Tips on how to increase digestive power! :)

These are tips for people who cannot handle a lot of raw veggies, have chronic gas, constipation or even diarrhea or alternating. It helps brain fog, fatigue, bloating, abdominal pain, etc. If you constantly have jagged cracks in your tongue, or lots of toxins coating it each morning, or candida, you need to know this stuff.

-------------

To increase the power of digestion, here are some excellent things to do and options. Whatever sounds good to you, give it a try. If something seems strange or not good for you, check the list again in two weeks. If it still seems wrong for you, chances are your intuition is right on.

Only eat as much food as you can hold in both hands in a single meal. This is very important. Never drink cold water with meals, stop drinking fluids 30 minutes before meals and 1 hour after. If you must drink, drink herbal tea or plain warm water. The stomach digests best with 1/3 air, 1/3 food, 1/3 water/gastric juices. Watering down your stomach dilutes the enzymes that digest food.

Try to have at least 4 hours in between meals. Eat regular meals at regular times. Avoid snacking as much as possible. DRink warm tea in between meals, spicy herbal tea - not black - is best.

Digestive enzymes are an excellent option.

Avoid greasy foods. Eat plain foods and add your own olive oil.

Avoid deepfried and other very dead foods with none of their own live enzymes.

Supplemnt with a super-green food such as Perfect Food and probiotics such as Primal Defense.

Try to use proper food combining techniques. For instance, eat fruit alone as a fruit meal, never with dairy except the occasional cottage cheese or yoghurt, nothing high-fat.

Try eating just a little bit of something pickled before your main meal, such as Kim Chee (pickled cabbage), or ginger (like what they give with sushi).

Consider switching from boiling veggies to stews and soups with onion and spices. That way the water is reserved with all the goodness of the veggies, and you can add cumin, ginger and paprika and cayenne pepper to make them tastier and better digested.

OR you can steam them easily by putting the cut up veggie in a med pot with a tight lid, 1/4 cup water and 1 tbls olive oil. Put on high heat for 4 minutes then check for crisp-tender. Spice and eat.

Try to eat only 3-4 types of veggies in a single meal, or less. Consider putting them through a blender. All your veggies should be cooked, but the occasional veggie juice is okay. (weak spleen - persistent colds) Broccoli and cabbage and brussel sprouts are often gas-producing.

Only eat beans and lentils if they have been soaked before cooking, or at least slow cooked, and are eaten with carminative spices and not with Sugar (baked beans have Sugar with them).

Try to eat more spinach, kale, beets, carrots.

You need more bitter, pungent, herbs and veggies to increase Agni (Digestive Fire). Options:

1. Swedish Bitters before each meal.
2. Drink more spicey herbal tea, such as Yogi tea's Indian Spice, and Fennel.
3. Drink this homemade tonic: 1 cup or so of milk simmered for 10 minutes with 1 stick of cinnamon, 3 cloves, 1/2 inch ginger root, 1-2 cardamon seeds. As long as the milk is cooked it shouldn't feed candida too much.

Consider eating a mono-diet of nothing but Kichadi (basmati rice and mung bean stew) for one week.

Consider a warm Water Fast for one day, or long enough for tongue to become clean. (several days great for Pitta, only 1 day for Vata). Tweet