Do any of these sound familiar to you?
You used to be able to eat anything you wanted without giving it a second thought -- but now you have a mental list of foods you know will give you trouble.
You occasionally feel bloated after you eat -- like you have to unbutton your pants or loosen your belt.
You avoid certain restaurants or certain types of food.
You occasionally experience intestinal gas.
You have irregular bowels -- occasional constipation.
If you have occasional problems with your digestive tract, you're not alone. The discomfort of occasional abdominal bloating affects 10, 20, perhaps even 30% of adults. And if you include other abdominal signs -- like occasional stomach discomfort, passing gas, or irregular bowel movements -- the percentages shoot up like fireworks.
I hear from far too many people who are struggling with occasional bloating or stomach discomfort. And social embarrassment too. Oftentimes, you lose out on the pleasure of sitting down to a tasty meal because you know the price you'll pay later. All because your digestive tract isn't working optimally.
Fortunately, if your situation is similar to that of the many others I've worked with over the past several years, there's plenty you can do to improve these occasional digestive issues -- and boost your overall health in the meantime.*
If you can relate to these stories than please heed your feelings of occasional abdominal discomfort. Take a few minutes with this quiz I've prepared. It will help you focus on any digestive issues that might be bothering you.
Take This Quiz to See if You Could Use Extra Help for Your Digestive System*:
| Yes | No | |
| I occasionally feel bloated after a meal. | ||
| I'm over the age of 30. | ||
| I occasionally feel indigestion. | ||
| I sometimes have gas attacks after I eat. | ||
| I eat one or more large meals each day. | ||
| More than 15% of my diet is meat. | ||
| I eat my food quickly. | ||
| I frequently feel low in energy. |
SCORE YOUR RESPONSES
Of course, no simple online quiz can be tailored to your health, so there is no substitute for checking with your own health practitioner.
However, here is what your score most closely indicates:
4+ ‘Yes' Answers: It sounds like you might benefit from some extra help to improve your digestion and make sure you're getting all the nutrients you need.*
2-3 ‘Yes' Answers: Continue reading to learn more about the ways your digestive tract functions. Someone with a score in this range is likely to benefit from some extra digestive support.*
0-1 ‘Yes' Answers: You may not benefit as much as others from extra digestive support. Still, the information in this article will help you discover how you can continue to keep your digestive system healthy into the future.*
Read on. The occasional bloating, gas, and discomfort you feel is only part of the picture. There's a hidden cost to sluggish digestion. Discover how a well-functioning digestive tract is important to your total health.
You Aren't What You Eat…
But You Are What You Digest and Absorb
If your body does not break down and absorb nutrients optimally, the effects can go far beyond the occasional abdominal discomfort you're feeling.
In fact, it's been said that a healthy digestive system is at the root of all health. That's logical -- your digestive tract is the basic source of the nourishment every cell in your body needs.
I want you to eat the healthiest, most nutritious diet possible. But if your stomach and intestines aren't working efficiently, even the ideal diet won't do as much for your health. You're not going to be able to optimally extract and absorb the chemical building blocks your body depends on.
To help your digestive tract do its all-important job, you've got to understand some of the chemical wizardry that goes on inside your stomach and small intestine.
Enzymes -- Your Silent Helpers in Processing Food*
Maybe you've already tried some other strategies to deal with less-than-optimal digestion. You eat plenty of fiber, drink enough water, and consume lots of fresh vegetables. Yet something still isn't workingas well as it can.
These are healthy dietary habits, so don't stop them. But you may need a little extra help. Perhaps the issue is your supply of digestive enzymes.
You need a robust supply of digestive enzymes to process food as it passes through your intestines.* Here's how they work:
The food you put into your mouth is a complex mixture of large organic molecules -- macromolecules. There are fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, along with vitamins, minerals, and other components.
To absorb these nutrients into your bloodstream, you've got to break these large molecules down into smaller bits.
Fortunately, your system has evolved sophisticated chemical engineering to accomplish just that. While you're polishing off your latest meal, digestive enzymes are pouring into your small intestine (from your liver, pancreas, and gall bladder) to break down the large macromolecules into easily absorbable smaller pieces.
These digestive enzymes are specialized proteins, each designed to break apart a specific type of molecule in your food. For example, there are:
Lipases -- to break down fat
Amylases -- to break down large carbohydrate chains
Proteases (also called proteolytic enzymes) -- to break down protein
The liver, pancreas, and gall bladder contribute other useful helper molecules too.
Digestive enzymes are naturally produced within your body. But sadly, there are far too many people whose enzyme stores become depleted for one reason or another. Then you can't digest your food optimally. The cycle of occasional bloating, indigestion, and other minor digestive issues begins.
Enzyme Depletion --
A Common Cause of Less-than-Optimal Digestive Function
All too often, diminished levels of your normal digestive enzymes are the root cause of less-than-optimal digestive function. Here are a few of the many common reasons that your enzymes might be depleted.
A generally unbalanced diet, without the right mix of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins
Inadequate vitamin or mineral intake
Poor eating habits -- rushing through meals, not chewing thoroughly
Exposure to artificial food additives, colorings, and preservatives
The aging process -- as you advance into middle age, a certain degree of enzyme depletion becomes almost inevitable
With all these possible factors contributing to enzyme depletion, it's no wonder that minor digestive complaints are so common.
Fortunately, there are a number of steps you can take today to make sure your digestive tract has maximal support to do its job. It begins when you take your first bite….
Start Digestion Off Right: Chew Your Food!
In today's hurried world, we often neglect to savor the simple pleasures of life. For example, nothing matches the satisfaction of sharing a leisurely, healthy meal with family and loved ones.
Quite apart from the esthetic pleasure of an unhurried mealtime, there are powerful physiological reasons to take your time chewing your food.
First of all, the chewing process mashes your food into small pieces and partially liquefies it, making it easier to digest.
Secondly, when food hits your mouth, it stimulates saliva production. Saliva contains its own digestive enzymes, so the longer you chew, the more time these enzymes have to get to work while your food is still in your mouth. This makes it easier on your stomach and small intestine.
There's also a third reason to chew your food thoroughly. The chewing process stimulates a reflex that primes your pancreas and other digestive organs to do their job. It's a brilliantly designed part of the automatic communication system that keeps your body's organs working in harmony. Don't mess it up by skipping the important first step -- chew thoroughly!
While we're on the subject of chewing, there's another important change you can make to save your digestive tract lots of stress.
Avoid Chewing Gum!!
Chewing gum interferes with the coordinated digestive tract reflexes that I just described above.
Every time you put a stick of gum in your mouth and start to chomp, your brain thinks you're eating food. So it sends signals to your stomach, pancreas, and other digestive organs to get them ready for the digestive process.
Your pancreas is fooled into manufacturing a batch of the digestive enzymes your brain thinks you'll need.
If you keep this pattern going month after month, your pancreas gets exhausted from the repeated over-production. Then it won't be able to produce the digestive enzymes you need when you actually require them.
Unfortunately, even if you follow these important health habits, your digestive enzymes could still become depleted. You may need some extra help with your digestive process.*
How a Top-Quality Enzyme Supplement Might Help You Once Again Enjoy the Benefits of a Good Meal
Thoroughly chewing your food at meals and avoiding chewing gum can dramatically help preserve your enzyme function. However, depletion of digestive enzymes does seem to affect many despite these practices.
And the common result is troublesome occasional bloating, minor abdominal discomfort, occasional constipation, and more. This can diminish your enjoyment of your food and cut you off from much of the nutritional benefit of the healthy diet you're eating.
Fortunately, you can give your natural enzymes a boost with a high-quality supplement that you consume at meal times.
Taking an enzyme supplement will be like hiring an extra hand to help on a work crew -- whatever the job is that needs to be done, it will get accomplished more quickly, more easily, and with less strain.* It's that simple.
There are dozens, or even hundreds, of digestive enzyme supplements available to the health-conscious consumer. So when you're considering which one to trust, there are a few key points you'll want to make sure you've thoroughly researched.
The high-quality digestive aid you're looking for should have these characteristics:
It should contain a mixture of different types of enzymes, to help digest all the components of your diet:*
Lipases for fats
Proteases for proteins, and
Amylases for carbohydrates
It should contain the right amount of each ingredient, to make digestion a breeze, but without over-riding your body's own digestive efforts*
The ingredients should be all-natural, and of the highest quality to begin with
The product should be labeled to tell you the actual enzymatic strength of each ingredient, not just its weight
The supplement should be easy to use and come with a solid guarantee
You should be able to obtain the product at a reasonable cost relative to the high quality
The supplement should be manufactured by a top-notch company, with excellent quality control and consistent potency
This last point is worth exploring in more detail. If you don't have confidence in the company that's making your supplements, how can you trust them with your health?
Only the Highest Quality Manufacturing Process Guarantees Purity, Consistency, and Effectiveness
There's a dirty secret that clouds the entire food supplement industry. Most vitamin companies don't want you to know about it.
The quality and purity of most products is very erratic.
If you send a vitamin supplement to be analyzed at a chemistry laboratory, the amount of each ingredient could vary tremendously from what's printed on the label. And that's true even before the product leaves the factory and sits on a shelf somewhere for a few months.
On top of that, a wide range of fillers, binders, stabilizers, and what-have-you is then added.
You can't take anything for granted -- these supplements are sold with little regulation.
Here's a checklist of some of the characteristics you deserve in a high-quality food supplement:
It needs to be all-natural, of course.
There should be rigorous quality control at every step of production.
Your product should be free of unnecessary additives or common allergens.
The potency should be consistent from bottle to bottle, batch to batch.
The manufacturer should exceed the highest industry quality standards. This means meeting the rigorous requirements to become ISO 9001, ISO 17025 and NSF certified. Those may seem like a bunch of meaningless letters and numbers to you, but believe me -- they mean a lot.
The company that makes the supplement should test and retest the original raw food sources from which the product is made, to make sure they conform to a rigorous standard.
The personnel who manufacture the product should be thoroughly trained and those testing the supplement should be scientists with PhD degrees.
With all these factors to take into consideration, the health-conscious consumer would have to do a lot of homework in order to know where to obtain a supplement of superior value. But if you don't want to take the time to do this entire product research yourself, I've done it for you.
I've invested countless hours researching the highest quality, medical-grade labs and manufacturers so I know I can trust them to create the nutrition products I recommend to my readers.
The result is a digestive aid that meets and exceeds even my high standards.
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