I often share information about my personal "healthy lifestyle" habits; some of these habits include not drinking liquid with food, waiting for a meal to digest completely before eating again, not eating spices, and so on. Sometimes, people hear me speaking about these habits and state that they don't practice all of these habits and yet they don't have any health issues whatsoever. I am happy to hear this; I believe what they are saying and feel that they are probably still on an ideal path for their own journey, even if they don't follow the exact same habits as I do.
Please note: this article is based on anecdotal information and personal experience...
Let me explain why I think these people may not feel digestive discomfort, even though they don't practice some of the habits I mentioned above.
If we take the average of ALL of our daily consumption and detox habits into consideration, we can more or less determine the average amount of toxicity we intake on a daily basis. Our consumption habits include things such as the kind of foods we eat, the air we breathe, any alcohol we drink, any stress we experience (adrenalin), any drugs we consume, any stimulants we intake, and so on. Our detox habits include things such as how much we exercise, the frequency of our bowel movements, how often we cleanse our colons, how much we sweat, etc. If you consider the daily average of all of your consumption habits and "subtract" the releasing effects of all of your detox habits, you can get an idea of the level of toxicity that your body is managing on an average day. For example, a person may eat burgers and fries at a fast food restaurant every day, generating a mass of fermentation and toxicity in the body. This person also may run five miles a day, which helps to release a reasonable amount of toxicity through sweat, plus the exercising also has the potential to increase the regularity of bowel movements. If you compare this person to someone else who eats the same amount of "junk food" every single day, yet doesn't exercise at all, then the amount of toxicity that is in their body on an average day will be more than the person who exercises.
If you consider the daily averages of ALL of your consumption habits and detox habits, you can get an idea of the amount of toxicity in your body on a daily basis, and if you want to, you can then compare this picture with other peoples' habits.
Each consumption habit that we have results in a specific amount of toxicity in our bodies. Some habits create more toxicity within the body than others. For example, eating some steamed quinoa generates less toxicity than eating a fast food hamburger. Another contrasting example might be that eating a salad before your first whole food meal has completely digested still generates less toxicity than eating two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread along with three chocolate chip cookies for dessert.
If a person consistently practices certain habits that generate lots of toxicity within their body (like the PB&J sandwiches & cookies), then the impact of any other habits they practice that create smaller amounts of toxicity within the body (e.g. overlapping whole food meals), will most likely go unnoticed. For example, if someone eats fast food hamburgers on a daily basis and then one day eats a whole food meal instead, followed by a healthy salad before that whole food meal had digested, this pattern of overlapping a second meal before their previous meal has digested would still create less toxicity for this person than their usual burger meals. Although it would give me extreme digestive discomfort if I ate a second meal before another meal had digested, someone else may actually still feel better after eating in this way, because the OVERALL amount of resulting toxicity in their body after overlapping meals is less than the total amount that they would normally experience after eating fast food burger meals; it is all relative. Hence, for someone in this position, the "toxicity"/fermentation impact of overlapping a whole foods meal with a salad will go unnoticed in comparison to their usual experiences, and they will actually feel better overall, due to feeling less toxicity in their body. I almost NEVER drink liquids alongside meals, nor do I eat a second meal before a first meal is digested. I only eat raw whole foods, with zero processed/packaged foods. My raw food meals generate less toxicity/fermentation within my body than if I ate a raw food meal with liquid or I ate a second raw meal before my first meal digested. Therefore, if I were to take on these habits of overlapping meals or drinking liquids with food, it would generate MORE toxicity within my body than I normally experience on an average day. Although in the example above, the person eating fast food burgers will actually feel better when overlapping healthy foods, in my case, I would actually feel worse. For the fast foodie, his total toxicity level would be lowered by overlapping some healthy meals, whereas my toxicity level would rise.
Many of you have probably experienced this pattern yourselves in some way. For example, in previous years, you may have gone to fast food restaurants with your friends on countless occasions. Since then, you may have improved your diet to eating only whole foods, or something close to that. NOW, when you consider eating those old fast food choices that you used to eat, you may cringe, knowing that if you ate those things these days, you would not feel good at all and may even get sick.
You personally may find that you do not sense any digestive discomfort if you drink liquids alongside foods, or overlap meals... AND... your "fast food friends" may also not sense any digestive discomfort when they eat chocolate chip cookies with milk, yet that would make your stomach TUURRNN... it is all relative!
If the toxicity generated within one person's body from certain consumption habits results in LESS than the daily average of toxicity they experience, then those consumption habits will most likely go unnoticed in terms of feeling 'disruptive' for that person, even if for someone else these habits may feel uncomfortable. Another example could be food combining. Some people seem to be able to combine food ANY WAY THEY WANT, and have no digestive discomfort, while others couldn't even think about eating in that way. For those people who don't practice food combining principles and yet have no digestive discomfort, we could conclude that for them, the toxicity generated from not food combining is LESS than, or equal to, the average toxicity that they experience on a daily basis. There is no "right" or "wrong" here - we all have different systems and different levels of toxicity in our bodies. In my experience, as we embark on a path of healthier eating, our average daily toxicity levels decrease and over time our bodies require less food and less toxicity to feel optimal.