The Synbiotic Dance Between Eating Rhythm and Digestion – Eating Rhythm Series – Episode 170

Hola amigos! Welcome to One Small Bite!

Have you ever noticed how stress or anxiety affects your eating rhythm? Have you ever noticed how your eating rhythm affects your digestion? Well my friends, I’m going to connect the dots. I’m going to culminate the Eating Rhythm series with a deep dive into the symbiotic dance between the eating rhythm and digestion system.

Here’s a overview of what I’m going to cover:

• Review the eating rhythm and its effects on health
• Describe my client’s digestive and eating rhythm journey
• IBS, the Low FODMAP Diet and how an eating rhythm helps
• Chrono-nutrition and the gut microbiome connection
• One small bite eating rhythm approach that helps the digestion

Episode Show Notes:

Review of the eating Rhythm and its Effects on Health
In the last five episodes I’ve provided various examples of the importance of an adequate eating rhythm and how it’s connected to sleep and our mental and physical health. If you haven’t had a chance, go take a listen to episodes 165-168.

Just to review though…an adequate eating rhythm is the cadence of meals that one consumes in the day to provide an adequate amount of energy and nutrients that meets the body’s needs and a person’s wants.

What does that mean exactly?

It means an eating pattern that feels right for you. When we eat meals that contain a variety of food groups, foods we enjoy, and when we enjoy our meals, we’re fueling ourselves adequately. Combine that with an adequate eating rhythm, or schedule of meals, we fuel our body, mind, and soul.

My client’s digestive and eating rhythm journey
A few years back I was working with a client who wanted to improve her digestive problems. She was diagnosed a few months back with IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. This is a condition where people suffer from a combination of abdominal pain, bloating, flatulence and excessive gas, constipation, or diarrhea. I’ll discuss IBS in more detail in just a minute.

This client couldn’t figure out what to eat, and she was also struggling with high stress, increased weight gain, and the fear of poor health. When we started working we tried a dietary approach called the Low FODMAP diet.

IBS, the Low FODMAP Diet, and How an eating rhythm helps
The Low FODMAP diet is the only well studied diet for people with IBS. It has been shown to improve symptoms in about 60% of people with IBS. It’s a four phase diet, much like many other diet approaches, that includes an elimination phase, a light reintroduction phase, a robust reintroduction phase, and a maintenance phase.

However, I didn’t want to put my client on the full diet protocol because she had a history of weight cycling, which means she’s gained, lost, and gained weight several times in the past. Weight cycling is a much stronger indicator of future weight gain, with a higher likelihood of future health problems developing. The benefit of the full Low FODMAP elimination protocol is lost to the long-term complications.

Therefore, we took a different approach. I had her take a FODMAP Light approach, which is better indicated for people with a history of weight cycling.

To return to IBS. It is a digestive disorder that has four subtypes – IBS-C (constipation), IBS-D (diarrhea), IBS-M (mixed – constipation and diarrhea), and IBS-U (unknown). My client was dealing with IBS-C, which also indicated to me that she may not be eating enough.

Why is this important? When people are constipated it’s not just a lack of sufficient fiber or water in their diet, it may also be related to low food consumption. Think about it…the less someone eats, the less the body has to get rid of. Therefore, putting her on a diet can lead to more constipation problems in the future.

Chrono-nutrition and Gut microbiome connection
In a systematic literature review by Henri Duboc, MD, PhD and colleagues titled Disruption of Circadian Rhythms and Gut Motility An Overview of Underlying Mechanisms and Associated Pathologies, they sought out to established the connection between the circadian rhythm, bowel movements, and digestive health. They found that disruptions of either the circadian or digestive rhythms lead to disruptions in digestion, in particular, constipation with IBS. They found a symbiotic dance occurring with the central clock of the body known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus, and the peripheral clock cells of the digestive tract.

Duboc and colleagues go on to explain the various factors that stimulate motility and create a digestive rhythm of movement and rest throughout the digestive tract. Those factors include the day and night, an eating rhythm that stimulates hormones in the stomach like gastrin, ghrelin, serotonin, and cholecystokinin, and physical activity like exercise.

Once again, it’s important to point out this symbiotic dance of body systems. The eating rhythm is just as important as the sleep and movement. Therefore, an interruption of an eating rhythm has implications on the disruption of one’s overall health.

In another recent study titled Circadian Rhythms, Gut Microbiota, and Diet: Possible Implications for Health, published 2023 in Nutrition, Metabolism, and Cardiovascular Diseases by Sofia Lotti and colleagues explains the concept of chrono-nutrition and its effect on health. She finds in her review that

“A key role in maintaining the balance between circadian rhythms and gut motility seems to be attributed to meal-timing and diet quality, as well as to certain microbial metabolites, in particular short-chain fatty acids.”

This finding in the review of multiple studies shows the very importance of maintaining an adequate eating rhythm to help the muscle in the digestive tract move. The hormone and neurochemical signaling along with the bacterial metabolites allows for the muscles in the gut to contract in a rhythm.

Therefore, getting my client to maintain a regular rhythm of eating, along with targeting certain FODMAPs that might be causing some discomfort, really helped improve her IBS symptoms. Now of course this might sound too good to be true, but it wasn’t just a blanket advice of giving her a diet plan with three meals and two snacks with specific instructions on what FODMAPs to exclude. No, that would have been too overwhelming for her busy life.

That’s why it was important to go slow, and make the changes over time. See what I mean below.

One small bite eating rhythm approach that helps the digestion
We did discuss the long-term goal of creating a regular eating and sleeping cycle to support her body’s needs. But how we started was much simpler. We focused mostly on her night time and bedtime routine. We looked at particular habits that kept her stuck in staying up late like scrolling through her phone, or working on her laptop.

We needed to add friction to the old habits in a subtle way so that she would be reminded to make those necessary changes at night. She needed one small interruption to her old night time habits.

She started by moving her cell phone away from her bed, and putting her journal on top of her pillow. These were just small interruptions that provided a small and subtle reminder to journal, meditate, or do some deep breathing exercises. She started slowly, and over time added several days to these new habits.

These new bedtime habits allowed her to get better sleep. They had a domino effect. These small interruptions allowed her to get up earlier and prepare an adequate breakfast. At times, she was able to prepare lunch, or at least think about what she wanted to do. Over time, she was able to pay attention to the FODMAPs that caused most of the problems for her, and come up with new recipes and replacements.

These were both the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. She saw an improvement in her IBS symptoms, more energy throughout the day, better mood, feeling motivated more often, and just an overall positive feeling and peace with her diet. She was able to be consistent, which turned into automatic.

This is the Habit Change Recipe I discussed in episode 167. Take a listen in order to get a deeper understanding.

More importantly, you now have one small bit approach you can take as well. It may not be exactly as this client did, but if you’re dealing with digestive problems, maybe it take creating some interruption into your routine like talking to a friend, or putting a reminder on your phone to get you to see a dietitian.

I wish you all the best in your journey, and hope this episode helped in one small way.

Thank you!

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Chop the diet mentality; Fuel Your Body; and Nourish Your Soul!