Digestive Healing Week on MLitK! Only a few spots left on our Digestive Healing Total Health Retreat taking place June 25th – June 27th in Midland, ON! We’re dedicating this week to health and healing! This week’s Love In The Kitchen LIVE TV has been postponed!
So what’s your favourite snotty food? An awful question to be sure but you know I go crazy for Okra and a chunk of aloe in my morning smoothie makes everything run, well, smoothly. It’s the slime factor. Ever blend up chia seeds? How about simmer some flax seed tea or even soak flax seeds overnight to make a raw tortilla? How about slippery elm lozenges for a sore throat? The snotty foods abound!
A nicer word for ‘snotty’ is of course mucilaginous and this mucilage factor does amazing feats in healing up the old digestive tract. It makes perfect sense that mucilage would heal a mucus membrane which is what lines our insides from top to bottom. A rinse with slippery elm tea can help heal up mouth ulcers, teas of flax seed and/or slippery elm will soothe inflamed and irritated throats, coat the stomach and promote healing for heart burn, gastric reflux and stomach ulcers.
What are inflammatory bowel diseases? Well they are ulcerations and inflammations further down the line in the digestive tract. The challenge we have with IBD and IBS is often that our digestive tracts are so angry that they are unable to properly absorb nutrition from the foods we eat and perpetuate the growth of the bad bacteria that are implicated in the onset and flare of such conditions. We need that nutrition- all those vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, and phytonutrients to heal and repair. The first step them, of course, is to stop that anger cycle and begin to heal.
Think of how awesome aloe feels when applied to a burn? Now imagine that soothing action happening to the hot, hot, heat of intestinal irritation and inflammation. Suddenly those snotty foods are looking pretty great right?
Now, an added benefit of these slimy foods is often the power pack of nutrition they offer. Aloe for example is also anti viral, anti-bacterial, and anti-inflammatory- all important factors when trying to heal. Now there has been much debate, largely among the GAPS diet followers regarding Mucilagenous Polysaccharides- those goodies that give off the slime factor. I do believe however, that as long as you are not in an acute-flare stage, they are monumentally healing.
The healing power of these Mucilaginous Polysaccharides include:
- Helps stop the bleeding, damage and leakage of the intestine wall.
- Relieves autoimmune response and allergic conditions.
- Helps to effectively balance and restore proper immune system function.
- Reduce inflammation: very strong anti-inflammatory agent.
- Encourages and increases: the tissue healing process.
- Prevents the production of to much stomach acids which lead to heartburn, acid reflux disease or gastro esophageal reflux disease known as GERD.
- Maintains or correct fluid levels within the colon after continued use: eliminating both diarrhea and constipation.
- By helping all the body’s systems work together as they should: proper digestion, absorption of foods and nutrients are no longer a problem.
- Protects and encourages healthy flora in the digestive tract.
- Controls chronic yeast growth: to insure that normal healthy flora may remain.
- And added bonus is that it can be be used simultaneously with any medication there are no known contra-indications.
I have been playing around in my kitchen as I prep and test recipes for the Digestive Healing Weekend Retreat and I do think I have come up with maybe the most healing aaaaand delicious blend yet!
Muci-licious Chocolate Pudding
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: None
Ingredients (Serves 1)
- 2 Tbs chia seeds(pre-grind in a coffee grinder if you have a weak blender or will be using a food processor)
- 2 Tbs raw cacao powder(or ground cacao beans using coffee grinder)
- 2 Tbs organic unsweetened apple sauce or steamed apple puree
- 1/2 cup water (or herbal tea of choice- licorice would be a good one!)
- 2 dates, soaked
- 1 Tbs fresh mint or 1 drop food grade peppermint essential oil
- honeyor sweetener of choice to taste
- pinch of slippery elm powder (optional)
- 1 tsp- 1 Tbs fresh aloe gel (optional)
Instructions
Thoroughly blend all ingredients together
Refrigerate for 1-2 hours until set and thickened
Enjoy!
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I love marshmallow root. I make a tea with either the dried root or the tincture mixed with ginger tea. I’m not sure if marshmallow root helps the digestive tract, but it is wonderful for a sore throat and inflamed tonsils.
If sure does!
That looks so good! I’m having my first endoscopy/colonoscopy tomorrow (fasting today) and I wonder if this would this be a good post op treat?
Trying to plan ahead as I cant stand the idea of putting anything less than amazing ingredients though my soon-to-be-sparkling-clean colon.
Do you have any suggestions for taking aloe for IBS that doesn’t include cutting up an aloe plant? I don’t have one right now and am afraid that it will be crazy expensive to buy the aloe the size of the one you had in your video!
I wish i could come to your digestive health weekend but I have just enrolled in IHN for September (yay!) and am funnelling all my money into that!
thanks!
Great post! I had no idea the benefits of these ‘snotty’ foods. Very cool indeedy.
Yum. That looks so delish.
I have to ask, given your repeated use of the term ‘snotty’, but do mucilaginous foods give you a snotty nose, as do dairy, oils etc? Is that a side-effect?
No! It actually as the opposite effect- helping eliminate excess mucous from the body.
Snotty is actually a description of the texture of these foods. Ever ate Okra?
[...] what you get is a beautiful smooth and silky texture. And it is delicious. Okra, aloe, irish moss, chia, soaked flax seeds all have this similar property. We call it ‘mucilagenous’ and that [...]
[...] ChocoChia Pudding [...]