School of Ayurvedic Diet & Digestion
Watch the Course Intro: Become an Ayurveda Health Counselor
Recipes
Food
Create Your Diet
Recent Articles (Blog)
SYMPTOMS & AYURVEDIC REMEDIES
INCOMPLETE CHEWINGWHAT DOES IT DO TO YOU? HOW CAN YOU MINIMIZE NEGATIVE EFFECTS?
Are you prone to a problem with 'Incomplete Chewing'?
Chewing & Your Health50% of digestion begins in the mouth. So if you have digestive problems, you can usually fix it with your teeth! The most powerful tools you have to digest and absorb nutrients well are your teeth. Your teeth are important digestive organs often overlooked. These powerful bones deliver 120lbs of pressure every square inch, and can grind the toughest piece of steak or stale bread.Chewing grinds up hard chunks of food and liquefies your food, turning it into a slushy paste. Thorough chewing immediately exposes your food to digestive juices in your saliva, and after swallowing, your stomach as well, thus ensuring better digestion. Chewing can be a great remedy for many digestive ailments. Popping enzyme pills or probiotics pales in comparison to the simple, mechanical benefits of careful chewing. Once I had a client with Crohn's disease that swallowed an unchewed almond by accident. The almond got caught in his colon which eventually had to be amputated as a result. That's a heavy price to pay for incomplete chewing. Consider this: How much longer would it take your stomach acids to dissolve a whole peanut compared to one completely mashed and mixed with saliva? Insufficient chewing of food forces your stomach to break down your food by acids. This takes both time and effort, and leads to a delay in digestion. As digestion is a metabolically intense process, poorly chewed food makes you and your digestive tract feel tired. Incomplete chewing saps your energy. While your stomach churns away, your gut will feel heavy as if you've eaten a large meal. Incomplete chewing causes sluggish digestion or even worse: acid reflux, indigestion, and bloating. If you have acid reflux, proper chewing is one of the best ways to minimize the amount of time the food sits in your stomach, so that acids won't linger. If you can't produce enough acid or enzymes in your gut to digest your food well, use your saliva to lighten the burden on these organs. Saliva contains digestive enzymes that start breaking down your food right away. To boot, mastication actually increases saliva output by 10x. Saliva has many other benefits as well. Its antibodies flag toxins for the immune system to destroy. Its antiseptic nature kills bacteria. And the hormones in saliva stimulate gut contraction to move food along the GI tract. Chewing Your Food AyurvedicallyTo improve your energy levels and promote good digestion, all foods must be chewed with care - especially those that are difficult to digest. If your food is difficult to chew, that's all the more reason to be patient. Difficult to chew means difficult to digest - so you might as well chew it complettely. Confronted by a bad food combination? At your friend's house for dinner and forced to eat food you know you can't digest? Extra chewing may be your best remedy when you're in a food pinch.
My Ayurvedic teacher, Dr. Vasant Lad, used to tell us "drink your food and chew your liquid." We suggest you keep chewing your food until it is completely liquefied and loses its flavor, generally about 20 times. Fully pummel it, pound it, and pulverize it, to ensure you mix up all of your food and drink with your saliva. Horace Fletcher may be forever known as the world's greatest champion of chewing. The famous health food enthusiast of the Victorian era promoted thorough chewing, becoming a millionaire in the process. Fletcher's laboratory experiments showed that comprehensive chewing improved vitality, strength, and even thinking ability. In his words, "Nature will castigate those who don't masticate." The patient attention of meticulous mastication allows you to savor the flavors of the tastes in your food. Ayurveda believes that each of the 6 tastes - sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent - has a medicinal effect on the body and an important role in the digestive process. Ideally all 6 are present in a meal. Allow your tastebuds to soak each one up. Mindful eating also gives you the chance to connect with your body and its reaction to your food. What subtle reactions do you notice as you eat broccoli? This sort of self awareness is the basis of healing in Ayurveda. It naturally prevents you from overeating and from eating foods that don't agree with you. Use your extensive chewing as a contemplative practice. Allow it to encourage your appreciation of the gift of nourishment you've received. ARE YOU NEW TO AYURVEDA?
Are you wondering what Ayurveda is and how to use it?
HERBS AND PRODUCTS FOR IMBALANCES RELATED TO 'INCOMPLETE CHEWING' MORE DIGESTION TIPSDISCLAIMER: The pathogenesis of each person's condition is unique, and so the diet must be fit to the individual and the unique root causes of the condition in your body. The information on this page is for educational purposes only and should not be used to treat a medical condition. It is not a substitute for medical care. Please check with your doctor before making any changes to your health and wellness routine. WHAT IMBALANCES CAN IT CAUSE?AGGRAVATES THESE DOSHAS & QUALITIES'Incomplete Chewing' is likely to aggravate the following doshas and qualities. If you have a systemic imbalance of one of these doshas or qualities, Ayurveda would generally recommend removing, substitute or lessen the frequency of 'Incomplete Chewing'. Imbalance Accumulates Improper food and lifestyle causes balances to accumulate. Ayurveda shows you exactly which doshas and qualities are likely to accumulate in your body. Once these doshas and qualities accumulate too much, they will begin to cause imbalance. You can reduce an imbalanced dosha or quality by removing things that aggravate it from your diet and lifestyle.V = VATA, P = PITTA, K = KAPHA 
To learn more about the symbols above, click on them. Are you prone to a problem with 'Incomplete Chewing'?
Mind, Stress & Sleep: Anxiolytic , ANXIOLYTICHerbs that help people suffering from anxiety or panic. They promote a state of calm and often improve sleep. Most anxiolytic herbs are also nervines.Sedative SEDATIVESedative herbs create a sense of calm in the mind and body by specifically calming or quieting the nervous system. Excellent for anxiety, stress and chronic pain.ADDRESS ISSUES IN STAGE OF DISEASE 0INCOMPLETE CHEWING IS IN STAGE OF DISEASE 0 - POTENTIAL CAUSEPotential causes increase and disturb your imbalanced doshas and qualities, causing them to accumulate and spiral out of control. For example, if you're overheated and eat a chili pepper, heat may become excessive and cause disease. As a dosha or quality accumulates in your body according to your dietary and lifestyle habits, it is more and more likely to cause disease. You can reduce an imbalanced dosha or quality in two ways, by removing, or lessening the frequency of aggravating causes from your diet and lifestyle, as well as by favoring balancing diet and lifestyle practices. For example, try eating something as cool as a cucumber when you're overheated, instead of a chili pepper. REDUCE THESE RELATED SYMPTOMS & HABITSThe following symptoms & habits may be related to 'Incomplete Chewing'. See your quiz results for a computerized assessment of your body type. Please click on the symptoms below to learn more about them.WHAT'S NEXT? 
DO YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR UNIQUE BODY?What aggravates it? What heals it?
Then get your Personal Ayurvedic Body Book!
This book, written by founder and director of Joyful Belly, John Immel,
is individually formatted for your unique body and will help you confidently choose food that restores your
healthy glow to get you feeling like your best self.
Just $19.99!
HOW AYURVEDA WORKS
ARE YOU WONDERING HOW AYURVEDA CAN HELP YOU?
WHY IS AYURVEDA THE RIGHT SOLUTION?Ayurveda strengthens the body, in addition to addressing the disorder. It take a holistic, systemic approach, instead of myopically focusing on the disorder in question. Ayurveda shows a person how to interpret signs and symptoms of imbalance, and how to address them using materials from home, so they can optimize their health on a continual basis. You can't take the doctor home with you, but you can take Ayurveda home with you. Ayurveda is the most advanced and easy to use home system for self healing with an exceptional focus on digestion.HOW DOES AYURVEDA WORK?Ayurveda starts by identifying your body type, which identifies certain tendencies in your body to get sick (as well as identifying your strengths). It uses body type to determine the likely root causes of your disorders. Next, Ayurveda analyzes the nature of your disorder. It fits all your signs and symptoms into a pattern, expressed as a combination of gunas / qualities. For example, you may have a heat disorder, a cold disorder, or an oily disorder, etc. This simple categorical approach shows you how to correct systemic imbalances and strengthen your body as a whole.On Joyful Belly, we've created an extensive categorization of food so you can easily match food to your imbalances (gunas). By eating an optimal diet that balances your gunas, your whole body is strengthened and the conditions that created the disorder are removed. Once the root causes of the disease are removed, the disease lessens in strength or disappears altogether. Additional remedies - such as herbs and lifestyle practices - focused on the specific disorder, can greatly enhance your healing. Want to learn more about Ayurveda and its step-by-step approach to healing? Click below.LEARN MOREGET STARTEDTo get started on your Ayurvedic journey, we first recommend that your find your body type by taking our free quiz. In Ayurveda, every solution is based on your unique body type, so by taking this quiz, you’ll get the best results.5 WAYS TO HEAL YOUR BODY
|
On Facebook
On Twitter
SAVE IT
FIND OUT
BOOKS
BY JOYFUL BELLY
Say goodbye to confusion about food and health with your personal Ayurveda body book, individually and custom formulated for your body. $19.99 $7.95 introductory offer 3 days only
Join Joyful Belly.
Want our top Ayurvedic recipes and health tips?Subscribe to our free newsletter!