healthy digestion
its about food & lifestyle
healthy digestion
its about food & lifestyle
The colon is a very important part of our digestive system. It extracts water from the digested food and makes the stool the right consistency to excrete. This process can get out of balance in both directions.
The stool can be too watery, which we call diarrhoea – or it can get too hard, which we call constipation.
To keep healthy, we should look after the good bacteria in our gut. How do we do that?
Mainly, by eating a good diet ourselves and having enough exercise.
The big three nutrients in our food are:
- Carbohydrates
- Fat, and
- Protein.
They're ‘big’ because we eat them in large amounts; and also because they are big, complex molecules.
Enzymes in our digestive system split them up into their parts:
- Sugars
- Amino acids, and
- Fatty acids.
These are the raw materials for generating energy and repairing parts of our body.
Other substances in food, for example vitamins and minerals, don't need to be broken down: we absorb them as they are.
Finally, there is some material in food that we don't digest at all: it's called fibre, or roughage. And fibre is important for healthy eating, too.
Another well-known problem with the modern Western lifestyle is that we don't get enough physical exercise.
We spend too much time sitting, not enough time walking, and many of us don't have to do any hard physical work. However, if we don't move our bodies actively, our insides also slow down. To complete the negative spiral, we tend to drop our regular sport or fitness activities when we are under pressure, which is counter-productive as stress hormones slow down our digestion, too. So when we are under stress we need exercise most – because it reduces our levels of stress hormones.
The result: getting regular exercise is one key to keeping our gut healthy.