Beware: Dangers Of Drinking Water Along Meals
Drinking water during meals severely hampers your stomach’s digestive abilities and causes insulin levels to fluctuate significantly.
This is a warning from a Microbiotic counsellor.
A number of people have water along with their meals, with a theory of washing down the food while eating. People have no idea how wrong this practice is and how difficult this can be for their digestion.
The stomach has a knack of knowing when you will eat and start releasing digestive juices immediately.
If you begin drinking water at the same time, what you are doing is diluting the digestive juices being released to digest your food, thereby hindering them from breaking down food.
Digestive Enzymes
Research shows that sipping a little water during meals is not a cause for concern but drinking a glass or two may interfere with digestion. It is important to drink fluid before or two hours after meals as this helps in absorption of nutrients.
What Happens in your body when you glug water with meals
Absorption of nutrients continues till it becomes concentrated enough for digestive juices to begin digesting your food. However, due to it getting mixed with water, this concentrated substance is now thicker than the food contents present in your stomach. So less gastric juice will be secreted to digest your food. The result is, undigested food leaks into your system as it gets absorbed through the stomach walls. This will also lead to acid reflux and heart burn.
Drinking water with meals can also cause a surge in your insulin levels, almost like the way high glycemic food would affect you. The more insulin is released into your blood stream, the higher the chances of you storing fat in your body.
Advice from a Microbiotic Counsellor
Make sure your food is not too salty as that would aggravate your thirst and trigger your need to drink more water. Besides, eating in a hurry will cause you to gulp your food down. Most likely, you would feel the need to wash it down with water while you are eating. Instead, chew, chew and chew more. We secrete a lot of digestive juices (enzymes) while chewing, which makes our stomach’s job easier.