by Tina Brewster

Created on: August 27, 2011   Last Updated: August 29, 2011

There are some very simple, natural ways to help boost digestion. These include: choosing healthy foods, eating slowly, chewing our food well, not over eating and getting plenty of fluids. But to understand why these simple acts will help boost the digestion, you must understand how the digestive system works.

The digestive system plays a very important role in keeping human bodies healthy. “Digestion starts with chewing and ends when you go to the bathroom” (Morrison, 4). From the moment food or drinks go into your mouth, the digestive system begins breaking it down and sorting out the nutrients that the body needs and prepares the leftovers to be removed from the body as waste. “More than any other system in your body, the digestive system can be seen as a kind of factory or power plant. Materials (food) go in and energy (sugars), usable products (the proteins and fats that your body uses to repair itself and grow), and waste come out” (Morrison, 5).

The first step in helping your digestive system is choosing healthy foods.  Choose organic foods when possible because chemicals are not used on them. It is important to stay away from processed foods and foods cooked at high temperatures because this destroys important enzymes.

The next step is to make sure that the food is chewed properly. “Chewing is the way your body begins to digest food” (Morrison, 8). When food enters the mouth, the teeth, tongue and saliva begin breaking down the food to prepare it for further digestion.  The saliva has an enzyme called amylase in it which helps break the food down into its basic nutritional forms such as sugars and starches.

The chewed food goes through the esophagus next.  Properly chewed food is easily pushed through the esophagus and released into the stomach by the esophageal sphincter.  The esophageal sphincter is a ring muscle that opens and closes at the bottom of the esophagus. If the esophageal sphincter is not working properly it will allow stomach acids to come up into the esophagus causing heartburn. Watching what you eat and chewing your food properly can help prevent heartburn.

Food will be in the stomach three to five hours during which time the stomach will continue to breakdown the food. The stomach releases an enzyme called pepsin that breaks down the proteins in the foods into less complex components called peptides and polypeptides, which are broken down into smaller units

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