Digesting The Core of Wellness (5)

Leafy greens are easy to digest
but doesn't actively improve
the digestive system

In the course of
maintaining or improving digestive wellness,
often,
we encounter the following pitfalls
in which people sometimes get trapped unconsciously:

(I) Eating more fruits and leafy veggies can improve digestion

The statement doesn't seem wrong generally,
but technically, it should have been stated this way:

"Eating more fruits and leafy veggies can relieve the digestive system"

The pitfall here is that
many people think, fruits and leafy veggies are easy to digest
hence it should improve digestion.

But the fact is that these foods
only help to reduce the burden of the digestive system
and do not enhance the performance of the digestive system.

If the digestive system is already weak to begin with,
eating more fruits and leafy veggies
only masks the weakness
as the digestive system is not required to do much work.
-- if any benefit for the digestive system to be claimed at all,
it's minimal and passive.

The worse situation is
when people over-eat fruits and leafy veggies
which are generally Yin in trait.

Over consumption of fruits and leafy veggies
easily put off the digestive fire
rendering a weaker digestive system
instead of improving it!

This is commonly seen among the slimming community
and vegetarians who do not know how to balance their diet.

In view of the issue above,
some of the solutions suggested are:

- to eat fruits and leafy vegetables moderately
(Exactly how much fruits and leafy veggies to eat,
please refer to http://TheVegSchool.net/Veg-Pyramid.pdf)

and

- to pay special attention to stimulating digestive fires
when eating a lot fruits and leafy veggies in a meal.
(E.g. adding spice mix powder on cut fruits, or sipping hot soup when eating a lot of leafy vegetables)

(II) Eating raw is beneficial for digestion

This is another pitfall which shares similar drill with the fruits and leafy vegetables.

Again, raw vegetarian food,
does help reduce the burden of the digestive system,
because of the active enzymes content.
But it doesn't really actively improve
the digestion system.

In contrary,
raw diet which is extremely Yin (if one doesn't know how to balance) ,
constantly suppresses the digestive fire,
due to overdosing of alkaloid
(a group of heat-sensitive natural plant compounds that interfere with digestive enzymes)

Long term suppression of digestive fire
will render the digestive system susceptible
to bad bacteria infection (e.g. H. pylori that flourishes under weak gastric juice condition)
and
incomplete transformation of nutrients.

Hence, long term raw diet should be considered prudently and
practical solutions should sought immediately if one is already on raw food:

Suggestions:
- to avoid taking raw diet in morning when the digestive system is weak (for semi-raw/cooked foodist)
- to increase intake of citric juices in raw diet, so that alkaloid could be neutralized.
- to deploy digestive aids like pungent spices, warming herbs and hot water sipping

To improve digestive health, remember to take on a holistic approach which often has to via the path of overall life force improvement, as explained in the previous posts.

Hope this series of articles on digestive health have been beneficial to readers :)

Should you like more information about dietetic and nutritional wellbeing,
dp consider joining one of The Veg School's courses which are very elaborated and comprehensive =)

Till then, may health and bliss be with all ^.^

Well regards,
Kee Yew
pureland2012-at-gmail.com


{Learning Holistic Wellness for Wisdom and Compassion}