Someone told me last Tuesday it was only 12 weeks til Xmas … I nearly fell off my chair when I realized they were right. So I thought it was now the time of the year to clean house.

Not my actual house, but the areas in my body that do most of the work and help to keep me healthy. There are certain systems in our body that we use all the time, can’t rest, are essential for life and health …

No not your brain, heart or lungs…

Your bowel and digestive system is one of THE most important areas relating to health. Just think of all the things it has to do and endure.

It is used to absorb the goodness you eat and eliminate the rubbish you need to expel. Also if you look at what your digestion does physically it does the same at a mental level … you digest food – the bowel also digests thoughts.

Each organ has an emotional aspect to it. The stomach/spleen relate to anxiety, the small intestine relates to the trying stresses, the liver/gall bladder relate to frustration and anger and the large bowel grief and sadness.

With the year gone so fast yet again, people still out of their houses, the rebuild going slowly, people traveling at 20kph when the signs says 30kph (and who ever travels at 30kph – hopefully my police patients are working night shift and not reading this), and so many other EQC and insurance stresses…

So with all those thoughts needing digesting, winter and all the more stodgy foods we eat it is now time to give the bowel a break…

This doesn’t mean diets, fasting or eating certain foods.

You need to rest your bowel and possibly even give it a detox. Resting the bowel is easy too…

Simply have a day or even a weekend if possible and only eat food that is pureed … that way the food gets to the stomach as broken down already. Most people eat too fast, chew their food a minimal amount of time, so that food enters the stomach as a large clump or mass of food.

The stomach struggles to break it down, so will the small intestine and hence the large bowel gets overloaded.

As an aside – did you know that swallowing is an involuntary reflex. That you should chew you food until it naturally falls down your throat – most people chew – chew – swallow

So take a weekend soon, eat only pureed food – anything at all, as much as you wish (within reason) – soups, puree fruits, smoothies (try a mango lassi – I live on these when i do it). You can even eat steak – as long as its been through a blender.

If you feel you need more even try a simple detox. You don’t need a radical change, there are many products such as the Nutrilife Detox where you add a spoonful of powder to water each morning for about a week and it will clean the liver and bowel. Tastes good and is good for you. The more radical detox’s in my opinion are too hard to follow and offer no better than these anyway.

So with summer coming, warm weather which means salads, bbq’s and food easier to digest … now is the time to prepare your body for it. Give it a clean..