How Slow Digestion Helps Keep You Healthy

Bluestone Chiropractic

Slow eating enables you to enjoy your food, keeps stress out while eating and helps you chew food well. So health buff experts advice us to eat slowly each meal. Just enjoy your food, they say. And slow digestion is also good for the health of some parts or systems of the body. The problem is, how do you control your digestion?

How do you slow down digestion? Before we tackle that, here's the health benefit of slow digestion---basically it helps the body absorb less sugar. With less sugar, you avoid blood-sugar spikes and that helps keep blood sugar within normal levels especially as you eat meals.

And according to health experts, the best for this purpose is soluble fiber. Soluble fiber slows down the movement of food in the intestines. Thus, it will take the body longer to digest food. That makes sugar less absorbable in the body. But what food should we eat to get soluble fiber?

One of the best sources of soluble fiber is Beta Glucan. It's not only good for normal blood sugar levels, it is also known to normalize cholesterol levels and improve heart health. Beta Glucan is extracted from many plant sources  Yeast-derived beta glucan is noted to have the most effect on the immune system. Other beta glucan sources are oats, mushrooms, and barley, and these are the types that have more effects on our cholesterol levels, though they also have some immune system benefits.

Since beta glucan is not digested in the body, it goes through the digestive tract and takes with it cholesterol deposits as it goes out of the body.