Do you spend your time wishing there were more hours in the day…?
I’m a business owner of a health clinic dealing in digestive health. This is what I often find: most of us are running around like headless chickens and wondering why we never get anywhere. For example, I always seem to have three books on the go and never read one!
We’re always looking for another hour in the day. Always complaining we don’t have enough time and we’ve got too much to do. Even if we had those extra hours, we’d still need some more!
Let’s face it, sometimes things don’t get done (even important things). And that causes us to worry which if course, leads to stress.
We have increasing health problems in the UK that lead from stress.
An increasing number of people have chronic digestive disorders and diseases than at any other time in history. These conditions and associated symptoms can have a devastating impact on quality of life. They affect family life, work life and social lives. And cold, hard, worst case scenario they lead to suicide. The cause of these problems? Stress and not having enough time.
All the advice is to prioritise your health over everything else and OF COURSE your digestive health which is the lynch pin to your overall health (body and mind).
But what if you don’t feel you have enough time to do that? What if prioritising your health in itself causes you stress because it’s “just another thing to do” on the list of a million others?
Well, with that in mind, here are some easy fixes for a healthier digestion while saving some time!
- Take some deep breaths before eating. I’m not saying do a whole meditation – I know you don’t have time for that! Just a couple of slow deep breaths before your meal. When you do this, the nervous system associated with stress calms down and once calmed down, your digestive system can work properly.
- Change one thing at a time. Don’t try to install a brand new healthy diet – who has time to focus on that either?! Change one thing. When you find that you have got used to that, change another – e.g. swap crisps with carrots, replace fizzy drinks with water. We’ve all got plenty of time for one small change in our lives.
- Lift your knees up when doing a poo (yes, I’m talking poo. You knew it was coming). You’ll find it far easier to have a healthy evacuation if you raise your knees up on a small stool (or a pile of old phone books works well too!) so that you put yourself in a similar position to squatting. Your body will now be in a position where it can empty efficiently and you won’t have to keep coming back again, saving time on the loo!
- Take a pint of water to bed with you at night. The best thing to kickstart your digestive system in the morning is water. Now most of us reach for the coffee when we first come downstairs, but if you have a pint of water on your bedside table, all you need to do is sit up, drink your pint of water down and then get up and have your coffee. Job done. Preparation saves time.
So next time I hear you complaining that you “haven’t got time to make all these changes”, I’m going to remind you of these simple fixes. They take no time to do – you’re doing them already in a way, it’s just a different WAY of doing them.
They save time in the long run, but more importantly they save your HEALTH.
