How Does the Digestive System Influence Emotional Well-being?

The digestive system is one of the most complex and fascinating systems in the human body. A holistic perspective attributes central importance to the digestive system in its impact on a person's health and quality of life. Natural medicine compares the digestive system to the emotional system, checking the energy flow in this system first in any ailment.

The connection between the digestive system and the emotional system arises because both systems include three overlapping principles: nutrition, movement, and drainage.

Nutrition is the primary function of the digestive system. The digestive system nourishes the body with optimal nutrients: macronutrients, minerals, vitamins, and more.

Additionally, the digestive system operates through movement. The movement is peristaltic, meaning a wave-like muscle movement that pushes different substances through the digestive tract.

Another crucial part of the digestive system is drainage. The digestive system drains waste accumulated during food breakdown and waste collected from body cells and deposited in the liver. The waste moves from the liver to the intestines and is excreted. If the drainage process is halted, toxins build up. According to Chinese medicine, constipation, essentially a lack of drainage, is the root cause of all diseases.

These three principles also function in the emotional realm. In the area of nutrition, it's important to nourish the soul with new ideas, life meaning, fulfillment, interest, love, and faith.

In the area of movement, the ability to be flexible and flow with changes, mental fluidity, flexibility, and coping with different and challenging situations.

The area of drainage includes releasing outdated ideas, irrelevant preconceptions, old grudges and anger, destructive habits, and negative energies. Ways to drain emotions and negative actions can include crying, laughing, anger, sports, and writing. Illness is sometimes the body's way of emotionally detoxifying when the person does not allow other drainage methods.

A person who adheres to these three principles, both in the digestive system and emotional system, enjoys a better quality of life and health of body and mind.