Health and Diet Blog

Lambert Klein asked:


Chewing your food completely is an often overlooked part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. If you are like most people, you lead such a busy life that meal time is cut down to a fraction of what it should be. Have you ever timed yourself when eating? How long does it take you to finish a meal? Is it ten minutes? Twenty minutes? Five minutes? If you fall into these time frames, chances are you are not chewing your food properly. Read on to uncover the reasons why chewing your food completely is so important to good health.

Most people think that digestion begins in the stomach. This is not true. Digestion actually starts in the mouth. Saliva in your mouth contains enzymes that are important to food digestion. One of the enzymes that your saliva contains is called alpha amylase. This enzyme is responsible for breaking down the starches that you eat into smaller molecules that the cells in your body can use for energy. When your food is not chewed properly, the alpha amylase in your saliva does not have the opportunity to break down these starches, leaving body cells starved.

Another important enzyme in your saliva is lingual lipase. This enzyme is secreted by glands located under the tongue. Lingual lipase starts digesting the fat content found in the food that you eat.

Do you find yourself feeling bloated and gassy after eating? You are not chewing your food properly. When you do not chew your food thoroughly, this will result in incomplete digestion. Large particles of food will pass into the colon and become a breeding ground for bacteria. This can lead to bacterial overgrowth, indigestion and flatulence. Not chewing your food completely will also result in just a portion of the nutrients being released from your food.

Properly chewed food is important for a healthy lower GI tract. There is a muscle that sits at the bottom of your stomach. This muscle must relax to enable food to pass from the stomach and into the small intestine. When your food contains large amounts of saliva, this will help the muscle to relax and the food can pass into the small intestine easily.

So how many times should you chew a bite of food? It is impossible to give an definitive answer to this question. There are plenty of variables that would come into play. For example, you would need to chew a piece of meat a lot more than you would need to chew a piece of bread. A good way to tell if your food has been chewed properly is to chew until you can no longer recognize the food by the texture. If you are chewing a carrot and are still able to tell it is a carrot by the texture in your mouth, then you need to chew it a lot more before you swallow.

Not only does chewing your food completely lead to a healthier lifestyle, it will also bring out the flavor in the foods that you eat. Chewing your food completely will make all of your meals more enjoyable.

peterhutch asked:




Anemia is a condition of too few red blood cells, or a lowered ability of the red blood cells to carry oxygen or iron. Tissue enzymes dependent on iron can affect cell function in nerves and muscles. The fetus is dependent on the mother’s blood and anemia can cause poor fetal growth, preterm birth, and low birth weight. In pregnancy, a woman’s blood volume increases by as much as 50 percent. This causes the concentration of red blood cells in her body to become diluted. This is sometimes called anemia of pregnancy and is not considered abnormal unless the levels fall too low.

Iron requirements go up significantly when you’re pregnant. Iron is essential for making hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to other cells. During pregnancy, the amount of blood in your body expands until you have almost 50 percent more than usual. And you need more iron to make more hemoglobin for all that additional blood. You also need extra iron for your growing baby and placenta.

Symptoms of Anemia in Pregnancy

The usual symptoms are breathlessness, tiredness, weakness, fainting, or paleness. Less frequently there are palpitations, loud heartbeat, inflamed tongue, nausea, headache, forgetfulness, jaundice, and abdominal pain.

Early symptoms are usually nonexistent or nonspecific (eg, fatigue, weakness, light-headedness, mild dyspnea with exertion). Other symptoms and signs may include pallor and, if anemia is severe, tachycardia or hypotension.

Nausea and vomiting: Even if the woman who is pregnant experiences what seems like an abnormal amount of nausea and vomiting (morning sickness), it probably will not affect the baby’s health, particularly if the woman is still gaining weight at the expected rate.

The body also has a remarkable ability to compensate for early anemia. If your anemia is mild or developed over a long period of time, you may not notice any symptoms.

Omega-3 Fatty Acid Deficiency: Having an Omega-3 deficiency during pregnancy can be harmful to the mother and baby. Omega-3′s are polyunsaturated fats that support the growth and development of a fetus and help reduce the risks of pregnancy complications. It is recommended women consume 300mg of Omega-3′s daily during the course of pregnancy, which can be found in cold water fish, eggs, walnuts, and dark green leafy vegetables.

Causes of Anemia in Pregnancy

Anemia during pregnancy can be caused by a variety of reasons. They may include: iron poor diet, lack of folic acid, blood loss due to hemorrhoids or gastrointestinal bleeds, destroying iron and other nutrients in food by excessive cooking. During pregnancy, anemia may be present even with iron and folic acid supplements because pregnancy alters the digestive process and the unborn child consumes the nutrients normally available to the mother.

Sickle cell anemia is inherited as an autosomal recessive trait. This means it occurs in someone who has inherited hemoglobin S from both parents. Sickle cell disease is much more common in certain ethnic groups, affecting approximately one out of every 500 African Americans. Someone who inherits hemoglobin S from one parent and normal hemoglobin (A) from the other parent will have sickle cell trait.

Blood loss: This is a common reason for iron deficiency anemia in adults. Heavy periods may cause anemia. Blood loss can also be caused by internal bleeding, usually in the digestive tract. A stomach ulcer, ulcerative colitis, cancer, or taking aspirin or similar medicine for a long time can cause bleeding in your stomach or intestines. That’s why it’s important to find the reason for a low iron level.

Robert Sifer asked:


(c) 2008 Robert Sifer

With a demanding and hectic lifestyle, a lot of people fall short on giving their body the right kinds of foods, nutrients, vitamins and minerals to make their stomach healthy and their entire body as well. Along with a busy way of living comes an unhealthy eating habit that comprises of fast and processed foods. This is primarily the reason why a lot of people have resorted to instant pain relievers like antacids to provide relief for their abdominal pain.

The use of antacid remedies however, should not always be the solution for abdominal disorders for the body might get used to this kind of treatment and may not give a long term relief. With this, a person is subject to act in a manner that will generate to longer outcome and this can be done through proper consumption of foods as well as the proper combination of various types of foods to eliminate the risk of abdominal pain.

Apart from drug medication to help relieve stomachache, averting the roots of stomach pain before it can bring adverse effects to the body should be your primary goal. Therefore, you have to consume foods that are easy to digest to avoid drug medication. Some of the things that you have to consider are the appropriate consumption of various food groups and determining the right combination possible.

Keep in mind that meat and carbohydrate foods should not be mixed together. This is due to the fact that the secretion of enzymes to digest carbohydrates is in the form of alkaline. Conversely, the body’s secretion of enzymes to digest animal protein is in the form of acid. These two doesn’t go well with each other and the combination of both will not bring proper digestion leaving it entirely inactive inside the body resulting to indigestion and stomach pain.

Another thing is to avoid eating fruits of different kinds all at the same time. This will cause rumbling activity inside your stomach and will definitely lead to abdominal pain. With this, try to eat fruits one at a time with an interval of about 30 minutes before introducing another type of fruits. If you notice when you eat fruits of different kinds concurrently, tendencies of other fruits to remain on top of others that are not properly digested occurs. When this happens, other fruits create a turmoil thereby giving a person discomfort and slow down metabolism. Lastly and the very basic of all is to provide your body with an adequate fiber rich diet coupled with a lot of water intake. Water is essential in keeping the body from any sorts of abdominal pain providing proper stomach activity and movement.

As a final point, preventing stomach pain and presenting treatments immediately will help the body do away with stomachache. To avoid opting to drug medication due to its unhealthy benefits, what a person should do is to enhance a healthy eating lifestyle and determine the right food types to generate good food combination all for the benefit of a healthy abdomen.

Raj Kumar asked:




To know this, one must imagine how important it is to keep canal of a commode that runs from your bathroom to the drainage system and finally out of the city, somewhere! Imagine that all the defecation and wasteful material passed by all the members of the family do not get away and remains everywhere…! Filthy? Cruddy? Yes! If that makes you to vomit, what would then happen when such bodily waste remains in your body??? Believe it, it is not only a shitty but it is very harmful material that produces toxins all over the body.

Colons are intestines, the major organs responsible for major function – the digestion, without what, absorption of the nutrients and assimilation would have not been possible. The body is composed of zillions of the cells and dozens of organs, they all form bodily system that are complicated. The body performs its tasks such as walking, running, seeing, thinking and whatever the act you name, with the help of these systems. Just like a car that needs fuel to run, the body requires fuel to get energy (we call it as calories) and this fuel; we get it from the food we consume on daily basis.

The foods, on other hand, come in many form containing many things. Today’s lifestyle consists of junk foods, canned/packed foods and all the foods that contain high-calories and no fiber material. In this way, intestines meet pounds of such foods that are sticky or gluey in nature. Over the times, such materials started get accumulating onto the intestinal walls and finally alter the alimentary canal’s overall functions. Now the matter is why is colon cleansing so important? It is just because one needs the entire gastrointestinal tract to be cleaned so that the body system works in toxic-free zone. Remember the commode, chocked up, filthy…!

Colon cleansing, if done perfectly, can get relief from abdominal gas/flatulence, abdominal cramps, stomachache, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, headaches, fatigue and many other problems related to bowels. Colon cleansing brings lightness in the body and one feel new life. The colon cleansing program or therapy comes in many forms. For instance, latest hydrotherapy for colon cleansing is a procedure that includes water with specially temperature and is introduced into the intestines that has cleansing properties. Enema and herbal colon cleansing therapies are nothing but another natural ways to cleanse the entire gastrointestinal tract. The material used in colon cleansing generally involves potential herbs such as Neem, hoodia, garcinia, Psyllium, Eclipta alba, Indian gooseberry etc that possess natural cleansing properties. They are consumed as pills in a certain dosage for a certain period for maximum benefits. However, while on the course, one should also follow strict dietary regimen and some light exercises to get faster results.

Colon cleansing often contains using dietary fiber or roughage that flushes off the unwanted and/or harmful substances from the intestines by excreting them out with feces. They are also natural ‘fat binders’ since they bind the fatty substance and expel them out with feces and hence, colon cleansing is often considered as effective treatment for reducing body weight as a part of curing obesity.

Related Articles:

Top Colon Cleansing Products Based on Customer Reviews

How does aloe vera help the colon?

Steve Holloway asked:


It is said that nearly one in four Americans suffers from some kind of digestive disorder such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Crohns Disease. Although medically recognized as incurable there is no need for sufferers of Crohns and IBS to give up hope. Although the conditions cannot be eradicated, the symptoms and distress can however be controlled. It is often true that what medical science cannot cure, common sense, information and commitment can subdue.

It is a frustration to many, that in many areas, medical advancement has brought breakthrough and hope to many suffering at the hands of illness, but still there are is a silent percentage, waiting in the wings hoping for their time to come.

So how can we loosen the chains of Crohns and IBS?

Get Informed.

In today’s world of super fast and open communication there is really no reason why someone should suffer in silence or ignorance for anything. A simple trip to the library will uncover many books and guides outlining possibilities and methods for controlling disorders such as Crohns Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. A quick search on the internet will uncover many opportunities and avenues for discovering exactly what is going on with your body.

Get Support.

In the same way, that there is no excuse to being ignorant, there is also no reason to be alone. Some people early on after being diagnosed with Chrons Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) go through a phase of denial – that’s natural – but there also comes a time to pick yourself up and face your disorder head on – but that doesn’t mean alone. There are many national and local support groups established which will help, encourage and motivate you to live life to the full and give ideas about how to

Get Control

Although the general principle is something of an illusion (after all, we are all uncontrollable factors in life) – it is absolutely essential for Chrons and IBS sufferers to work towards getting to grips with their disorder so they can start to feel free and live life again. For the majority, its not actually that hard – as long as you have been through the process of Getting Informed and Getting Support. In my experience the only way to get control that lasts and is beneficial is to take the information and support and apply to my own life religiously. With careful monitoring, strict adherence and continual awareness, you to can live the life you deserve.

David T Smith asked:




The colon, also known as the large intestine has many different ‘compartments.’ These are all linked, beginning with the ascending colon, the transverse colon, and the descending colon that leads in to the sigmoid colon. This might not mean anything to anyone but keeping your colon healthy and in full working order is very important. The colon is a sort of storage area for solid waste, it is used to extracts salts and water from the faeces before it exit’s the body through the anus. If a blockage occurs it can be life threatening as the build up of this waste leads to a condition known as volvulus or obstruction of the colon. The build up of this waste can cause internal bleeding.

Like the majority of large cities around the world, most are known for their poor diet. Colon cleansing in Houston Texas is very important, because of the lifestyles the inhabitants lead. The diet is very important, as some fatter and greasier foods cannot be digested properly, leading to colon obstruction. There are many establishments that offer methods or facilities for colon cleansing in Houston Texas. A big one is the colon cleansing and constipation resource center. It is an Internet based company that offers advice on the best methods for colon cleansing in Houston Texas and have links to medical websites where you can purchase the correct treatment for your individual needs.

Some common methods of colon cleansing you will find in Houston Texas are:



Enema; this is the most common and most heard of type of colon cleansing treatment there is. This involves the introduction of fluids in to the colon via the rectum. It is successful in most cases and your usual doctor can normally book you in for a treatment. They are performed in most hospitals, and if the problem is serious, your health insurance will cover it.

Oxy – Powder; this is a reasonably new method but does have very positive feedback from all users. It is an orally administered capsule that works as a dietary supplement to take the place of all of the nutrients you are missing out on. It is primarily oxygen based and works with the liquids in your colon to expand and flush out any blockages.

Laxatives; these are only a temporary relief method as they will not cure the problem. They will aid the disposal of rectal build up but will not completely cleanse the colon.

Colon Hydrotherapy; much like an enema, colon hydrotherapy passes warm water through the colon and over time completely removes any build up or blockages. This is more effective than the enema and when used at the same time as oxygen based treatments it is almost flawless.



Your colon is one of the most important organs in your body. It must be kept clean, the same as any waste disposal system not inside the body. For more methods of colon cleansing in Houston Texas visit your local doctor or hospital advice service.