Over Eating Again!

It seems such a simple thing, but many of us do it all the time...it becomes a habit.... Eating too quickly and over eating.

If we want to improve our digestion, this is a really important fundamental that we often over look.

Take a patient that came into my clinic a few months ago, we'll call him John Fullbelly. Complaining of constant loose stools and diarrhoea after almost every meal.
"I've been to Chinese Medicine Dr's before and it helped for a little while, but then just came back again".
Oh challenge I thought, 'i can make a better formula than the other Dr and he'll be really impressed!' Ha ha, little did I know. I tried so many formulas: shen ling bai zhu san, wu ling san, li zhong wan...combinations of everything, plus abdominal moxa, acupuncture...nothing really worked. So then I re-assessed.
OK, so now we're going to try an elimination diet. Cut out all the possible foods that could cause a reaction. This seemed to have a great result for a week, but there were still times when the diarrhoea would come back. Right, so what happened at those times I asked John. "Well, nothing really it was still the bland diet, potato mash, sweet potato and rice with salt, with some lamb and cooking oil". Did you enjoy it? "Yeah, I loved it, I ate it so fast and got really full, this diet has been so boring".
So after more questioning and observation, the times when John is most in trouble with his bowels is when he has lots of oil, eats fast and overeats.

So for Johns treatment now:
Long dan xie gan tang tabs 3-4 before meals to help the liver and gallbladder to produce bile to break down fats.
Lemon juice for digestive enzymes and bile
1 table spoon of sauerkraut to re-introduce healthy bowel flora
Acidophillus powder/ tablespoon culture yogurt

Then:
Eat slowly and chew!! As Steven Clavey, one of my mentor's always mentions: 'your stomach doesn't have teeth', so do the work for it in your mouth. Also, chewing prepares your stomach to produce digestive enzymes.
And the golden rule of 75 - 80%: Don't eat anymore than 80% of your total capacity. In other words, stop just before you feel full. This is really important!

John has been doing much better. But we'll keep you posted on his progress.

For those of you interested, I also recommend reading 'Healing with whole foods' for a well rounded view of dietary therapy and digestive health.

Chris Eddy