Courtesy
The best things in life are free! Ayurveda, the holistic system of medicine originating in India over 3,000 years ago, professes a variety of simple lifestyle routines that are particularly powerful (and free!) for optimizing digestion and improving overall health. Three of these include: an awakened appetite, regular meal times, and post-meal walks. These practices are corroborated by Western science as health enhancements. Let's explore awakening the appetite first.
An Awakened Appetite:
Ayurveda emphasizes the importance of priming the appetite prior to meals for optimal digestion. If meal times have been erratic or scattered for decades, digestion may be subpar and hunger cues may be muted. Our appetite, which alerts us to our body's readiness to eat and digest, may be sluggish.
One of the best ways to ensure our enzymes are optimally released to break down our meals is to eat at the same time each day. Our digestive system learns our meal rhythm and triggers our enzymes accordingly.
Another excellent digestive support is cooking our own meals. As the culinary aroma wafts through the kitchen and into our nostrils it prompts neurological signals that rev our digestion. Zapping meals in the microwave, or buying and tossing pre-cooked foods into our mouths, are common practices that preempt the body’s release of adequate digestive juices.
We can also awaken our appetite, and thus digestion, with a homemade and delicious appetite kindler. One of my favorite traditional Ayurvedic appetite kindlers is a tea with equal parts cumin seed, coriander seed, and fennel seed, enjoyed 15 minutes before meals to prime the enzymes. Over time with meal time consistency and home cooking, the digestive kindler may no longer be needed as our body prepares for the process intrinsically.
Regular Meal Times:
For optimal digestion, one meal must be fully digested before beginning the next. Food generally churns in the stomach for 40 minutes (for a light snack) up to four hours (for a heavier meal) as digestive acids and enzymes break it down. If you snack before your stomach fully digests your prior meal, your nearly digested first meal and your undigested second meal commingle in your stomach. When the pyloric sphincter opens to allow food to transit from the stomach to the small intestine, your second meal can move though under-digested. This compromises digestion and leads to bloating and fatigue. Accordingly, meals are best kept at least four hours apart.
Daylight is likewise important to consider when planning meal times. Our digestive fire (termed agni in Ayurveda) is at its zenith at noon, when the sun is at its peak. This is the best time to eat our largest and most complex meal. Our digestive efficiency ebbs early and late in the day when the sun is low, such that breakfast and dinner are best kept a bit lighter. Though contrary to common practice in our culture, lunch is ideally the heaviest meal of the day.
A third consideration in mealtime planning is bedtime. Because the stomach works valiantly to process food for up to four hours, it is best to finish dinner (with the exception of herbal teas and water) three to four hours before settling in for the night. If you plan to sleep at 11pm, 6 or 7pm would be an excellent time to finish up dinner. Eating closer to bedtime could result in acid reflux or heartburn with concomitant sleep disruption, reduced nutrient absorption, and waking feeling groggy and under-rested.
Eating all meals between sunrise and sunset, takes full advantage of our circadian rhythm which primes digestion. Accordingly, in Seattle’s dark winter months, compressing three meals into precious few daylight hours can be challenging. A healthy winter meal schedule could be: breakfast at 8am, lunch at noon, and dinner at 5pm. This nine hour eating window provides for an ample fifteen hours of fasting during the night allowing the body to carry out its non-digestive tasks including cellular repair and maintenance.
Clearly, at our Northern latitude, the number of daylight hours differs substantially from summer to winter. As such our eating window can be expanded in the summer without compromising digestion, as long as we offer the body ample hours between meals and before bed for digestion.
With consistent meal times, our body learns to prepare its digestive system for the upcoming feast, secreting digestive enzymes, awakening our hunger, and igniting salivary juices before our first bite. The more consistent our meal times, the more effectively our body can hone its preparations. Accordingly, it is generally best to avoid random snacking; though of course there are exceptions, such as among children, pregnant moms, during diabetic blood sugar challenges and during intense fitness training.
Walks After Meals:
Ayurveda has historically recommended a walk after each meal for ideal digestion. In fact, in Ayurvedic school, my professor and the entire class walked together after lunch each day to help integrate the routine and observe first hand its benefits. A brief postprandial walk can enhance ability to focus throughout the afternoon without the dreaded blood sugar crash. Recently western medicine studies evidencing the sugar stabilizing benefits of post-meal walking have corroborated this Ayurvedic practice. In fact, a 2022 meta-analysis in the Journal of Sports Medicine found significant blood sugar stabilization among those who walked for a mere two to five minutes after each meal.
These ideally brief and gentle post-meal walks enable the necessary bodily resources to focus on digestion. More moderate or vigorous daily exercise is of course key to optimal health as well, but best planned before meals when we aren’t actively digesting. This way our blood supply can prioritize digestive organs during digestion, and skeletal and respiratory muscles during exercise.
Clearly many additional ingredients (the foods we eat, the company we keep, our mindset and regular exercise routine) play key roles in the vitality and steadiness of mind and body, but a primed appetite and regular meal times followed by short walks, with the last meal wrapping up three to four hours before bedtime, are particularly simple, yet powerful and free self care modalities. I challenge you to try it for a week and see how you feel. Wishing you a 2025 of improved digestion and revitalized energy and health!
Annie Lindberg is a licensed acupuncturist, Chinese Medicine practitioner, and Ayurvedic practitioner. She also holds a Masters of Environmental Studies. She owns and practices at The Point Acupuncture & Ayurveda, located in Madison Park and is a regular Madison Park Times health columnist.