If you have IBS, bloating, heartburn, or are prone to indigestion then these five tips should help you survive Christmas without feeling like you’re missing out.

Tip #1 – How to avoid digestive symptoms over Christmas – keep anxiety under control

Accept that you probably are anxious and stressed, even if you don’t feel like you are in the moment. It’s usual not to feel like you’re stressed while you’re stressed, but you may well recognise it as such afterwards.

Anxiety, worry and digestive symptoms such as IBS unfortunately often go hand in hand. Your gut and brain are always talking to each other – you can read more about that here – so it’s very important to avoid anxiety as far as you can.
Unfortunately Christmas and all the running around shopping, wrapping and cooking can cause even the most laid back people to become stressed – so make sure you ask for help when you need it, if you want to avoid aggravating those IBS symptoms.
When we experience stress (and it doesn’t have to be excessive) we tend to produce less stomach acid and digestive enzymes, and it also has a negative impact on our friendly gut bacteria. This can result in uncomfortable digestion and excessive bloating and gas.

If you don’t already, a crucial part in overcoming gut symptoms is learning to manage stress with techniques such as meditation and yoga. If you’re already in the habit of practicing these, then remember to fit them in over the festive season too.
Read more about managing stress and anxiety here.

Christmas IBS survival tip #2 Eat mindfully

This leads us nicely into tip number two – eat mindfully.  It’s necessary to get your body into the right mode for eating, especially if you’re sitting down to a large meal, larger than you usually eat. You need to smell your food and relax to get those digestive juices flowing nicely.

A good way to do this is to take some time before eating to do some simple breathing exercises.

Here’s a good one –

Breathe in for a count of six
Hold for a count of six
Breathe out for a count of six

Repeat this several times until you feel yourself begin to relax.

If you’re feeling stressed and eating lots more than you usually would, you may not be producing sufficient levels of digestive enzymes to properly digest your food. This is where apple cider vinegar may help you – add a tablespoon of ACV to a glass of warm water before meals to help stimulate your digestive system.

If you’re worried your diet is impacting your gut health, I’d highly recommend downloading my online course The Ultimate Gut Health Programme to help support both your digestive sysem and hormone health, whilst avoiding triggering symptoms.

It’d be impossible to include all you need to know in one blog, but the programme will have all you need to know to ensure you’re soothing your digestive system, whilst eating delicious and filling foods.

Tip 4 – keep hydrated

Water is vital for your digestive system, it really does keep everything lubricated and moving along nicely.  It also helps you avoid constipation.

The temptation is always there over christmas to consume too much alcohol – this is very dehydrating and the dehydration will wreak havoc with your digestive system.

You need plenty of water on board to ensure your gut can make all the digestive enzymes and acids it needs to.

Keeping hydrated will also help your liver to detoxify if it is getting over burdened.

When you do drink alcohol, make sure it’s a good quality wine and drink less of it – avoid anything too sugary.  Aim to alternate an alcoholic drink water to keep things moving along nicely.

I hope that helps you survive this year’s festivities and I hope you have a great Christmas!

If you find your digestion’s feeling bit off, maybe with bloating, nausea or aches and pains, you could do a lot worse than to make sure you have plenty of herbs and spices at hand in your kitchen cupboards.

There are literally hundreds of herbs and spices to help with day to day tricky gut situations.

Some herbs will support your body in producing bile – a digestive substance produced by the gall bladder which helps you digest fatty foods.

Also, many of these herbs and spices will soothe the gut wall and ensure your gut is functioning correctly to get any pesky excess gas out of your system.

If you’re worried your diet is impacting your gut health, I’d highly recommend downloading my online course The Ultimate Gut Health Programme to help support both your digestive sysem and hormone health, whilst avoiding triggering symptoms.

It’d be impossible to include all you need to know in one blog, but the programme will have all you need to know to ensure you’re soothing your digestive system, whilst eating delicious and filling foods.

However they do their job, you can be assured that the following herbs and spices will support healthy digestion, allowing the gut to function as it’s supposed to.

And apart from all that they taste amazing too!

Here are four of my favourites –

Chamomile

My favourite herb of all time and so handy – I have a box of chamomile tea in the kitchen all the time as I use it for sleeping and relaxation.

A lesser known benefit of chamomile is as a great treatment in case of any stomach aches or bloating – it works so well – sometimes I just have three small cups of chamomile tea, one after the other, and it nails most minor digestive complaints.

It’s also been proven in animal studies to be anti inflammatory and reduce diarrhoea, and also to inhibit the development of stomach ulcers – amazing!

Cumin

Cumin is great for indigestion and actually revs your digestive processes up by increasing the activity of digestive enzymes.
Again, cumin will increase the production of bile so it’d be a great idea to include some of this if you tend to feel uncomfortable after eating fatty foods.

People with IBS have even reported improved symptoms after taking cumin as a supplement.

You might have noticed that a lot of these spices are traditionally served alongside notorious foods which commonly aggravate digestion, such as beans and lentils – think chilli and dhal.  

There is a reason for this, they do actually help your gut to break down these harder to digest foods. 

So there you go, four essential herbs and spices to have in your cupboard to support your digestion day to day – enjoy them as teas or in cooking!

When foods are referred to as ‘organic’ it means they have been produced without the assistance of any artificial pesticides, fertilisers, antibiotics, hormones or chemicals. And that they’re not genetically modified. As far as pre-packaged foods are concerned they must not contain any artificial additives at all, in order to be labeled organic. The ingredients that they are made from must also be organic. But is organic food really better for you?

As well as being better for your health, organically grown crops are much better for the environment as they use natural fertilisers like manure to nourish the plants. Because of this, organic farming methods tend to improve soil quality rather than deplete it.

How else is organic food beneficial to health?

Studies consistently show that organic produce in general contains much higher levels of antioxidants, as well as micronutrients such as vitamin C, zinc and iron.

In fact, antioxidant levels can be as much as 69% higher in these foods.

There was one study which discovered organically grown berries and corn contained 58% more antioxidants and as much as 52% more vitamin C.

So this is well worth bearing in mind.  You could be looking at eating the equivalent of 1-2 extra portions of fruit and veg, if you choose organic options!

How can this happen?

Organic plants don’t rely on artificial pesticides for protection. Instead, they produce more of their own protective compounds – antioxidants. All this goodness then gets passed onto us.

Although some studies show that organic food isn’t necessarily better than non-organic, and that there’s no benefit to eating organic at all, these studies tend to look at how harmful one pesticide or chemical is, in isolation. The thing which hasn’t been fully studied is the cumulative effect of all the chemical fertilisers, antibiotics and so on.  They’ll usually show up as safe in trials – but that’s when they only test one in isolation.  If you’re eating several different foods in a meal – by and large you will be – who knows what the effect of all the pesticides mixed together will be.

If you’re worried your diet is impacting your gut health, I’d highly recommend downloading my online course The Ultimate Gut Health Programme to help support both your digestive sysem and hormone health, whilst avoiding triggering symptoms.

It’d be impossible to include all you need to know in one blog, but the programme will have all you need to know to ensure you’re soothing your digestive system, whilst eating delicious and filling foods.

How about organic dairy?

One food group I’d definitely recommend buying organic is milk and dairy (if you tolerate it)

Not only do organic dairy products and meats contain higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, they’re also higher in micronutrients such as vitamin E and iron.

A diet rich in omega-3 fats is associated with a huge array of health benefits, including improved cardiovascular health and less inflammation.

Watch out for ‘organic’ processed food

Pre-packaged, processed food and fizzy drinks are not ideal, whether they’re labelled ‘organic’ or otherwise. These foods tend to be very high in sugar. Organic sugar is still sugar and has the same effect on the body as any other type of sugar. They’re also likely to be high in trans-fats and salt.

On the plus side though, if you do occasionally choose to eat these foods you can be sure they don’t contain any chemicals or additives.

The answer to this question may surprise you! The unfortunate thing is that many of our favourite fruits and vegetables are only available for a short season. Usually during the height of summer. Strawberries and other berries spring to mind here (especially if you’ve got kids, as these seem to be the main types of fruits they enjoy). Of course we can get hold of fresh berries and other fruits all year round, but they’re never as flavourful as when they’re in season. When this happens don’t worry – just remember the freezer aisle!  Because believe it or not, when frozen or fresh fruit and veg have been studied in lab tests, they almost always turn out to be as nutritious as each other.

In fact sometimes frozen produce fares even better than fresh.  This seems strange but I’ll explain.

Studies have compared the nutrient content of frozen and fresh produce –

• Peas
• Broccoli
• Blueberries
• Strawberries
• Carrots
• Spinach

Their overall findings were that there was no difference in nutrient levels, including B-vitamins and folate content, which remained constant even after months spent in the freezer!

How can this be?

Often fresh produce is harvested before it’s fully ripe. This ensures it stays fresh for longer – it has a lengthy journey from being picked, packaged in a factory, transported to a supermarket, sometimes put in cold storage, spending several days on a supermarket shelf, before arriving at your fridge. There it can sometimes hang around for a few more days before you actually eat it. Unfortunately when you pick fruits and vegetables before they’re fully ripe they haven’t had a chance to fully develop all their nutritional goodness – vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Not to mention flavour.

On the other hand, frozen fruits and vegetables are picked when they’re perfectly ripe and rich in vitamins, minerals and flavour. At this point they’re frozen very quickly locking in all these fantastic gut-friendly nutrients.

So that means you can have all that goodness and flavour year round.

Eating a wide variety of different coloured fruits and vegetables, means you’re getting a whole array of nutrients. Including those vital polyphenols which you need for great gut health and keeping your friendly bacteria healthy and thriving.

Remember diet diversity is key for optimal gut health.

If you’re worried your diet is impacting your gut health, I’d highly recommend downloading my online course The Ultimate Gut Health Programme to help support both your digestive sysem and hormone health, whilst avoiding triggering symptoms.

It’d be impossible to include all you need to know in one blog, but the programme will have all you need to know to ensure you’re soothing your digestive system, whilst eating delicious and filling foods.

So, what’s the best way to use frozen fruit and veg?

1. Look for the highest quality frozen fruit and veg you can find. If you can lay your hands on organic – added bonus! – as you know that berries and the more delicate fruits haven’t been overloaded with pesticides.  Berries are notorious for being sprayed a lot as they’re so likely to get eaten by bugs.

2. Organic frozen peas are always readily available. These are one of my favourite frozen vegetables to have on hand.

6. Frozen vegetables are great to add to soups, stews and curries or chillies.  Personally, I don’t find them fantastic to eat steamed or stir-fried, I find fresh much nicer to eat like this. There’s nothing wrong with them at all, but it’s all just down to individual preference ultimately.

7.  One of my favourite frozen food tips: If you buy fresh herbs and find you don’t get around to using them all at once, pop any leftovers in a freezer bag then you can just break bits off when you need them – handy!  And you can have a nice selection of delicious and medicinal herbs available in the freezer ready for when you need them.

A question often crops up in clinic, about how your gut health affects other parts of your body. This is very interesting as your gut health closely connects to just about every other system and function of your body, and a major complaint of nearly everyone I speak to is always feeling tired, fatigued or exhausted. If you’re always tired it can really impact your life negatively – with work, family and everything else so it’s absolutely worth getting to the root cause of it, and getting it sorted.

Here are a few reasons whey this may be happening –

1. Impaired absorption may be why you’re always tired

Firstly – if your gut isn’t functioning optimally you’re unlikely to be absorbing nutrients properly.  Your stomach just won’t be able to break down food, and allow your gut to absorb all those vitamins and minerals efficiently.  A lot of vital nutrients are going to end up passing straight through your digestive system.  If your gut function is compromised your stomach acid might be low, or you may be producing inadequate levels of enzymes from your pancreas, for example.  This will cause inadequate nutrient absorption.

2. If you’re always tired, then your microbiome – AKA gut bacteria – could be to blame.

Further along your digestive system your microorganisms are a huge influence on how effectively you digest and absorb your food. They’re also critical in how well you sleep, your mood and your hormone levels, to name a few. All these factors can influence your overall energy levels.

Any time you experience a degree of stress, be it from an infection or emotional stress, your microbiome will undoubtedly take a hit. Your bacterial balance may change from consisting of mostly beneficial species, to having overgrowths of less desirable bacterial species, or yeasts such as candida. These may not only cause digestive disturbances, but also hugely impact your energy levels.

Studies have actually shown that not only do less desirable bacterial species tend to proliferate in those who experience a lot of fatigue, but they have less bacterial diversity too. This is why I’m absolutely not a fan of overly-restrictive diets to control digestive symptoms. Everyone needs a diverse microbiome to keep healthy and energetic, and a diverse diet is needed to increase bacterial diversity.

If you’re worried your diet is impacting your gut health, I’d highly recommend downloading my online course The Ultimate Gut Health Programme to help support both your digestive sysem and hormone health, whilst avoiding triggering symptoms.

It’d be impossible to include all you need to know in one blog, but the programme will have all you need to know to ensure you’re soothing your digestive system, whilst eating delicious and filling foods.

3. Inflammation

The more pathogenic strains of bacteria produce substances that cause the intestinal lining and immune system to release inflammatory molecules to fight the threat of infection. This creates low-grade inflammation in the gut. If you imagine what happens when you catch a cold, you’re usually floored for a few days but then bounce back after about a week as the infection passes. With chronic inflammation the effect isn’t short and sharp, but goes on for months and even years with a vague feeling of prolonged tiredness in the background.

5. The HPA Axis – a big reason you’re always tired.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is the part of your nervous system that deals with stress. As inflammatory substances, known as cytokines, begin to circulate in increasing numbers this causes stress in the body. The more your body is stressed, the more the stress hormone cortisol is released. If this goes on for too long, your adrenal glands may become compromised resulting in insomnia and exhaustion.

Needless to say, if you feel tired all the time this warrants investigation firstly from your GP. However if those tests don’t shed any light then do get in touch to discuss gut testing (especially if you’re experiencing gut related issues alongside). It could well provide the answers you’re looking for.