It seems as if every day there is a new trend rising in relation to gut and overall digestive health. Sometimes, it can feel overwhelming trying to understand all the different new trends, and which ones are actually worth implementing in your own life. In hopes of making it easier for you to navigate, we have broken down three different gut health trends, how they work, and their effectiveness in improving certain aspects of one’s health.
Improving Stress Levels Using Emotional Release Stretching Techniques
Whether we like it or not, our emotional state tends to impact almost every aspect of our daily lives. There is even a connection between our emotions and our gut health. Negative emotions such as stress, anxiousness, and sadness can negatively impact the gut’s ability to work properly/effectively.
Recently, many people have spoken out about how stretching techniques — like the ones used in yoga — can help a person release emotions that might be pent up in a body. Emotions are stored all throughout the body, including in a person’s tissues, muscles, and skin. These emotions rest in those areas until they are properly released. If ignored, these emotions can have a negative impact on our health and a lasting impact on our bodies.
In general, emotions stored in specific areas of the body can be due to specific types of emotions. For example, emotional anger tends to be held in our jaw area, and grinding of your teeth or feeling excess tension in this area can be an indicator that you are holding onto that emotional energy in your jaw area. However, emotions are held differently for each person, so finding the areas that are impacted for you personally requires some exploration.
There are several different types of stretches that can be done to release pent up emotions throughout the different areas of the body. Take some time to work through these stretches and make note of both physical and mental reactions that occur throughout the process.
In general, stretching is known to help activate a person’s parasympathetic nervous system which can help bring the body back down from a state of chronic stress or anxiousness. This is especially beneficial in supporting a healthy gut, because living in a chronic state of stress or panic can decrease your gut’s effectiveness in doing its job.
While it is not a guarantee that emotional release stretching techniques will work for each person in the same manner, there is a potential for it to improve your overall emotional state and in turn benefit your body’s health.
The Effectiveness of Digestive Bitters on Improving One’s Gut Health
Digestive bitters, which are essentially different types of bitter herbs and plants, can be taken in their true form, a supplement, or a tincture that can be added to beverages. People are claiming that digestive bitters have improved their digestive health and decreased issues such as constipation and bloating. So, let’s break down how our body reacts to digestive bitters and the potential benefits of including them in your diet.
The bitter characteristic of digestive bitters tends to be what helps to stimulate your digestive process. The body tends to identify bitter compounds as its own entity, meaning that it is recognized as an individual type of taste which helps to stimulate digestive secretion in the body. Digestive secretions help to increase the overall effectiveness of our digestive process including helping to improve nutrient absorption. Digestive bitters can potentially help those who struggle with producing stomach acid. On the other hand, if you are someone who is known to produce an excessive amount of stomach acid, then bitters can actually do more harm than good to your digestive process.
Herbs that are commonly used to create digestive bitters are:
- dandelion
- licorice root
- artichoke leaf
- gentian
- burdock
In conclusion, digestive bitters can definitely be beneficial to a person’s gut health. However, for those with gastrointestinal issues such as irritable bowel syndrome, digestive bitters can sometimes irritate the body. Digestive bitters can also negatively interact with certain medication, so be sure to speak to your doctor in regards to digestive bitters before adding it into your routine.
How the ‘Sea Salt Gut Flush’ Can Impact You
Every month there seems to be a new beverage concoction that people claim to help promote bowel movements, detox the body, and reduce bloating. Today, we are going to break down what is being referred to as the ‘sea salt gut flush’. This concoction is a mixture of warm filtered water and high-quality, non-iodized salt. The specific recipe calls for about 20 oz of heated filtered water and two tablespoons of non-iodized salt such as himalayan pink salt.
While a saltwater flush can definitely have a laxative effect on the body, there is no hard evidence that shows it detoxifies the body of any specific parasites or toxic waste. The salt interacts with your intestines in a way that allows for the water to move through your digestive tract without being absorbed, and the salt also helps to promote muscle contraction. This is what helps to create a laxative effect, and be potentially beneficial for those experiencing constipation.
This being said, for some people, consuming salt water can also lead to dehydration, nausea, and vomiting. If you do choose to try a sea salt gut flush, make sure that you are not consuming food right beforehand as it will become likely that you experience vomiting and nausea. It is also recommended that a person does a salt water flush on a day with little to no responsibilities, as the process can become painful and requires easy access to a bathroom.
When it comes down to it, a sea salt gut flush can be a great way to help promote bowel movements in those who seem to be struggling with constipation, but must be done with caution due to its potentially adverse effects. Sea salt flushes should be done sparsely, as doing them regularly can be dangerous due to their dehydration effect and high-salt content.
In the world of many trends, we are here to help you break down how they all truly work and whether they are worth exploring. In the coming months, be sure to check back on our blog for more trend breakdowns!