You can eat the healthiest food on the planet but if you’re stressed when you eat it, you’re not going to benefit anywhere near as much as you would if you were eating in a calm, relaxed state.
When you are stressed, your body HAS to pause digestion. If you are stressed in your head from anything ranging from school runs, traffic, kids, work, your phone, too many jobs to do, arguments with family – these things all tell your body that there is DANGER and that it needs to be ready to face it.
Back in our past, that danger was immediate and urgent and involved something like you running from a lion, but these days our body interprets our psychological stresses in just the same way that it used to interpret a lion attack. And so it pauses non-essential functions.
Our stresses have evolved, but how we respond to them has not.
At the end of the day, you don’t need to be digesting your breakfast if you’re fighting for your life. And so if you do eat in a stressed state, then you won’t digest your food the same as if you had been calm. It won’t break down properly and you could well start to impact things like your stomach acid levels, your gut microbiome (all deplete with stress), you could find you experience bloating or wind later in the day.. any number of gut symptoms and imbalances can come from eating in a stressed state.
Whilst I believe that dealing with our emotions and stressful lives is a crucial part of healing our guts, my feeling is that we also do need to look at the whole picture, including what we eat, how we move, sleep and so on to get ourselves fully well.
What would you rate your day-to-day stress levels as being on a scale of 0-10? (10 being mega stressed).. if it’s at a 5 or more this could seriously be holding you back from getting well and resolving your gut problems.
Have you considered healing your emotions to heal your health?
If you’d like to work with me on reducing stress to improve your gut health, you know where I am.
Lucy x
