It’s easy to take your digestion for granted. You eat, you digest, and you go on with your day. However, everything that you do impacts your digestive health. And conversely, everything that you eat and how you digest it impacts your life.
For example:
- The quality of your sleep can affect how well you digest. And you probably already know from experience that sometimes what you eat, or drink, can impact how well you sleep.
- If you have alcohol immediately before bed you might sleep super well for a few hours but then be awake the rest of the night.
Your digestion includes everything from top to bottom, or from consumption to elimination.
So we not only pay attention to what you put into your mouth but also how the material comes out.
We’re talking about waste or... poop. Yes, poop. No one really likes to talk about it, but it’s a direct result of your digestion.
And proper elimination can certainly impact your digestive health.
Areas Directly Or Indirectly Impacted By Your Digestive Health
For example, if you’re constipated, which can happen for a large number of reasons, you can develop bacteria growth problems in your gut.
This can lead to inflammation, discomfort, malabsorption and a bunch of other issues.
So you want to not only pay attention to what goes into your body but also your elimination systems.
Here are a few areas of your life that are either directly or indirectly impacted by your digestive health:
- Sleep
- Mental clarity
- Energy levels
- Immune system
- Pain/discomfort
- Metabolism
When we talk about digestive health we often focus on problems. And we’ll take a look at three chronic digestive problems that can impact your life next.
However, let’s also say that good digestive health is our real focus and good digestive health looks like this:
- Regular bowel movements; meaning that they happen regularly. Generally, for adults, this is once a day, but it can be more or less. In any case, it should be relatively consistent.
- Normal bowel movements; meaning that they should be the right color, shape, and consistency. Diarrhea and constipation are the bookends here. There can also be things that happen in the middle of these two extremes that can be signs of issues.
For example, floating stool indicates that your body isn’t digesting fat. This can occasionally happen if you eat a particularly fatty meal. However, it shouldn’t be the norm.
Gas happens. It’s part of the process, and everyone will at least sometimes have some gas.
However, extensive gas accompanied by painful and chronic bloating can be a sign that something in your digestive health is wrong.
So next, let’s talk about what can go wrong.
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