Hello,
My name is Sean Ramson and welcome to this very short lecture on the mind-gut connection.
In recent years this has become a big talking point and focal point among Western medicine and it is highly related to the gut flora bacteria.
Therefore,
It is quite common that people are put on probiotics.
Interestingly though,
Ayurvedic medicine and Chinese medicine and many other traditional medicines for that matter have noticed the mind-gut connection for about 2,
000 years.
Their view in terms of creating a good gut is quite different.
Where Western medicine tended to want to put in good bacteria,
They wanted to create a better function where that good bacteria would automatically grow.
So these are the nine techniques that are used for a relatively long period of time in terms of,
When I say relatively long,
About two millennia,
That these techniques have been used by traditional medicines to help make the gut strong.
Just to take one step back and look a little bit at the theory,
Ayurvedic medicine,
For example,
Says that your digestive fire is the most important aspect of your health.
Nothing is important as your gut fire.
They believe that if your gut fire were to decrease and get too low,
The body will start to build up toxins in different parts of the body depending on your constitution.
That in long term can of course cause accumulations of toxins and many other various problems.
But they thought that was,
In many ways,
The root cause of all illness.
The Chinese had a slightly different view to it.
They thought the kidney was the most important in the body because they thought that gave the base to the to the digestive fire.
The issue at the end of the day is that if you were to focus on the kidney and not the digestive fire,
It's like trying to make yourself bigger by building your bone density up instead of your muscles.
It's not possible.
Your bone structure is given to you by the DNA and your muscle,
Of course,
Can be changed.
So therefore it is clear that we must focus on the digestive fire at our base.
So how do we protect and nourish this digestive fire?
Number one,
First and foremost,
Chew your food properly.
You should be chewing your food about 50 times per mouthful and then swallow.
The reason for that is that about 30% of digestive enzymes are found in your saliva and chewing your food,
Of course,
Makes your stomach has to be left of a churning process and therefore using up digestive fire.
The second technique is not to use your mind for 40 minutes after you eat.
The reason why you don't want to do that is,
Of course,
After you've eaten,
There is an immense amount of activity in the stomach,
So there's a lot of blood in that area.
If you start to use your mind,
It takes a lot of that essential blood flow to the digestive system and puts it up to the mind.
In the end,
Also weakening the digestive fire.
This puts us on to technique number three,
Which means that no TV or phone or computer while eating.
We want you to do one thing at a time and in this time we want you to mindfully eat so that all your energy and your focus is on that digestive fire.
Technique number five is when you notice that your food is sitting in your stomach for too long.
Three hours after you eat,
Your stomach should actually be empty.
The stomach sac itself is what I'm talking about.
If that's not empty,
That means your meal is either too big or too oily or the incorrect food for your body.
The fire also weakens in summer and damp weather,
So therefore we need to eat stimulating foods such as ginger.
So let's say you live in a climate like Singapore,
Which is consistently damp and hot.
You need to be very careful that you keep your digestive fire strong.
This is probably why many countries that have a damn hot environment also have a very chilly based diet.
This is not as important if we're in winter.
The digestive fire is stronger than when it is in summer.
You also need to exercise every day.
The exercise stimulates the peristalsis function and stimulates the movements within the digestive system.
If you are somebody that doesn't have enough time to exercise,
Or if you're somebody that doesn't like exercise,
Just walk.
Walk 30 minutes a day or at the bare minimum walk at least until you have some flatulence and burping,
Telling you that your digestive system is now moving.
The eighth technique is no oily food.
Now,
Good oil and bad oil are two different things.
Good oil of course is good for your heart because it increases your HDL.
Bad oil is bad for your heart because it increases your LDL.
Your stomach and digestive fire doesn't care if it's good oil or bad oil.
Oil is oil and it's hard to digest.
So if your digestive system is slightly weak,
You need to be very careful not to have foods that are too oily.
Number nine,
Raw food such as salads and raw vegetables damage the digestive fire.
That's pretty obvious.
How do we know that's obvious?
Because as you can imagine,
Raw food takes a lot longer to cook than cooked food.
So that doesn't mean all raw food is bad for you.
It just means if you have bloating and discomfort easily,
Stay away from all raw foods.
Also,
Don't overeat raw foods because in the long term it can damage that digestive fire.
The final technique is do not drink icy cold drinks.
As you can imagine,
If you put ice cold drinks into your stomach,
You have to use an immense amount of digestive fire to process that.
If we also look at it from more of a modern science perspective,
If you have cold drinks,
It contracts all the blood vessels around the stomach.
So any essential blood flow to that area is now dramatically reduced.
Therefore,
It's not a good idea.
If you don't want to follow that for whatever reason because you like cold drinks,
At least don't drink cold drinks around mealtime.
I hope this has been useful to you and it can help you to some degree.
