Eating celery with your green drink will help your digestion

Do you have a daily greens drink every day? If you don’t, I actually recommend that you do, since most of the foods we eat aren’t as nutrient/micro nutrient dense as they once were, and we really need to have more of those things than what modern food can provide for us. But that’s a different topic.

I want to talk about a way to improve your digestion and possibly absorption of micronutrients of that green drink by eating celery.

Well, it doesn’t have to be celery. It can be anything fibrous that you have to chew. Like an apple, or asparagus, or even a cucumber.

Let’s talk about the digestive process real quick…

It starts with your sight, smell, and touch senses, actually. When you see, smell, and feel the food you’re going to eat, you’re telling your brain that you’re going to be eating something. It prepares you to digest by revving up your salivary glands (which is the first enzyme of digestion).

Then you get to chew the thing. In mammalian nature, you’re supposed to chew your food up before you swallow it. That’s why we have teeth. So if your dog or cat just gulps down their food without chewing it, you might want to think of a different way of feeding them…but I digress…

You’re supposed to chew your food into what’s called a BOLUS, or a ball of liquid food that’s mixed with saliva. That’s what you’re supposed to send down the esophagus. Not chunks. It should look like a slimy version of a meal replacement bar.

What happens next, is the bolus goes into your stomach, where the HCL (stomach acid) further breaks down and disinfects and kills bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc that was in your food before sending it down to the intestines. Liquid doesn’t usually spend much time in the stomach (only about 50% will be left in there after 10 min), whereas food will spend 30 min-2 hours in there before even beginning to exit into the intestines, depending on how much and what types of food you ate.

Your small intestines is where the food hits first. This is where the majority of the nutrients get absorbed into your system. So, if your food wasn’t chewed enough, the nutrients can’t get soaked in through the intestinal walls. Chew your food, folks.

The large intestines is where most of the liquid (water) gets absorbed. So if you’re constipated, it can be hard for you to absorb water, because you’re literally plugged up. Get that shit moving (haha pun intended), and make it a habit to drink more water.

When your poop comes out and you can recognize your food (like the infamous “corn poop”), it means you haven’t chewed enough, and you basically just wasted that piece of corn, nutrient-speaking.

There are people starving all over the world, mal-nutritioned, and here you are wasting the perfectly good food you have by pretending you’re a reptile and swallowing it whole. Boo, I say! Boo!

Anyway….

Here’s where celery comes into play.

Remember the saliva we talked about early that’s supposed to be mixed in with the food to create the BOLUS? Yea, that saliva is super important in the digestive process to help with digestion and nutrient absorption. It’s called CHEMISTRY. The enzymes are really important to mix with the other enzymes and digestive liquids along the line not only to help with the absorption, but to send a signal to your brain that you’re eating food.

What this means….

If you have something to chew, your brain thinks you’re eating something and will tell you you’re full, or to stop eating after a certain amount of time. If you just drink something, you’re telling your brain that you were just thirsty and need more water absorption than nutrient absorption.

Starting to get it?

Also, having something solid to eat while drinking your greens slows down the rate that the greens go through your pipes, since you have to break down that celery. Your stomach acid increases (which is good when you’re digesting), your internal fire revs up (improves your metabolism), and your small intestine is more prepped to take in those nutrients! Just having the celery means that you increase your absorption of your green drink just because you’ve slowed down the digestion rate for that liquid, and you’ve properly prepared your system to be able to absorb!

Again, it doesn’t have to be celery, but literlly anything that you need to chew is a good thing, and usually that’s going to be a fibrous veggie.

If you just have added fiber, like psyllium husk, yes, that adds bulk to your poop (good for colon health and hydration!), but it doesn’t increase the absorption of the nutrients because it doesn’t stimulate the digestive fluids in the beginning of the process (ie, your saliva).

So, if you’ve heard the phrase “drink your food, chew your drinks,” that’s what it means. Chew your food until it’s a consistency where you can drink it, and chew something when you’re drinking something that has nutrients in it. Something, anything, even if it’s just the liquid you’re drinking. Get those salivatory gland working!

And if you want to make things even better, include your other senses in the experience. Look at, smell, and touch what you’re going to ingest before you ingest it.

You may experience increased satiety, less bloating, more energy, better poops, and more zen. Really. Decreasing stress is part of it. But that’s a topic for a different time.

Best in Health and Happiness,

Jackie