10 Foods To Eat And Avoid On An Empty Stomach For Better Digestive Health
Eating is vital to our health and well being. We eat to live. When you consume your foods, in some cases, is just as important as what you are consuming. Eating all the right foods but at the wrong time is counterintuitive and an exercise in futility.
The goal in healthy eating is not just eating foods that are good for you and avoiding the bad. It is learning your body and figuring out how to optimize the food that you do eat. This means learning how to improve your digestion and to maximize absorption of the key nutrients your body needs.
Eat these 4 foods on an empty stomach:
1. Fresh Fruit
Fruit is an incredibly healthy food group: packed with vitamins, nutrients, fiber and water. Incorporating fruit into your diet, the proper way, allows your digestive system to reap more powerful benefits through vitamin intake and improved digestion. Starting your day with fruits helps you detoxify your system, supplies you with a great deal of physical energy, can aid in weight loss and provide the needed energy and focus for other life activities.
The simple sugars contained in fruit need time to be completely absorbed by your body. When fruits are eaten alone and when your stomach is empty, all of the nutrients, fiber and the simple sugars contained in the fruit can be more easily processed. According to prevailing research, this is the ‘proper way’ to benefit from eating fruits.
2. Oatmeal, Buckwheat and Cornmeal Porridge
Eating oatmeal first thing in the morning or on an empty stomach has several advantages. First it provides a coating on the lining of the stomach which prevents irritation from your bodies naturally occuring hydrochloric acid (HCL). Oatmeal also contains soluble fiber which aids in digestion and lowers cholesterol.
Buckwheat and cornmeal porridge also stimulate digestion while lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels. They remove toxins and heavy metals from your intestines and create a satiated feeling for a longer period of time.
3. Honey
Honey helps to awaken your immune and digestive systems. Honey has been shown to help with “lazy bowel syndrome,” and other stomach issues. It also acts as a cleaning agent by ridding the body of harmful viruses and bacteria.
4. Eggs
Eggs are extremely good for you and provide a myriad of health benefits whenever they are consumed. What makes them the perfect food to consume on an empty stomach is the fact that they make you feel full longer. Studies have shown that when eggs are eaten in the morning, the total amount of daily calories consumed decreases and eggs also aid in fat reduction.
These four foods will improve your overall health, aid in digestion and are excellent breakfast foods!
Along with knowing which foods we should eat, we should also be aware of foods we should avoid eating when our stomach is empty. Eating the wrong foods at the wrong time can wreak havoc on your insides.
Avoid these 6 foods when your stomach is empty:
1. Tomatoes
Tomatoes, although packed with nutrients and high amounts of Vitamin C, also contain high levels of tannic acid which increases acidity in the stomach and can lead to gastric ulcers. Save the tomatoes for dinner salad.
2. Yogurt
The primary reason to avoid putting yogurt on an empty stomach is because the benefits of the lactic acid bacteria found in yogurt is rendered ineffective due to the high acidity of stomach acid. Therefore you gain very few of yogurt’s health benefits when consumed first thing in the morning.
3. Processed Sugar
We all are aware that too much sugar is bad for you. But did you know that the sugar added to most processed foods–such as high fructose corn syrup and other such sweeteners have the same effect on the liver as drinking too much alcohol? The sugar that is found naturally in fruits is counteracted by it’s fiber but copious amounts of fructose–especially on an empty stomach, overloads the liver and can lead to liver damage. Skip the breakfast donuts, guys…
4. Bananas
Bananas are one of the best known diet foods. It satiates, assists in relieving constipation and is considered by some health experts to be a super food. However, bananas contain high amounts of magnesium and potassium which can lead to an imbalance of magnesium and potassium in blood if you eat bananas on a completely empty stomach. Bananas are a prime example of eating the right food at the wrong time.
5. Tea and Coffee
Drinking coffee on an empty stomach increases acidity, which in turn causes heartburn and indigestion throughout the day. Drinking tea on an empty stomach can suppress the secretion of gastric juices and reduces bile and acid in the stomach which aid in the overall digestion of foods and is essential to the process of secreting excess cholesterol from the body.
6. Alcohol
With no food in the stomach, alcohol travels straight to the bloodstream. Once alcohol is in the bloodstream, it’s quickly distributed throughout the entire body, causing the blood vessels to widen and result in temporary feelings of warmth, temporary decrease in pulse rate, as well as blood pressure. It travels through the stomach, kidneys, lungs, liver, and then to the brain. It doesn’t always take long for this to happen either; about 20 percent of the alcohol a person drinks passes through the stomach and reaches the brain within a minute. Having food in the stomach decreases the rate in which alcohol travels through the bloodstream, slows its effects and minimizes the damage it causes to the organs.
Research is definitive; when you eat is just as important as what you eat. Good health begins with being conscious about what we put into our bodies and learning how to fully optimize those good food choices.
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