How to Digest Food Faster

The factors that determine the length of this transit time include not only the type and amount of food that was eaten, but also your activity level, general health, stress that you might be experiencing, and your characteristics.

If you are worried about your digestion, there are some steps you could follow to speed up the process. Keep reading to learn how to digest food faster and other important bits of information related to your digestion.

The symptoms that accompany slow digestion or constipation include bloating, gas, nausea and burping. Moreover, you might be feeling low on energy and gain weight faster than usual. Untreated slow digestion can negatively affect your entire body and lead to other medical conditions. Moreover, food waste stuck in your colon for a longer period of time can get reabsorbed into the bloodstream and irritate your body.

Foods for digestion improvement also include green vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, spinach, collard greens, kale, artichokes, and the like. They contain a lot of magnesium and fibre and promote good bacteria in your gut, thus making sure your digestive system stays healthy.

Consuming too much dairy can be problematic as it is usually high in fat and can lead to digestive problems. You should definitely avoid dairy products if you are not sure whether you are lactose intolerant as they can otherwise damage your digestive system.

You probably know that the food you eat travels through your digestive system. Through a series of processes your body extracts nutrients and it can take 6 to 8 hours for a regular meal to make its way through all of them. Depending on what you eat and drink, you may be able to speed up the amount of time it takes for your body to digest a meal.

The digestion process starts with ingestion. When you take in food, it gets physically broken down into smaller pieces by your teeth. Your salivary glands are triggered and saliva is released to moisten and lubricate the food.

This is where the fun begins. Your swallowing kicks in and moves the food from your mouth into your esophagus. Contractions from a muscle called the peristalsis transports the food down this tube and into another, more familiar muscle, the stomach.

Your stomach churns your food and mixes it with naturally produced bodily chemicals. Gastric juices, acidic fluids, and enzymes breakdown your food at a molecular level and turns it into a creamy paste called chyme.

At the bottom of your stomach, there’s a little gateway called the pyloric sphincter which control the entry of the chyme into your intestine.

The body digests different macronutrients at different rates, and the combination of protein, carbohydrates and fats in a meal affects how quickly it moves through your system. Try an experiment to see this first-hand: Today, eat an apple by itself—chances are, you’ll feel hungry an hour later. Tomorrow, eat an apple with a serving of peanut butter, and notice how you feel satiated longer. The peanut butter adds fat and protein to your snack, helping tide you over until dinner. But what takes place during digestion to make this true? First, you have to understand how each macronutrient is processed.

While the overall process of digestion is similar person to person, factors such as gender, age, and medical conditions can change how quickly food is digested.

Here's what you need to know about how digestion works, how long it takes, and when you may need to speed up the process.