When we don’t have sufficient digestion, we don’t properly metabolize our food or absorb the nutrients from that food.
Impaired digestion is common due to many factors including stress, medication use, and microbial imbalance in the gut. You may recognize symptoms that include bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea, and lethargy after eating. Impaired digestion affects how well our bodies can absorb our nutrients and the goal of an anti-cancer diet is to flood our cells with nutrients, so strong, well functioning, digestion is necessary.
Stress Effects Digestion
Our digestive processes are affected by a state of stress, which can interfere with your body’s ability to make enzymes and other digestive fluids produced by your body.
If you are experiencing digestion issues, you may need to take digestive enzymes and/or probiotics to boost the metabolism of food nutrients.
Digestive Enzymes
Lipase helps digest fats
Amylase promotes the digestion of carbohydrates
Protease digests protein foods
Digestive Enzyme Supplements
Products that support digestion that I often recommend include, Dipan-9 (Thorne), Plantizymes (Thorne), Digest Gold (Enzymetica), Lipase Concentrate (Integrative Therapeutics), Panplex 2-Phase (Integrative Therapeutics), and Betaine HCL (Integrative Therapeutics).
Microflora
Our gut flora supports digestion and these organisms often need to be replenished with fermented foods or probiotic supplements.
Fermented Foods
There are thousands of different types of fermented foods, including:
Probiotics
Supplements that contain PRO-biotics can be taken along with PRE-biotics to increase supporting microbes in the digestive system.
Brands that I often recommend include Klaire Labs and Integrative Therapeutics.