There are many causes of indigestion including stress, smoking, alcohol, ulcers, and of course a high fat diet.
But what many people do not realize is that most common forms of indigestion in basically healthy people can be prevented by simply eating foods in the correct combinations, or more importantly, avoiding food combinations that are likely to cause indigestion.
This article will give you a brief overview of the food combinations that are most likely to give you a pretty bad case of indigestion.
Hopefully, after reading this and avoiding these combinations, you'll find that your bouts of indigestion are few and far between.
The first thing you need to understand is that there are a number of different food groups and each food group uses a different enzyme or group of enzymes to digest that particular group.
What happens with people who suffer from chronic indigestion is that they're usually mixing foods from groups that don't go together.
Why don't they go together? Because the enzymes required to digest each type of food cancel each other out and ultimately what happens is these foods end up laying in your stomach for long periods of time, thus causing indigestion.
So, what are the food groups and which ones go together and which ones should be avoided during a single meal? The basic food groups are proteins, which include nuts, seeds, legumes and meats; vegetables, starches, which include potatoes, yams, squash, grains and corn; and fruits, which are further broken into sweet fruits and sour fruits.
Let's start with fruits because this is the easiest to understand.
Fruits should NEVER be eaten with anything.
If you're going to eat fruit, eat it as a snack by itself or way after your meal is over as a dessert.
Fruit will ferment with anything that you put with it.
Also, do not eat sweet and sour fruits together.
As for the remaining food groups, proteins and vegetables are excellent combinations.
A nice salad of greens with some lean turkey or chicken is unlikely to cause indigestion.
Do not put tomatoes in your salad.
Tomatoes are fruits and will not mix well with everything else.
Vegetables and starches also go very well together.
Actually, vegetables are almost the universal safe food as they only things they don't go well with are fruits.
What trips a lot of people up is eating proteins and starches.
We all do it.
How many people live on sandwiches for lunch? Even something as simple as turkey on whole wheat is asking for trouble.
However, if you restrict your protein and starch combinations to one meal a day, you limit your chances of coming away with an upset stomach.
In addition to avoiding certain food combinations, eating slowly and thoroughly chewing your food will also greatly reduce your chances of coming down with a case of indigestion.
To YOUR Health, Steve Wagner