After a heavier meal, wait about 30 minutes before you begin. You can perform the routine straight after a light meal or snack. This specially designed exercise routine helps boost your digestion by assisting this process. Peristalsis is the involuntary muscle movement in the gut that helps us digest food by massaging it along the digestive tract. These exercises can upset the digestive system and cause discomfort and stitches, so stick to walking and other low-impact physical activities. While digestion is taking place, it is important to avoid certain types of high-impact exercise, such as running, kick boxing, trampolining, dancing and team sports. A good way of beating stress is to ensure that you’re doing some form of exercise on a regular basis. Stress can weaken your body's resistance, immune system and digestive performance, which can leave your feeling tired, bloated and lacking in energy. Note that it’s important to stick to walking and avoid any high-impact activities, such as trampolining or running. By walking, you will improve your metabolism, as well as giving your digestive system a kick-start. Tip 3: Walk for good digestionĪfter a light meal or a snack, go for a brisk walk (after a heavy meal, wait an hour before setting off). Drinking a glass of water after every meal or snack counts towards this goal and also helps flush out toxins and aid digestion. We should be drinking around 6-8 glasses of water a day in order to stay hydrated. Meanwhile try to avoid or reduce your intake of red and processed meats as there is strong evidence that eating a lot of these increases your risk of bowel cancer. Getting your 5-a-day not only delivers fibre but also antioxidants, which help to delay or prevent cell damage. When it comes to aiding digestion and bowel health, fibre plays a particularly important role by keeping everything moving through the digestive system. Top tips for better digestion Tip 1: Eat well for good digestionĮating a healthy, balanced diet is key for maintaining our overall health and wellbeing. Health and Wellbeing Programme Manager, Sarah Kemp offers up some top tips for keeping your gut functioning well, and suggests a special set of moves to try to help boost your digestive health. This gut flora as it’s known plays an active role in protecting our immune system, preventing the growth of bad bacteria and helping the body digest and absorb what it needs from the foods we eat. Research also suggests that exercise affects the balance of bacteria in the gut. Physical activity increases blood flow to the muscles in the digestive system, which massage our food along the digestive tract – a process known as peristalsis – causing them to work more quickly and effectively. For one thing it helps stimulate the gut and increases intestinal activity. How we move our bodies also affects our digestion. Making sure we eat and drink the right things is obviously important. The good news is that there are simple things we can all do to help support good gut health.
So it’s not just about preventing digestive disorders such as constipation, bloating and wind – our digestive health really is central to our overall wellbeing. If our gut health is under par, our mental wellbeing can also suffer. Gut health also plays an important role in how our mind functions and how happy we feel.
According to research, these could include: autoimmune conditions such as coeliac disease, colds and flu, type 1 diabetes, obesity, skin conditions such as eczema, chronic fatigue and even cancer.įor more on how to have a healthier gut, check out our article Diet tips for a healthy bowel and digestive system. So if our gut health is compromised (by eating a bad diet, smoking or stress for example), so is that of our immune system, leaving us at increased risk of a wide range of conditions. But it’s important in other ways too.įor one thing, about 70% of the body’s immune system resides in the gut. The role of the digestive system is to break down (or digest) our food, eliminate toxins and absorb the energy and other key nutrients our bodies need to function well.
Why looking after your digestive system is more important than you might think – and how exercise can help