Our Dominican Centenarians all share the same words of wisdom when it comes to diet. Eat simply, eat locally, eat seasonally, eat at the right time and don’t eat too much! They have a simple, healthy day-to-day routine which promotes good digestion and they stick to it! Below are a few tips on how to gently improve your digestion, and how to go about balancing that all-important digestive “fire”. If maintained as part of a good lifestyle routine, these simple tips will definitely help improve the capacity to digest fresh, local, natural Dominican food!
•Upon rising, drink a glass of water or warm herbal “bush” tea to •Only exercise after you have had a bowel movement in the
mouthful properly, and avoid reading, watching TV or even driving whilst you eat. Your food should be your focus!
•Don’t eat too little or too much. As a general rule of thumb, the
size of your stomach is about the size of both your hands as you cup them together. Solid food should fill your stomach to ¾, and liquid should fill the remaining ¼. Avoid drowning your food with a huge glass of ice cold water or juice as this will extinguish your digestive “fire” and lead to improper digestion.
•Drink plenty of liquids throughout the day, but at least 30 minutes before a meal or at least an hour after a meal.
•After eating, go for a short walk to help “churn” your food •Leave at least 4 hours between meals and avoid snacking
between meals. If you snack between meals, then you are adding fresh food on top of partially digested food, which will upset the digestive process and diminish the digestive “fire”.
•Avoid eating right before going to bed. Ideally you should leave at least 2 hours after eating before bedtime.
•Our sense of taste is almost entirely dependent on our sense of
morning. Exercise should not be too strenuous. Gentle and progressive is the key.
smell. As our gastric secretions are directly linked to smelling and tasting our food, if you have a cold it is better to eat lighter, nongreasy foods that are easier to digest.
•Eating “on time” and at regular intervals is important, but more
•Food combination- Try not to combine too many different types
importantly you should only eat when genuinely hungry. Don’t eat just because “it is time”. If you have an irregular appetite, then following this advice will help normalize appetite at the right time.
•Try to make lunch the largest meal of the day as our “digestive
fire” is at its strongest between 11am-1pm (when the sun is at its highest point in the sky). Try to make dinner the lightest meal of the day.
of food in one meal. Another thing to avoid is fruits after a meal. They will sit in the stomach for much longer than is necessary to digest them and produce unwanted toxins. Finally, another important consideration when establishing a good, strong digestive capacity is take the time to LOVE and ENJOY your food. Bon appetit!
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help stimulate bowel activity.
•When eating a meal, take your time to enjoy it! Chew each DIGESTING DOMINICA
healthy capacity to digest the food that we eat. If you have problems with an irregular or poor appetite, poor digestion with lots of gurgling sounds, intestinal cramping, or suffer from abdominal bloating, gas, fatigue, unexplained weight gain or weight loss, hyper-acidity, have food or other allergies, then the likelihood is that your digestive capacity could be suffering, even though you may be eating a balanced diet.
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