Never Eat Angry – Digestion and Stress Hormones
It’s amazing how many times modern scientific discoveries finally catch up with ancient wisdom.
As I was sitting through a lecture in the role of stress hormones on digestion my mind was taken back to what I was told in an Ashram in India – never eat angry. The idea that you are better to go without than eat when in a distressed state – as in that state you can not digest properly. A period of calm after eating also ensures proper digestion so it is recommended lie down and rest. Well a lie down seems like a pretty good idea when the only thing waiting for you after dinner is another long session of yoga or silent meditation.
But what about in the ‘real world’. Surely with the faster pace of our lifestyles it’s just not pratical. It is advice ignored at our own peril and it turns out this becomes even more important .
Flash back to my lesson on stress hormones and it all falls into place as does the high incidenses of digestion problems and intolerances.
Our bodies are designed to be able to deal with ‘stress’. The part of the body responsible for this stress response is known as the Sympathetic Nervous System, or the flight or fight response. Our bodies goes through a rapid biochemical change releasing a cascade of neurotransmitters and hormones to attempt to bring the body back to homeostasis.
When you are stressed the body goes into fight or fight mode. To get out of danger we are primed to either run away or fight the danger, so need our muscles. So it’s action stations. The body then has a very clever way of putting all it’s energy into fight or flight. Any system that is drawing energy that is not needed is temporarily shut down.
During the moment of danger we do not need to digest as it uses up vital energy that might be spent getting out of immediate danger. And so our digestive function (as well as immune function) temporarily reduces.
So in a stressed state your digestion function drops hence the Ancient wisdom reminding us to not eat angry.
Of course the stressed state is not just anger. It includes anxiety, panic or just plain old garden variety stress. But what about eating on the run when you are running late for a meeting? What state are you in during your breakfast, your lunch and your dinner?
An extreme of this is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a physical condition, whereby after some stressor (often viral) the body starts it’s stress response. The initial trigger seems to pass but the body gets stuck in what’s known as a sustained sympathetic nervous system arousal. With key body functions like digestion, immune and sleep ‘turned off’ the ensuing consequences can be debilitating. The majority of people I see with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome have some form of food intolerance and there is little point focusing on the food intolerance until the underlying dysfunctional physical stress response is addressed.
So being mindful of how you eat is just as important as being mindful of what you eat. If you are spending a fortune on suppliments, vitamins and organic fresh food but putting them into a digestion system that isn’t working for you, then you won’t be getting the full benefits.
Next week we look at the rise of food intolerances and new theories on how we are training ourselves into intolerances.