Don't Drive And Eat: It's Bad For Digestion
Driving is a sympathetic process. Digesting is a parasympathetic process. The body cannot do both at the same time.
Did you know that something as simple as eating while driving can hinder your health? When you eat while driving, you are not allowing your body to go into the relaxation state needed to adequately digest food.
The body is intrinsically designed to digest food while resting--it’s the reason the dinner table was created. Well, maybe not the reason, but it still fits.
Our nervous system has many branches, one of them called the Parasympathetic Nervous System. It’s role is to save energy. When you relax, your blood pressure decreases, pulse rate slows, and digestion can begin [1]. If you’re driving in your car, you are most likely not relaxed (especially if you are in traffic) because you are paying attention to everything else going on around you. Your blood pressure and pulse can also be elevated. There will be no digesting when your body is in this heightened state. The same goes for having a heated argument whilst eating (makes you lose your appetite), watching a violent film (heightens pulse and blood pressure), or simply being under a certain amount of stress (either makes you not hungry or causes you to overeat). You cannot digest in this mode. Period.
Also, the food you are eating in the car is most likely processed, fast food. Fast food is toxic and inflammatory in nature. Another negative hit on the health meter.
If you are not in parasympathetic state, the stomach does not get a message from the brain to release stomach acid. Stomach acid is necessary for “mood regulation”. It helps digest protein, unwrap the polypeptide chains, and convert/use the amino acids needed to keep away depression and anxiety. Amino acids build neurotransmitters like serotonin the “happy chemical” and dopamine the “pleasure chemical.”
Stomach acid is also key for the absorption of nutrients and increases the chances of getting pregnant. Folic acid, vitamin B12, and omega-3 fatty acids are especially helpful fertility nutrients. Stomach acid and enzymes from the pancreas help digest and absorb folic acid. Vitamin B12 comes from fortified foods and animal products, including fish, meat, poultry, eggs, milk, and milk products, but we need stomach acid to digest it. And the pancreas and gallbladder help digest omega-3 fatty acids, but only if the body is in a parasympathetic state.
The process of digestion also interacts with the creation and regulation of hormones. When fat is digested by the body, it produces hormones. And in turn, hormones aid every bodily process from brain functions, to the reproductive system, and of course, to the digestive system (pretty much everything mentioned in the paragraphs above). If a hormone imbalance is created because of an inability to digest, it can produce serious health consequences.
The gastrointestinal tract has more nerves than the rest of all the other parts of the nervous system combined. That is why when you have the stomach flu it’s first painful, and then the next day you have extreme fatigue. All of those nerves work overtime to help get rid of the sickness. The inability to digest can have the same effect on the body, and even throw a person into chronic fatigue.
Digestion is a north to south process.
Often times we have things happening south like bloating, or way south like diarrhea or constipation, and we just need to look at what’s happening up north!
Let’s say, for example, you are bloated--you may not have adequately chewed your food. The breakdown of food starts in our mouth with mastication (chewing). When we chew our food, it mixes with an enzyme in our saliva called amylase, which breaks down carbohydrates. This takes some of the burden off the stomach and the pancreas. There is a reason your mom told you to chew each bite 32 times!
When we are not adequately digesting or being mindful of our food, we tend to overeat. This is why I suggest my weight loss clients serve themselves. Do not eat out of the chip bag, but rather take a serving of chips and put it on a plate in order to mindfully eat it. This cannot happen if you are engaged elsewhere like driving, talking on the phone, or watching tv.
The Europeans have it right--the meal is their form of entertainment, not just a quick stop on the way to the next thing. They live to enjoy the food they eat, and so should we all. So SLOW DOWN. Enjoy what you eat as though your body depends on it, because it does!
1. https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/auto.html
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Heidi Toy Functional Medicine Blog
Did you know most people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes until well into the 1900’s? It wasn’t even invented for large scale commercial use until the mid 1800’s [1]. So how did people keep their milk cold and make their food last longer? Fermentation. It sounds like a gross concept, because we often associate fermentation with a bad odor, but foods like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut and pickles are all fermented foods. And those aren’t gross, are they? Well, some might disagree with me about sauerkraut, but that’s beside the point. Fermented foods are digestive aids. Microscopic living organisms in fermented foods help extend the food’s shelf life, enhance flavor, and help the body absorb minerals. These organisms pre-digest the food, getting rid of harmful components, and create more vitamins and enzymes than the food began with. Enzyme-rich foods have many benefits including [2]: Increase digestibility of food we eat Boost immune system Increase alkalinity; neutralizing pH levels Provide a healthy balance of friendly flora in the gut (Learn more about your microbiome in my other blog posts ) Tone the colon and help with elimination Control cravings for unhealthier foods Eliminate toxins and undigested wastes in the body In the “old days,” people use to ferment all kinds of foods through pickling, canning, pasteurization and added salt. Nowadays, however, large scale fermentation has lost many of its nutritious benefits due to the need for speed to get the product on the shelf as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. The only true fermented foods you will find are sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt and kefir, beans, wine and beer, some meats (such as salami and pastrami), legumes and nuts (such as tofu, soy sauce and miso), sourdough bread, and various kinds of vegetables [3]. Fun facts about sauerkraut: The Germans “stole” it from the Chinese! Sauerkraut (probably not labeled as such for the Chinese, but the same recipe) was one of the main foods for those who built the Great Wall of China. Genghis Khan brought it to Eastern Europe during an invasion. It also contains high levels of vitamin C, and sailors often took it on long journeys to prevent scurvy.
How can we best keep blood sugar stable? Do what our body is designed to do – use fat for energy. Our species did not survive the Ice Age because of vanilla coffee lattes and cheesecake. Throughout most of our history, we ate a diet that was likely 50-70 percent fat. Look at the old family photo albums, specifically pictures of people in the first half of the 1900s, before we had so many processed foods. You won’t see many fat people--in fact, most look darn skinny. If they lived on the farm, they ate lots of eggs, meat, milk, and vegetables out of their own backyards. “Diet foods” were non-existent. Heart disease was almost non-existent. Our metabolism is designed to work much better with fats better than with sugar. Fats provide the slow and steady fuel our body likes to use for energy. Think of fats as a slow-burning log on the fire. One log (i.e. one meal containing fats) lasts for hours. Starchy carbs, on the flip side, are like kindling. You constantly have to throw more twigs (chips, pasta, bagels) to keep the fire burning. The first step is to know your sugars by reading the labels, and then avoid said sugars as much as possible.
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