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How Your Lifestyle Affects the Digestive System ?

In a quest to be ahead in the rat race, we overwork, sleep less and spend hours in front of our PCs. As a stress buster, we then go ahead and party hard, smoke, drink, eat unhealthy food and oversleep. The result – a digestive system gone for toss! Our lifestyle has a significant impact on the digestive system. The occurrence of indigestion, acidity, bloating, IBS etc. has been on the rise. Let’s take a look at some of these issues.

1. Stress negatively affects digestion.
During times of stress, the digestion slows down in some people and can lead to constipation. In contrast, it tends to have quite the opposite effect in others, where the food movies hurriedly through the system leaving inadequate time for nutrient absorption. In some, stress causes loose motions!

2. Food Fads
With a lot of importance on being a particular size and shape to be deemed attractive, many people start following erratic diets. Instead of a balanced diet, there is a disproportionate increase or decrease in carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Resultant lack of adequate fiber leads to constipation.

3. Sedentary jobs and lack of exercise
Hours spent at the desk and lack of exercise tend to make the gut sluggish too. It is a common cause of constipation. Constipation further leads to fissure, piles and other problems.

4. Smoking
Excessive smoking causes weakening of muscles of the esophagus ( food-pipe that runs from the throat up to stomach ). As a result, food/acid from the stomach regurgitates into the esophagus, a condition known as Reflux. This causes symptoms of heartburn.

5. Binge Drinking
When kept within limits, drinking isn’t that harmful. However, students and youngsters nowadays, indulge in binge drinking. They lose the count of how many ‘drinks they are down’. This happens every few days. This causes acidity apart from raising havoc in the liver, an important organ for detoxification.

Thus, our lifestyle has a significant impact on our digestive system. Improper functioning of this system leads to problems like constipation, bloating, flatulence etc. Constipation further causes problems of the anorectal region like hemorrhoids (piles), fissure, rectal prolapse and hernia. So next time you have any issue with the digestive system, take a pause and review what you could have done wrong. The digestive system is important not only for a sense of wellbeing, but it also plays an important role in establishing our immunity. It’s about time that we give this system due respect, and in turn be blessed with a hale and hearty life!