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In any given day, lots of things enter our mouths—air, water, a piece of Bazooka. To prevent problems associated with your digestive system, these are the best things that can enter your intestinal pathway.
FIBER Fiber is the community-service director of the major food groups—it’s not a sexy job, but it sure does great things. Most important, fiber helps keep digested food bulky and soft—so it passes through the colon easily. Fiber makes it easier for the food to move through your intestines without much pressure being placed on your tubing. And that’s important for avoiding such things as diverticulosis and hemorrhoids. Found solely in plant foods, fiber is largely indigestible as it passes through the digestive tract intact. It contains no calories but makes you feel full, which helps control overeating. Both kinds of fiber—insoluble and soluble—are good for you. Insoluble fiber doesn’t easily dissolve in water and is not broken down by intestinal bacteria. (This type doesn’t lower your cholesterol, but still has an effect on your digestive system.) It’s found in grapefruit, orange, grapes, raisins, dried fruit, sweet potatoes, peas, and zucchini, but especially in whole-wheat or whole-grain bread (it has to be whole-grain, not five-or six-grain bread, to have enough fiber). Soluble fiber does dissolve in water; it regulates metabolism and digestion, and stabilizes blood glucose levels. And it’s mostly found in grains such as oats, barley, and rye; in legumes such as beans, peas, and lentils; and in some cereals.
In Real Age terms, people who eat 25 grams of fiber a day can be as much as three years younger than a person who eats only 12 grams a day (the average for American adults). Plus, one study showed that a 10-gram increase in the daily intake of fiber decreases the risk of heart attack by 29 percent—and makes you 1.9 years younger. These are the foods that can get you fiber quickly:
lima beans (3 tablespoons): 13 grams
buckwheat cereal (1 cup): 10 grams
artichoke (1 large): 10 grams
soybeans (1/21/2 cup): 10 grams
almonds (24): 5 grams peanuts (30): 5.5 grams
oatmeal (1 cup, instant): 3 to 4 grams
Cheerios® (1 cup): 3 grams
WATER (NOT SOFT DRINKS) If you’ve ever been to a water park, you know the way water slides work. The water shooting down each sliding board “lubricates” it so that the rider moves faster. Without water, there’d be too much friction on the slide, and it would take someone twice as long to make a big splash. Water works the same way in your body—it’s a natural lubricant that helps everything slide through your system. But it also has another great advantage: Water fights bad breath. As that bacteria comes up from your stomach to your mouth, it can become stagnant—which is what causes bad breath. Drinking water will help break up that stagnant bacteria and move it along, rather than having it greet people every time you say hello. Now, when we say water, we mean water—not any ole liquid. The empty calories and self-destructive ingredients found in soft drinks will leave you bloated, hungry, and fat (okay, so if you like diet sodas, at least you won’t consume the empty calories, but we mean water here). Also, since the main cause of kidney stones is dehydration, it’s essential to keep your body hydrated with sixty-four ounces (eight glasses of eight ounces) of water a day.
Action 2: Change How You Eat
Watch any hot-dog-eating contest and you know that there are as many eating styles in this world as there are actors waiting tables in Hollywood. You can have a positive effect on your health by making some subtle changes not just with what goes into your mouth, but also with how you put it there.
AVOID LATE MEALS If your idea of late-night entertainment is a party with a bowl of Lucky Charms, switch to lifting weights while watching Leno or Letterman (see Chapter 4). Lying down so soon after eating encourages the flow of acid back up your esophagus so you get that burning taste, which will intensify the symptoms of GERD. While you’re at it, avoid GERD-promoting items like foods or beverages containing pepper or peppers, caffeine, and alcohol. Some pills can also cause GERD if you don’t take them with water (these are individual to the person).
BUY NEW DISHES Eat on nine-inch plates instead of traditional thirteen-inch dinner plates. Research has shown that the visual effect of eating is a powerful signal to your stomach to slow the digestion process. People who eat meals from smaller plates consume fewer calories—but still have the same feeling of satiety as people who eat off larger dishes. Finally a case where size matters, and smaller is better. Reducing portion sizes also has the effect of making you up to 3 years younger because it helps reduce arterial and immune aging.
TRICK YOUR DIGESTION SYSTEM Many obese people have received attention for losing weight from gastric bypass surgery. After the surgery, people simply can’t eat as much food because a major portion of their stomach has been excluded. But researchers recently found out that part of the reason why they’re not hungry isn’t necessarily because their stomachs are smaller, but because the segment of the stomach producing the appetite-inducing ghrelin hormone was removed. But those hormones aren’t just in the stomach; they’re in the intestines, too. So one of the
ways you can turn those hunger triggers off is by making sure you don’t get to the point of feeling famished. The slower you digest food, the slower your stomach empties, the fuller you’ll feel, and the lower the chance that you’ll wind up with an aerial endorsement contract from Goodyear.
Fiber is one way to do that; here’s another: If you have a little fat before your meal, you’ll prevent your stomach from emptying quickly. Example: If you have tea and unbuttered toast in the morning, your stomach empties in about twenty to thirty minutes, leaving you craving a midmorning Doritos binge. But if you spread some peanut butter or apple butter on your toast, it takes about three and a half hours for the toast to leave your stomach. Feeling fuller slows everything down. We recommend eating a little fat at each meal, but especially before your most gorgeprone meal of the day—dinner. Eat about seventy calories in the form of healthy monounsaturated fats. That’s about six walnuts, twelve cashews, or twenty peanuts. The extra fat also has another advantage: It helps absorb fat-soluble nutrients like the lycopene in tomatoes.
TRY DIFFERENT DESSERTS We’re a society programmed to end our meals with something sweet—a piece of chocolate, a cookie, or some mile-high fudge monstrosity. Besides the damage dessert can do to your waistline, ending your meal with sugary foods help promote the buildup of bacteria on your teeth. Instead, think about other ways you can end your meal. Why not do what many Europeans do—and make salad the last thing you eat? Or even try three ounces of low-fat cheese or a handful of peanuts; they’re foods that help clear harmful sugars and plaque away from your teeth.

Action 3: Really Feel What You Eat
Look, when it comes to health, nobody’s perfect. But what’s our goal here? To improve your health, and to keep you young and active. So let’s say your overall digestive health ranks a 4 on a scale from 1 to 10; you don’t have to get to a 10 to live better. An 8 would make your insides feel as if they’re getting a Swedish massage. And you’ll live longer and better because of it. If you’re bothered, nagged, or even just mildly irritated by occasional rumblings in your gut, one of the best things you can do for your health is play mad scientist for a couple weeks. We don’t know about you, but we always loved science lab. Mix and match ingredients, and you’ll come up with the coolest concoctions that are customized to the needs of your body.
Since food has so much of an influence on our digestion, it stands to reason that you can change the way you live and feel by figuring out the foods that are causing you trouble. Since there are so many foods to choose from, the best way to experiment is through the food-elimination test (no, you won’t be looking in the toilet again). In this test, you completely eliminate one group of foods for about three days in a row. During that time, you should take notes about how you feel with regard to energy levels, fatigue, and digestive regularity. Take notes when you go off foods and—just as important—how you feel when you reintroduce them into your diet. That way, you’ll be in tune to those things that make you feel worse once you start eating them again. Here’s the order of groups of food we’d suggest you eliminate from your diet at different times, just for two or three days:
wheat products
dairy products
protein
carbohydrates (including sugar)
fat
artificial colors
When you eliminate a group from your diet, you’ll notice different things about the way you feel. For instance, you may have more energy when you eliminate the aging fats (saturated and trans) from your diet, and that’ll help you stick to a diet low in saturated fat because you’ll notice—and like—the changes. It’s all about awareness—being in tune to which foods make you feel crummy and which make you want to sprint to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. This three-day elimination plan is an especially good test because you may be able to identify subtle food allergies through this method. While some food allergies may be as obvious as a botched hair transplant, others may not be so clear. Low-grade food allergies can make you feel as if you have a touch of the flu—with a runny nose and headache. Through this experiment, you can help make a diagnosis and avoid some of the foods that make you feel less well. Best of all, this experiment trains you to do something that’s good not only for your digestive system but for your overall health and youth. It teaches you to eat smaller meals by restricting some of the usual foods that you would toss in your mouth by habit. And that’s good for everyone.
Action 4: Supplement Your Food
One big bowl of chili is enough proof that food can be very powerful, especially if you’re sharing a tent. Still, you can make a few additions to help address this and other digestive issues.
MAKE YOURSELF PSYLLY That is, the supplement psyllium (pronounced “sillyum”). It’s a fiber supplement derived from a Mediterranean plantain, which has been shown to help bulk up stool and improve digestive flow by sucking water into the bowel. Take a rounded teaspoon per day, but make sure to add lots of water or you’ll feel like you just ate concrete.

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