One of the very worst things you can do when it comes to eating and digestion is to drink cold liquids during a meal. The stomach is like a cauldron of fire. You need to have strong digestive fire in order for everything in your body to be digested properly. One of the things that dilutes digestive fire more than anything is putting cold things on that fire. We don’t want to dilute digestion, because the more it is diluted, the harder it is for your body to process that food.
When you go to any restaurant in the United States today, the most common thing that is placed on the table is ice cold water. This is a new phenomenon in history. Before refrigeration, people most likely would have never consumed liquids cold. Liquids were either consumed at room temperature or warm/hot. First, water may dilute the hydrochloric acid in your stomach, which is critical for digesting all of the protein you consume. These digestive juices should not be diluted at all so that your body can properly break your food down. Second, the coldness of ice slows everything down. Nothing should be slowed down with digestion, as everything should be flowing exactly the way it is supposed to.
When you go to a traditional Chinese restaurant, what they serve you at the beginning of the meal is usually small amounts of hot tea. Drinking something hot or at least room temperature goes more with the flow of nature digestively speaking. Hot tea can support digestion and not take away from it. Most restaurants carry sliced lemon these days. My advice is to drink 4-6 ounces of warm/hot water with fresh squeezed lemon or drink very little during a meal. If you choose not to drink during a meal, you can consume liquids either a half an hour before the start of or half an hour after the completion of a meal. Most people have to drink liquids during meals because their glands may be impaired, they don’t drink enough water to produce enough saliva or they eat so fast that they don’t give their mouth a chance to properly digest food. I live in Florida and people look at you strangely when you ask for hot water with lemon in the middle of the summer!
If you are mindful, and very deliberately and slowly chew your food, then you will find that you do not actually need hardly any liquid during meals in order for you to properly digest all the food that you consume. Most people eat so fast these days that they drink lots of liquid (water or even worse, soda) in order to make sure that their food gets down into their stomach. If you chew very slowly, and make sure that everything is chewed to a mushy pulp, usually you have produced so much saliva that the food will flow down very nicely into your stomach.
Lemon actually helps digestion by supporting hydrochloric acid production in the stomach. Lemons are also very rich in vitamin C and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, and silicon. It is also a wonderful tonic to help cleanse and detoxify the entire body. Lemons are also very powerful at helping to destroy bacteria that is in the intestines and can directly help to alleviate flatulence, bloating and indigestion problems caused by unwanted bacteria in the gut. The bioflavonoids found in lemons can help to strengthen the walls of your cells and reduce inflammation in the body. Try consuming only 4-6 ounces of hot or room temperature water or lemon water with each meal.
Every health problem has its root in the health of your gut. If you want to massively increase your energy, sleep better, raise your libido, lose weight and eliminate your pain and inflammation, I created an online course called Total Gut Transformation. This course is full of lessons online, videos, a free breakfast guide, a detoxification program and so much more. In as little as 30 days, you can totally heal your digestion. Click HERE for more information on Total Gut Transformation.
