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Mahatma Gandhi once said that we should “chew your drink and drink your food”.  Even if chewing your food more was the only thing you introduced into your routine, you’d be pleasantly surprised the benefits your health and wellbeing would reap.

If you catch yourself inhaling food and swallowing food chunks the size of golfballs, it’s probably a good idea to slow down a bit, cut a small portion, and chew.

Digestion starts in the brain and the mouth, and if things aren’t going well here then it’s likely they won’t go too well further on down the digestive tract either. Chewing your food properly is one of the best ways to positively influence your digestive system, your dental health and your weight.

• Each time you chew you are sending a message to your brain that you are eating, and the more this occurs the more your brain responds by both producing more enzymes and acids to digest your food, but also by producing hormones that tell you that you are full. Not chewing properly can mean you’re often hungry after you’ve eaten.
• Chewing more means it’s less likely that you will eat mindlessly. By forcing yourself to slow down you will be less likely to overeat, and you’ll also allow your body to send through the message that you’re full (which is often a slow to come message) before you’ve overstuffed yourself.
• Chewing your food well means less damage on the oesophagus – if you’re swallowing whole chunks of food it can damage the delicate tissue in this area. By chewing properly you’re also lubricating the food with saliva, making its journey down to the stomach an easier passage.
• Saliva contains several enzymes that kickstart the digestive process. Fat digestion begins with saliva, and there are also enzymes that break down starches into sugar. You can experiment on this by chewing a plain cracker for a long period – it will transform from a savoury snack into sweet!
• The more you chew your food the more surface area you are creating, which means the digestive acids and enzymes will have an easier time breaking your food down even further.
• If your food is not chewed properly this acts a food source for the unfriendly bacteria in your digestive tract, allowing them to grow and crowd out your good bugs.
• Chewing is important for your teeth. It helps to keep your jaw and gum muscles strong, and the saliva produced is also important in controlling the bacteria in your mouth.

You should aim to chew each mouthful 25 times, or at least until it becomes a paste. For soups and drinks you don’t have to worry about the 25 count, but do give it a few chews to ensure the enzymes are working and to stretch out those jaw muscles.

This can be a hard thing to remember to do, so I often suggest to my patients to set a reminder in their phones to go off before their regular meal times “Remember to Chew!” and if possible to avoid eating while in a hurry, because this will mean you’re more likely to gobble down your meals.

Give chewing more a go, and let me know if you notice a difference!

The post The Importance of Chewing appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

“The immune system present in the gut makes more immunological decisions in a day than the rest of the immune system does in a lifetime”.  (1)

If your immune system isn’t behaving itself properly, you might want to consider that your digestive system is the culprit.

Your digestive system has a special mucosal lining over the surface of your intestines, and the health of your gut flora (the complex, extremely important colony of bacteria within your digestive system, also known as the microbiome) has a huge amount of immune decisions to make on a daily basis – it has to deal with bacteria, viruses and food, and decide each time whether it is a friend or foe.

Setting up the gut bugs

The bacteria within your gut are established within the first 20 days of life.  If the bacterial colony does not set up adequately, babies can be immune compromised and can be more prone to immune imbalances later on in life, as well as increased inflammation which is largely controlled by our immune cells.

Frequent use of antibiotics can severely impact on the health of your digestive system.  In some cases, certain bacteria can never recover after they have been killed by antibiotics (2).

The gut reports to the immune system

There is a special type of cell within the digestive system called a dendritic cell.  This cell is responsible for determining whether our immune system should be on high alert or not.  Occasionally this cell will extend a little feeler (almost like a tentacle) and take a handful of whatever is in your digestive system to examine, to then report back to the rest of the immune system whether everything is okay or not.  This can explain why your diet can have an effect on allergic conditions such as hayfever and eczema, as well as autoimmune conditions (3).

Immune cells in the gut

There are also a lot of other players involved in the gut, such as Immunoglobulin A (sIgA) and certain T lymphocytes.  sIgA helps to protect the epithelial layer from being inhabited by bacteria and viruses.  This helpful immunoglobin is actually produced by lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) which are actually created by Bifidobacteria (a good bacteria that exists mostly in the colon).  Unfortunately, Bifidobacteria are easily damaged, especially by antibiotics.

Enzymes do more than digest food

When you think about digestive enzymes, you’ll probably be thinking that they’re there to break down your food so it’s primed for absorbing.  They also have another important role to play, and that’s in breaking down substances that might be harmful to your immune system.  Due to poor eating habits, the secretion of enzymes is compromised in a large proportion of people.  Implementing habits such as chewing each mouthful more and taking time to enjoy and concentrate on your meal are helpful for stimulating the cephalic phase of digestion – where your brain tells the rest of the digestive system to get ready for food, and consequently more enzymes and acids are produced.

Fix your gut to improve your immunity

By now you are probably realizing that keeping your gut healthy is pretty dang important. In order to achieve this, there are a few strategies that can be implemented, all depending on how bad your gut and immune system is to begin with.

I highly recommend working with a practitioner in this, particularly if you are looking to assess and treat specific microbial imbalances, as it can be a complicated process that may require stool analysis, and some gut infections can take a long time to resolve so it’s helpful having the support of a practitioner.

Balance your gut flora: This process may need to start with a stool analysis to see if you’re lacking in certain beneficial bacteria, or whether you have a unfriendly bug that needs killing off. Depending on where your gut flora is at, you may need to look at using some herbal anti-microbial herbs or oils to kill off the unfriendly bugs, and also replacing the good guys with a probiotic supplement, as well as probiotic and prebiotic foods.

Repair the gut lining: There are plenty of options when it comes to gut healing. Things like slippery elm, the amino acid glutamine and glycine are my favorite tools for repairing the gut lining. Other options that can be helpful include Aloe Vera and Bone broths.

You also need ample supply of protein in your diet, as well as the mineral zinc.

Avoid irritating foods: This can be different for everyone, but some of the most common irritants for gut health include wheat, dairy and processed soy. As frustrating as it is, food intolerances can be developed to anything, so if you’re unsure what you’re intolerant or sensitive to it may be worthwhile completing an elimination diet or a food intolerance test.

Processed foods, sugar, alcohol and coffee can damage the gut lining as well so if gut healing is your goal it’s worthwhile keeping these foods out of the diet, or at least to a minimum.

Minimise stress: Interestingly the state of our gut and our mental health are interconnected (you can read more about this here) so it makes sense that if you are stressed, anxious or adrenally fatigued it is going to impair your gut healing journey.

Yep, stress affects everything in our body, and this includes stress of all forms. So even if your house isn’t on fire or something similarly dramatic, it doesn’t mean you’re not affected by stress. In this day and age there are a lot of pressures and expectations on people, everyone is usually in a rush and we’ve also got less support networks and rituals in place to help us deal with these stresses. On top of that, most people consume a diet that is less abundant in the nutrients that our bodies need to cope with stress, so it’s no wonder that stress has such as huge impact on our health and wellbeing.

Of course everyone deals with stress differently so the degree to which it affects your health will vary, but I recommend that everyone (regardless of whether you’re trying to heal your gut or not) incorporates stress management techniques into their day. This can include exercise, yoga, meditation, mental stillness, leisure time, time spent with friends or family, or journaling.

Works Cited

The post The gut and your immune system appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

Papaya salad is one of my favourite Thai dishes. While you can find it in a lot of Thai restaurants, I only discovered it in a cooking school I went to while I was holidaying in Thailand back in 2008 with my awesome fellow naturopath Melinda King.

Green (unripe) papaya has a whole host of benefits. It is rich in vitamin c and enzymes that help our digestive system to break down food and absorb nutrients more effectively, as well as reduce inflammation. It also contains B vitamins, antioxidants, and plenty of fibre.

We had just graduated from uni, and so decided to refresh our adrenals with a holiday filled with eating authentic Thai food, exploring beautiful towns and busy cities, snorkelling through rainbow coloured fishes, relaxing on isolated beaches and caring for retired elephants (that’s a story I’ll tell you more about later).

While staying in Chiang Mai, we attended a Thai cooking course, which is where I discovered the papaya salad. Before we started cooking we were first taken to the local market to collect the produce we’d be cooking with. The stalls were just amazing, filled with a variety of colourful and fresh produce.

Along with making coconut milk and green curry paste from scratch (the former being easy to do, the latter being a real workout when you’re only using a mortar and pestle) we made a heap of dishes that for a while, ruined Thai restaurants for me, as the food was amazingly so fresh and clean, and had such a different flavour spectrum to the Australian version of Thai food.

Thankfully, Papaya salad is so straight forward that I haven’t come across a bad one, and perhaps it’s the nostalgia that keeps me coming back to this dish, but I think the knowledge that green papaya is rich in enzymes that help with digestion has something to do with it as well.

If you don’t have a mortar and pestle you can use the end of a rolling pin to smash the flavours up in a bowl, or even a food processor for the dressing. The tricky bit would be preparing the papaya. If you’re got a zigzag peeler or a julienne attachment on a mandolin then it’s going to be easy, but otherwise there’s plenty of ways you can do it. Even if it doesn’t turn out to look like the traditional long strips (mine never does) don’t worry because it will taste the same however you do it.

Options for preparing the papaya:

1- The traditional way: the papaya is shredded by holding the peeled fruit in one hand, and tapping it with a long knife to make long cuts, while rotating it around. Probably the riskiest method if you’re not steady handed. This technique can also be modified by cutting then peeling layers off. Some people prefer to cut the papaya in half then scoop out the seeds first, but I prefer to keep it whole.

2- Peel then slice: Alternatively you can slice thin strips off with a mandolin or peeler (or even better use a julienne attachment to get the strips automatically), then stack these strips up and slice thinly using a knife. Again, I keep the papaya whole in this method.

3-  Zigzag peeler: This is probably the most practical method, but not everyone has a zigzag peeler in their house (I don’t). If you do, go ahead and use it because you’ll get long strips straight away with the minimum effort.

4- Chop then grate: This method requires you to cut the peeled papaya into sections, then grate using a grater attachment on a food processor or a handheld grater. You get smaller sections this way but it’s probably the easiest method if you don’t have a zigzag peeler and don’t want to risk chopping your hands off using the traditional method.

Green Papaya Salad

Ingredients

• 1 green papaya, peeled
• 1 carrot, peeled and grated (optional)
• 6 small chillies (or 2 long chillies if you don’t want too much heat)
• 2 tbsp palm sugar, or to taste
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 tbsp Thai shrimp paste or 4 tbsp dried shrimp
• 8 snake beans cut into 3 cm lengths
• Mint leaves, to serve (optional)
• 10 cherry tomatoes, halved or 2 tomatoes, cut into chunks
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 3-4 tbsp fish sauce (to taste)
• 2 tbsp roasted crushed peanuts, to serve

Method

In a mortar and pestle, pound the chilli along with the salt, sugar and garlic until broken up and mixed well. Add the lime juice and dried shrimp or shrimp paste and pound further.
Add in the snake beans and tomatoes and bruise lightly, then add in the papaya and carrot and continue mixing and pounding lightly for another minute until the flavours are mixed through. Serve, garnished with crushed peanuts and mint leaves.

The post Green Papaya Salad appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish made from fermented vegetetables.  Kimchi has a tangy, slightly spicy flavour and is a good side to a lot of dishes.  Fermented food is awesome for your digestive system, because it helps the friendly bacteria in our digestive system to stay in balance, which can help with all sorts of health conditions, especially digestive complaints like bloating.

I’ve been experimenting by making various fermented foods, and Kimchi is my favourites, mostly because it tastes good.  I like to have a couple of tablespoons of kimchi with one of my meals most days and encourage my patients to do the same, as I am pretty excited about the benefits it offers.

I totally get that making your own fermented foods is probably a little daunting, it’s a bit time consuming (not every day though) and sounds weird if you haven’t heard of the concept before – but it’s worth it!

When you ferment vegies, you get a whole heap of benefits:

• The food becomes more digestible
• The vitamins are heaps easier to use by the body
• More enzymes are produced, which help digestion
• Your gut’s good bacteria increase, which means better digestion and better immune health
• Fermented foods help clear out unwanted heavy metals such as mercury and aluminium
• Fermented foods promote an alkaline environment, which is important for general health
• Fermentation is a natural preservation technique, and is actually the only method that doesn’t kill off nutrients in the process.

Ingredients:

Day 1:

• Sea salt (not table salt)
• Half a purple cabbage (normal cabbage is fine, I just like the colour)
• 3 carrots (i used a combo of orange and purple carrots)
• Optional – other vegies can include beetroot, green beans, radishes, seaweeds

Day 2:

• 1 red onion
• 1 red chilli, seeds removed and finely chopped
• 8 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp freshly grated ginger
• Spices, e.g. cumin, coriander, turmeric, caraway, fennel.

How to:

Prepare the brine by mixing approximately 1 tbsp salt into 1L of filtered water, stirring to dissolve.  You want it to be salt, but palatable.  If you are not using whey, you may need to add more salt to preserve it until the fermentation process starts.

Thinly slice the cabbage using a mandolin or a slicing attachment on the food processor, and either grate, or quarter and thinly slice the carrot.  Submerge these vegies (along with any of the other vegies with the exception of garlic and onion) in the brine and allow to soak overnight.  You can put a smaller plate on top of the vegies and weight it with a can to ensure they’re fully submerged.

The next day drain the soaked vegetables (reserving the brine) and mix through the chopped garlic, ginger, chilli, onion and a generous amount of spices of your choosing to the kimchi.

In the mean time sterilise 2 large jars with boiling water and allow to air dry.

Pack the combined vegies into the jars, pressing down firmly and adding more brine if needed to submerge the vegies fully.  Close or cover the jar with muslin or a clean tea towel and then let it sit in a warm place.  Snap lock jars work best for storing fermented foods, but a screw top jar will be fine.  If you close the lid of the jar rather than cover with cloth you may need to ‘burp’ (open) the kimchi every few days to let out some pressure.

It usually takes about a week for the fermentation process to complete – you know it’s worked when the vegies taste ‘ripe’ and have a sharp acidic smell, but it shouldn’t smell off.  It’s a good idea to check the vegies every 1-2 days so that you don’t let it go too far.  Once it’s complete, seal the jar and store in the fridge.  You can eat it straight away or store for a few months.

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