The human digestive system operates pretty much like a modern recycling factory. A mishmash of materials comes in, these are put on an assembly line, broken down by force and caustic chemicals
then the waste is effectively released at the end.
It's a system that operates 24 hours a day, non-stop, for decades on end. In warrants our respect, care and - dare we say it? - admiration.
As with any relatively violent mechanical process, pieces and parts of your digestive system occasionally go wrong. There are four common breakdowns.
The gates malfunction Notice that you're burping a bit more or feel pain in your chest after meals? You may have heartburn or its more serious cousin, gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD). The two typically occur when the value that's supposed to keep the bottom of the oesophagus closed weakens allowing digestive juices to flow up from the stomach and into the oesophagus, sometimes all the way to the back of the throat. Studies find more than half of people-aged 65 and older have heartburn.
Waste backs up It's nothing to be embarrassed about, but we're all more likely to become constipated as we age. It's not because we're older but because we tend to become less active, follow unhealthier diets and takes more medication. An estimated 41 percent of older people have constipation.
Bad things get into the system The microbes that cause food poisoning are the obvious ones; they make you sick almost immediately after eating contaminated food. But we're more concerned with a type of bacteria called Helicobacter pylori, which is the primary cause of ulcers - sores in your stomach and intestines that can cause great pain and possibly blood loss.
The pipes get irritated As you get older, your intestinal lining becomes more prone to developing small out-pouchings called diverticula, probably caused by low-fibre Western diets. These affect around one in ten people over 40, half of those over 50 and around 70 percent of those over 80. On their own, they cause no symptoms but inabout one in four cases they become inflamed and infected, a condition called diverticultis. Other common causes of intestinal problems include inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. All of these require medical assessment, and your doctor will probably advise on treatment. Simple lifestyle changes can also help with many digestive problems.
Most of the following steps will not only improve your condition but also help to avoid problems altogether or prevent them recurring.
To prevent and manage heartburn
Slow down Most of us eat the way we do everything else - too fast. When you eat too fast, you take in more air with your food, which can distend your stomach and lead to belching - which can also force the stomach contents upwards. Try this: take a bite, put your fork down, swallow, chat for a minute or read a page of your book, then pick up your fork and take another bite. A bonus: you'll eat fewer calories because your body has more time to sense its fullness, even though you've eaten
less food.
Closely monitor your food choices Although the traditional advice is to cut out certain foods such as tomatoes, spicy foods, fried foods and alcohol if you have heartburn, the evidence just doesn't support it. Instead, learn what foods make your stomach burn. Grab a notebook and, over the course of a week, list the foods you eat at each meal. Then note any signs of heartburn and how long after eating they occur. Look for patterns and if you see a suspicious food, cut it out. If your condition improves, you know what to avoid; if it doesn't improve after a week, add that food back in and cut out a different suspect.
Use gravity When you're upright, the contents of your stomach stay down, so walk instead of lying around after eating, raise the head of your bed with bricks to keep stomach acid flowing downwards and even consider eating while standing if it helps. This isn't just a folk remedy; when researchers evaluated more than 2,000 studies on treatments for heartburn or GORD, they found that 'gravity' solutions worked to prevent that burning feeling.
Lose weight The closer you are to a healthy weight, the fewer symptoms of heartburn and GORD you'll experience. why? The primary reason is probably that extra weight increases pressure on your abodmen. Also, overweight people are more likely to develop a hiatus hernia, which occurs when the top part of the stomach protrudes upwards through the diaphragm into the chest cavity, increasing reflux.
Skip the before-bed fizzy drink - or sleeping pill It's been found that carbonated beverages and benzodiazepine drugs such as diazepam (Valium) and lorazepam (Alivan), prescribed for anxiety or insomnia, can lead to heartburn during the night, disrupting your sleep. And no, you don't have to swallow them together to get this result.
Try acupuncture A study by researchers in Australia found that applying very light stimulation to the wrist with electrical acupoint stimulation (a needleless version of acupuncture) reduced relaxation in the lower oesophagus - a contributor to GORD and reflux - by 40 percent during the stimulation compared with no change using a dummy procedure.
See a sleep specialist A sleep specialist for GORD? Yes, It seems that the same treatment used for obstructive sleep apnoea - in which people stop breathing several times during the night - can help with nocturnal GORD, or severe night-time heartburn. The treatment is called continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). You sleep with a mask over your nose; this is attached to a machine that delivers pressuried air to maintain an open airway pressure (CPAP). You sleep with a mask over your nose; this is attached to a machine an open airway. It appears to work by increasing pressure in the back of the throat and preventing the stomach contents from coming up the oseophagus. Since GORD and obstructive sleep apnoea often occur together, a visit to a sleep specialist could be worthwhile.
Make a doctor's appointment Persistent backflow of digestive juices can damage the oesophagus, possibly leading to a condition called Barrett's oesphagus, a potential precursor of oesophageal cancer. If your heartburn has moved beyond the usual discomfort and is causing a chronic cough, nausea, vomiting or wheezing, see your doctor.
To prevent and manage constipation
Fixate on fibre Eating high-fibre food is one of the seven key choices of full-life eating (see also on Eat more whole grain foods). One more reason to get more fibre is that it's a magic ingredient when it comes to relieving constipation. Fibre is the indigestible parts of plants. when eaten in whole fruits, vegetables and grains, it serve as a wick in your stomach, soaking up liquid and creating bulk to make it easier to move the stools out of your system. Your goal is 20-30g a day, which is easy enough to get it you have a breakfast of high-fibre cereal topped up with strawberries, then have a salad and 125g of beans or brown rice with lunch or dinner.
Bake some muffins Just mix in 2 teaspoons of psyllium seed or husk for each muffin. This grain is a natural laxative that's great for simple constipation, although it may take a day before you get relief. You can also sprinkle 2 teaspoons of psyllium over cereal or yoghurt.
Carry a refillable water bottle Actually, get two. Fill them halfway with water and freeze. Then pull one out, top it up with water and carry it with you everywhere. When it's empty , fill it halfway with water again, put it in the freezer, and take out the other bottle.
The pain-card test
Urine is mostly water plus waste products that have been filtered from the blood by your kidneys, it's naturally a pale yellow colour due to the excretion of urochrome, a pigment in blood. Since urine changes colour easily, it's a good marker of your body's hydration level.
Try this test: pick up colour sample cards of yellow paint at a hardware shop and use them to assess your level of hdyration (or dehydration). Your urine should be as pale as the palest shade of yellow; if it's anywhere near the gold colours, it means your body isn't getting enough water.
Note that natural foods rarely affect urine colour, though food dyes can have a small effect (beetroot can occasionally turn the urine red or pink). Then there are the B-complex vitamins; they have more effect on urine colour than almost anything else, turning the shade to a bright, almost neon yellow. Cloudiness or murkiness usually means a urinary tract infection or kidney stone, so see a doctor if your urine is cloudy.
Older people are less likely to drink enough fluids, and dehydration - however subtle - is a major cause of constipation. Age blunts the 'thirst response', or your ability to feel thirsty. Plus, the amount of body fluid declines with age, from about 60 percent of body weight in men and 52 percent in women before the age of 60, to 52 and 46 percent respectively after the age of 60. Another age-related change occurs in the kidneys, which become less able to concentrate urine, so you lose more liquid overall.
Learn to control the uncontrollable Check out biofeedback, a mind/body technique that helps you to become aware of and control involuntary processes. One study of 79 adults with a form of constipation in which the muscles used for bowel movements don't work well (particularly common in older people) found the technique worked better than laxatives, diet and exercise for relieving constipation. In some areas the NHS runs biofeedback sessions for people with bowel and other disorders - ask your GP.
then the waste is effectively released at the end.
It's a system that operates 24 hours a day, non-stop, for decades on end. In warrants our respect, care and - dare we say it? - admiration.
As with any relatively violent mechanical process, pieces and parts of your digestive system occasionally go wrong. There are four common breakdowns.
The gates malfunction Notice that you're burping a bit more or feel pain in your chest after meals? You may have heartburn or its more serious cousin, gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD). The two typically occur when the value that's supposed to keep the bottom of the oesophagus closed weakens allowing digestive juices to flow up from the stomach and into the oesophagus, sometimes all the way to the back of the throat. Studies find more than half of people-aged 65 and older have heartburn.
Waste backs up It's nothing to be embarrassed about, but we're all more likely to become constipated as we age. It's not because we're older but because we tend to become less active, follow unhealthier diets and takes more medication. An estimated 41 percent of older people have constipation.
Bad things get into the system The microbes that cause food poisoning are the obvious ones; they make you sick almost immediately after eating contaminated food. But we're more concerned with a type of bacteria called Helicobacter pylori, which is the primary cause of ulcers - sores in your stomach and intestines that can cause great pain and possibly blood loss.
The pipes get irritated As you get older, your intestinal lining becomes more prone to developing small out-pouchings called diverticula, probably caused by low-fibre Western diets. These affect around one in ten people over 40, half of those over 50 and around 70 percent of those over 80. On their own, they cause no symptoms but inabout one in four cases they become inflamed and infected, a condition called diverticultis. Other common causes of intestinal problems include inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. All of these require medical assessment, and your doctor will probably advise on treatment. Simple lifestyle changes can also help with many digestive problems.
Most of the following steps will not only improve your condition but also help to avoid problems altogether or prevent them recurring.
To prevent and manage heartburn
Slow down Most of us eat the way we do everything else - too fast. When you eat too fast, you take in more air with your food, which can distend your stomach and lead to belching - which can also force the stomach contents upwards. Try this: take a bite, put your fork down, swallow, chat for a minute or read a page of your book, then pick up your fork and take another bite. A bonus: you'll eat fewer calories because your body has more time to sense its fullness, even though you've eaten
less food.
Closely monitor your food choices Although the traditional advice is to cut out certain foods such as tomatoes, spicy foods, fried foods and alcohol if you have heartburn, the evidence just doesn't support it. Instead, learn what foods make your stomach burn. Grab a notebook and, over the course of a week, list the foods you eat at each meal. Then note any signs of heartburn and how long after eating they occur. Look for patterns and if you see a suspicious food, cut it out. If your condition improves, you know what to avoid; if it doesn't improve after a week, add that food back in and cut out a different suspect.
Use gravity When you're upright, the contents of your stomach stay down, so walk instead of lying around after eating, raise the head of your bed with bricks to keep stomach acid flowing downwards and even consider eating while standing if it helps. This isn't just a folk remedy; when researchers evaluated more than 2,000 studies on treatments for heartburn or GORD, they found that 'gravity' solutions worked to prevent that burning feeling.
Lose weight The closer you are to a healthy weight, the fewer symptoms of heartburn and GORD you'll experience. why? The primary reason is probably that extra weight increases pressure on your abodmen. Also, overweight people are more likely to develop a hiatus hernia, which occurs when the top part of the stomach protrudes upwards through the diaphragm into the chest cavity, increasing reflux.
Skip the before-bed fizzy drink - or sleeping pill It's been found that carbonated beverages and benzodiazepine drugs such as diazepam (Valium) and lorazepam (Alivan), prescribed for anxiety or insomnia, can lead to heartburn during the night, disrupting your sleep. And no, you don't have to swallow them together to get this result.
Try acupuncture A study by researchers in Australia found that applying very light stimulation to the wrist with electrical acupoint stimulation (a needleless version of acupuncture) reduced relaxation in the lower oesophagus - a contributor to GORD and reflux - by 40 percent during the stimulation compared with no change using a dummy procedure.
See a sleep specialist A sleep specialist for GORD? Yes, It seems that the same treatment used for obstructive sleep apnoea - in which people stop breathing several times during the night - can help with nocturnal GORD, or severe night-time heartburn. The treatment is called continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). You sleep with a mask over your nose; this is attached to a machine that delivers pressuried air to maintain an open airway pressure (CPAP). You sleep with a mask over your nose; this is attached to a machine an open airway. It appears to work by increasing pressure in the back of the throat and preventing the stomach contents from coming up the oseophagus. Since GORD and obstructive sleep apnoea often occur together, a visit to a sleep specialist could be worthwhile.
Make a doctor's appointment Persistent backflow of digestive juices can damage the oesophagus, possibly leading to a condition called Barrett's oesphagus, a potential precursor of oesophageal cancer. If your heartburn has moved beyond the usual discomfort and is causing a chronic cough, nausea, vomiting or wheezing, see your doctor.
To prevent and manage constipation
Fixate on fibre Eating high-fibre food is one of the seven key choices of full-life eating (see also on Eat more whole grain foods). One more reason to get more fibre is that it's a magic ingredient when it comes to relieving constipation. Fibre is the indigestible parts of plants. when eaten in whole fruits, vegetables and grains, it serve as a wick in your stomach, soaking up liquid and creating bulk to make it easier to move the stools out of your system. Your goal is 20-30g a day, which is easy enough to get it you have a breakfast of high-fibre cereal topped up with strawberries, then have a salad and 125g of beans or brown rice with lunch or dinner.
Bake some muffins Just mix in 2 teaspoons of psyllium seed or husk for each muffin. This grain is a natural laxative that's great for simple constipation, although it may take a day before you get relief. You can also sprinkle 2 teaspoons of psyllium over cereal or yoghurt.
Carry a refillable water bottle Actually, get two. Fill them halfway with water and freeze. Then pull one out, top it up with water and carry it with you everywhere. When it's empty , fill it halfway with water again, put it in the freezer, and take out the other bottle.
The pain-card test
Urine is mostly water plus waste products that have been filtered from the blood by your kidneys, it's naturally a pale yellow colour due to the excretion of urochrome, a pigment in blood. Since urine changes colour easily, it's a good marker of your body's hydration level.
Try this test: pick up colour sample cards of yellow paint at a hardware shop and use them to assess your level of hdyration (or dehydration). Your urine should be as pale as the palest shade of yellow; if it's anywhere near the gold colours, it means your body isn't getting enough water.
Note that natural foods rarely affect urine colour, though food dyes can have a small effect (beetroot can occasionally turn the urine red or pink). Then there are the B-complex vitamins; they have more effect on urine colour than almost anything else, turning the shade to a bright, almost neon yellow. Cloudiness or murkiness usually means a urinary tract infection or kidney stone, so see a doctor if your urine is cloudy.
Older people are less likely to drink enough fluids, and dehydration - however subtle - is a major cause of constipation. Age blunts the 'thirst response', or your ability to feel thirsty. Plus, the amount of body fluid declines with age, from about 60 percent of body weight in men and 52 percent in women before the age of 60, to 52 and 46 percent respectively after the age of 60. Another age-related change occurs in the kidneys, which become less able to concentrate urine, so you lose more liquid overall.
Learn to control the uncontrollable Check out biofeedback, a mind/body technique that helps you to become aware of and control involuntary processes. One study of 79 adults with a form of constipation in which the muscles used for bowel movements don't work well (particularly common in older people) found the technique worked better than laxatives, diet and exercise for relieving constipation. In some areas the NHS runs biofeedback sessions for people with bowel and other disorders - ask your GP.
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