overnight and then…

4.  I slow simmer the bones for hours the next day. I gently bring the bone filled pot to a simmer on the stove top.

5.  I then place the pot o’ bones in a pre-heated 220 F oven and leave for 5-6 hours if chicken or fish bones and longer if the harder bones of pork or beef (at least 6-8 hours).  Yes, a crock pot works well.  You could simmer for hours on the stovetop but I find the oven temp is easier to regulate and keep the simmer from boiling away the broth. Cool fall and cold winter days make for extra warmth in the kitchen with the oven going. Slow roast something for dinner to get extra bang for your buck using the oven for so long.

6.  After simmering, I remove the bones with a large slotted spoon.  Use the broth as a soup stock or eat the broth as it is, drink it like a morning or evening cup of tea.  I add a bit of unrefined sea salt to taste.

7.  If making soup, I sauté the veggies and other soup ingredients before adding them to the hot bone broth. This avoids further simmering of the broth.

8.  Toward the end of bone broth simmering you can add herbs** that contribute to the anti-inflammatory effects: turmeric & ginger root, rosemary, thyme, oregano… allow the herbs to gently simmer (that 220 degree oven is hot enough) for an hour if a leaf/flower and simmer for 2 hours if a bark/root/seed.  (Similar information is the making of herbal tea infusions: http://www.paulayoumellrn.com/making-herbal-infusions-teas/ )

9.  When I re-warm the broth for sipping I will sometimes add small amounts of marshmallow root powder, slippery elm bark powder, and/or licorice root powder. These herbs are anti-inflammatory and also contribute to the soothing effect; the heal and seal for the gut lining.

10.  Using a large slotted spoon, remove the bones from your finished broth.  

Now what to do with it?

• Put into glass canning jars and refrigerate until ready to use.
• Drink one or two cups daily, gently warmed up, like a tea.
• Use it as soup stock.
• Freeze to use later as bone broth tea or soup stock.

I often keep my bones soaking in the vinegar solution for days or weeks. I keep the bones in a wide mouth canning jar in the fridge. I add bones to this jar until I have enough to justify making bone broth and/or the outside temperature is cool enough to be ok with my long oven usage. With fall and winter just around the corner, sorry dear Co-op friends, it is a good time of the year for long cooking of bone broth.

Enjoy making and sipping bone broth.

**This is part of my vegetarian and vegan friendly information for enhancing your gut health through plant based choices…

Thanks for hanging in there and continuing this read. As a vegetarian or vegan you can cook up vegetable broths that are enhanced with the above herbs.

· Slippery elm, marshmallow, and licorice root have coating and soothing effects on the gut lining. I use them in many ways as bonus gut health foods – teas or the powdered herbs mixed into plain/full fat yogurt with added L-glutamine powder.

·Add red cabbage to your soup as it is a plant based source of L-glutamine. Red Cabbage is considered the densest vegetable form of L-glutamine. Making red cabbage sauerkraut is another great way to use cabbage and create a highly bio-available form of l-glutamine.

·Other sources of L-glutamine to help tighten up those junctions: the highest levels found in grass-fed beef, bison, chicken, and free range eggs. Raw dairy products from grass-fed cows and goats are also very high in L-glutamine.

·Plant sources: almonds, pistachios, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, peanuts and peanut butter are all good sources (peanuts can be disturbing to gut health in people with pre-existing gut issues). Dried lentils, peas, and beans contribute L-glutamine as well. Other vegetables sources include spinach, parsley, and beets.

·It is best if these vegetables are consumed raw or fermented in order to maximize their glutamine content and increase bioavailability. Cooking heat, especially high heat, breaks down the L-glutamine.

·A recipe for using raw, red cabbage in fresh slaws: http://www.paulayoumellrn.com/winter-salad/

·Making sauerkraut with red cabbage: http://www.paulayoumellrn.com/blog/2014/02/04/i-popped-the-cranberry-of-fermentation

Conveniently made for you bone broth in Canton-Potsdam area: 

• Potsdam Food Co-op in Potsdam carries Pacific Organic bone broths, in aseptic packages, on the grocery shelf.
• Nature's Storehouse in Canton carries Bonafide organic beef broth in their meat freezer.

2 websites for further learning about bone broth and healing the gut lining (type "bone broth" or "leaky gut syndrome" into the website's search bar):

·         http://www.mercola.com/

·         https://draxe.com/

10 Body Healing Benefits of Yoga

1. Blood pressure: a regular yoga practice reduces blood pressure.

2. Mindful body and breath work cultivates peace that lingers and weaves its way through your day.

3. Aligning your breath with your body's movement aligns body, mind, and spirit. See peace info above.

4. Got gut health issues? Try some yoga poses that are guaranteed to bring digestive tract relief.    

Pose images from an online article at Yoga Journal, I urge you to check out this Yoga Journal gut healthy, better digestion article, click here. While you are at it, just check out the whole Yoga Journal!

5. Body Weight Balance that is healthy for you & your body: When your spirit can move through the world with grace, because your physical body is a comfortable place to be (physically, emotionally, AND spiritually) your life and life force energy just flows better.

6. Asthma Relief: Yoga breath & body work creates healthier lungs, better lung capacity, less asthma symptoms, and lowered stress. 

7. Stronger Bones, stronger muscles, stronger body-mind-spirit.  You gain better flexibility & balance in body-mind-spirit as well. Bonus!

8. Yoga is healing to all body systems. Yes, I said healing! Your cellular metabolism will balance out, because your mitochondria will be happy, making you feel light and energetic.

9. Yoga is your daily happy drug lifting mild depression and making neurotransmitters flow. Yoga literally lifts the corner of clouds so you can always see the sun.  As my youngest son said, 6 years ago, "when you lift the corner of the clouds, the sun is always shining!"

10. Yoga helps you relax and sleep better as it engages your para-sympathetic nervous system, the rest & digest system, taking you out of the constant stressed out, fight or flight mode (your sympathetic nervous system on over drive). This reduces inflammation in your whole body.

I could come up with another 90 healing benefits of Yoga in about 10 minutes time. I love to chat about Yoga, if you are interested.

I love to share Yoga...  http://www.paulayoumellrn.com/yoga/

                               Namaste

Translated roughly, it means

"The Spirit within me salutes the Spirit in you"

knowing that we are all made from the same                     One Divine Consciousness.

Simple & Sensible Reasons To Take Magnesium

A week or so ago I sent a newsletter (not a blog post) titled #1 Supplement I Recommend about the magnificent mineral magnesium. Below I will quickly list and explain, in simplest terms, some of the benefits of taking magnesium: meaning the ill health symptoms you experience from your magnesium insufficiency will buzz off and leave you alone when you actually have enough magnesium in your system for your body cells to use.

1. Constipation: having an uptight and anxious colon is not pleasant, take some magnesium citrate and relax the colon for happy pooping daily (yes, I said daily. Anything less is constipation).
2. Migraines, headaches: again, tension from tight body tissues, lacking magnesium in the cells, can leave you prone to headaches.
3. Anxiety: magnesium helps you relax and release tension and anxiety.
4. Gut health: this is a catch 22 as you need strong acid to break down magnesium out of your food and yet adequate body supply of magnesium builds strong stomach acid (trust me, this is a good thing. You want strong stomach acids... get rid of those acid blocking drugs, just saying people. Rx drugs are not body healing).
5. Vitamin D levels: magnesium works with Vitamin D. Deficient in Vit D? Help your body work properly with some magnesium.
6. Calcium and mineral absorption: calcium alone will not build strong bones. The just take calcium supplements mentality leaves your bones lacking in so much more. Your bones need magnesium... and many other minerals, vitamins, and micro/macro nutrients. Calcium is not the bone issue cure all. Magnesium sufficiency promotes the deposit of calcium in your bones. Magnesium insufficiency or deficiency deposits calcium into your soft tissues. This spells: Plaque in arteries (50% calcium, only 3% cholesterol), kidney stones...
7. Magnesium is needed for DNA repair... you want this!
8. Magnesium insufficiency and deficiency contribute to hyperinsulinemia... can you say diabetes?
9. Got high blood pressure? Maybe you are insufficient in magnesium. Constricted, tight, anxious blood vessels make it hard for your heart to pump blood through them. Think about a garden hose that has been stepped on or kinked.
10. Magnesium calms muscles and nerves preventing cramps, excitability, and irritability in both your muscles and nervous system. Got that urge to snap when stressed out about work, teenagers, stupid driving maneuvers? Soothe yourself with some magnesium.
11. Prevent sleep disturbances by keeping your body relaxed.
12. Prevent depression as magnesium sufficiency is required for adequate neurotransmitters. Healthy levels of neurotransmitters keep the brain, nervous system, moods, etc. fring happily & healthfully.
13. Coffee drinker? Soda? Body stores of magnesium are depleted by coffee, alcohol, phosphates, (e.g. in dark sodas) and by calcium only supplements. We are meant to eat whole foods and use supplements that are balanced, not single constituent minerals. No food is made up of just calcium without other nutrients. Real food is a balanced package of nutrition.
14. Inflammation is a marker for disease. Magnesium is an anti-inflammatory agent. Relax, release, soothe yourself! 
15. Got hideous menstrual cramps?  Ease the uterine tension and anxiety with some magnesium. Depending on whether your are constipated or have diarrhea pre-menstrually or at the start of your period... see below to pick your magnesium wisely.

In the last century, the magnesium content of food decreased by approximately 50% as a consequence of food processing, loss of top soil, and loss of minerals in soil. If we are no longer getting healthy doses of magnesium in our food, we do need to supplement. Yes, this means single constituent magnesium supplementation because... there are exceptions to every rule!

Questions? Post in the comments below & I'll do my best to help you out.

Or their is always email: pyoumell@paulayoumellrn.com

USE Magnesium Citrate if you tend towards constipation (At least one healthy bowel movement daily should be a happening event with your body).

Available at Nature's Storehouse in Canton, NY

USE Magnesium glycinate if constipation is not your issue.

Need a blend of mag citrate & mag glycinate? This combo will provide just a little assistance with constipation but not a full on intestinal dynamite system?

Available at the Potsdam Food Coop.

Junk Health Food

My Advice:  Be Wary... Be Very, Very Wary

I was inspired to write this after shopping in a health food store a couple of hours from home. I am a people watcher and a health educator. I can't help but notice the things people buy. The person in front of me at the checkout had a cart loaded with what I call Junk Health Food: [I observe from a space of love... wanting so badly to reach out and do some community education... but only when asked Paula, only when asked! :) ]

• organic, refined, white flour bread and rolls
• chips of every kind
• natural soft drinks and fruit juice flavored drinks
• organic, sugary cereals
• organic pop tart™ type toaster pastries

Be wary of anything that comes in a box, bag, can, jar, etc.  If it is a packaged food product, made in a factory and not your home, be a savvy shopper and consumer. Just because it is sold in a health food store does not mean it is cell nourishing food.

WHY?

1.  Most food products are manufactured for the corporate bottom line, not your health.

This means that the cheapest ingredients go into the "product" so the company manufacturing this product can make the highest profit margin.  Profits before people is the name of this game.

Now keep in mind, there are companies out there creating quality products.  Real food, in packages, that are healthy alternatives to what you would make in your own kitchen.  These products are sold on the shelves of health food stores, food coops, and in the healthy section of grocery stores.

BUT, just because a product is on the shelves in these healthier places, do not assume that the product is healthy (see below on being self-responsible).  Even products you have found to have healthy, 100% whole food ingredients; be aware... the ingredients can be changed.  Big corporations love to buy out these smaller "health conscious" companies because the healthier products are money makers.  Most people do want healthy food and healthy bodies so the sale of organic, whole, non-GMO foods has soared. Corporate America wants their piece of this pie. But... as soon as a larger corporation owns the food, the food label, the product suddenly changes.  Cheaper ingredients are now used to make the very same products. This "ingredient switch" pads the bottom line of the large corporation, not your health!.

You have to be the responsible one in the grocery store... this means reading labels very, very carefully.  (This is what I teach in my book and in my workshops; self responsibility around your own health restoration... you healing you!)  Read the ingredient list, on anything you are contemplating purchasing, that comes in a package.  Your health, your life, depends on this.

Ask yourself questions about the product:

-Is every ingredient in the product a whole food? (organic? non GMO?)

-Could you assemble all the ingredients, in your own home, to make this same food item?

Answering yes to these questions? Then move forward, feeling comfortable that the food will nourish, not deplete, the health of your body cells.  Depleting body cells means you are depleting you; creating degeneration in your body.

Answering no to these questions?  Put the "product" back on the shelf; your health and your life depend on this.

2.  Most manufactured products are full of fake stuff:

Fillers (to enhance textures without using real food, i.e. whole food ingredients. MOST Greek yogurts are one of these filler enhanced foods, read more here: 13 Health Foods That Are NOT So Healthy),

Preservatives,

Artificial colors and flavors,

Fake sweeteners,

GMOs

Fake fats...

the list of fake things, that go into factory made food, is never ending.

Bottom Line:  Fake ingredients, factory made substances, do not belong in the human body.  They do not create cellular health. Cellular health IS created when we eat whole food.

   Fake Food     vs      Real Food

Have I convinced you to nourish each and every one of your beautiful body cells with 100% whole foods?  

Be well; feed your body well.    You will lose weight, feel better every day, and restore your body's natural health!

5 Reasons Chewing IS A Most Important Part Of Eating & Digestion

The story is that engaging those pearly whites in the chew process is the most important initial step you can take for the health of your digestive tract and your bodaciously beautiful body cells. Think how many people chuck food into their faces at break neck speed, chomp on it 5-6 times, and then swallow large chucks of food.

Pay attention the next time you engage in eating a meal. Are you a chewer or a chunk swallower? All these years picking on cows for their endless "cud chewing" and it seems those beautiful cows had it right all along.

Get chewing your cud people and here is why:

1. Chewing begins carbohydrate digestion: which prevents reflux as you are revving up the digestive tract with your chewing. The more you chew your food, the more messages are sent to the gut to get the digestive juices flowing. That means optimal hydrochloric acid for stomach digestion of food. Good digestion in the stomach sets the stage for good digestion throughout the digestive tract.

Little chewing = little time for messaging the GI tract to send out digestive juices = impeded digestion.

Most reflux is NOT an over abundance of stomach acids but in fact a lack of stomach acid (food sits in stomach not digesting and body's wisdom says "hey this stuff is rotting right here... let's get rid of it.” At this point the easiest way to get rid of stomach contents is up and out. Yup, reflux.).

2. Chewing food well feeds your beautiful gut microbes: You waste $$$ taking probiotics if you are not going to offer them kindness and feed them well. Be the gut bug hostess (or host) with the most-ess! Chew your food well. Doing so breaks down the food fibers, the starches, which feed the gut bugs you want surviving and thriving in your gut.

3. Chewing well prevents leaky gut: See above for how chewing feeds the happy, healthy gut bugs. When we are not feeding the "good" gut microbes to maintain a healthy and balanced microbial population, we can create an inflamed and irritated gut lining. This leads to leaky gut syndrome and contributes to many chronic, lifestyle related, health problems.

Belly ache or gut health... you decide!

4. Chewing food slowly and well promotes relaxation: eating fast, swallowing food practically whole, creates a stress response in the body.  Stress causes body tissues (muscles, organs etc) to tense, contributes to poor digestion, and chronic fight or flight response throughout body. This digestive tract and body tensing also contributes to constipation.

Chewing IS yoga for the digestive tract, nervous system, and really your whole body. You know how I love, love, love my yoga. Type Yoga into the search bar, below, and I will inspire you with the many body, mind, and spirit benefits of a daily Yoga practice.

5. Chewing food well means food is then swallowed in a liquid state this means your body, digestive tract, is better able to digest and pull the nutrients out of the food. 

This means your body cells are being better nourished by the whole foods you spend your hard earned money on. This is very important my friends. The more nutrients we can pull out of the food we eat, the healthier we will be. It is all about what nutrients actually got to your body cells. Poorly chewed food cannot be digested well and therefore the actual nutrition does not reach your intended body cells. Yes, your health pays dearly over the years.

Chew all food into liquid consistency. 30-50 chews per bite or gulp of food (Gulp: I am thinking about smoothies, creamed soups, etc. that are gulped down without any conscious thought of actually chewing.)  

If food is already a liquid or mushy consistency (soup, puddings, smoothies) take 20 to 30 conscious chews.  If food is solid, take 50 conscious chews.  

Example: blueberries and skins of berries require 50 chews. The soft inner part of berry will chew up quickly and naturally move down throat... keep chewing that blueberry skin 50 times. Yes, the cud will get smaller and smaller and the habit of swallowing before adequate chewing has taken place will be right there in your face (literally). Resist and keep chewing as the skins of blueberries are loaded with micro-nutrients and complex carbohydrates (fibers) that feed those gut bugs IF you chew it up well for your gut bugs to be able to use them. Trust me; the gut bugs (microbes) do not have teeth to do the chew job if you leave it unfinished. For goodness sake, show those gut bugs (who do so much for you) some genuine hospitality and chew, chew, chew!

Get Chewing & Get Healthy.