Welcome to Joy Lab!: Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons And welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I am Aimee Prasek. So here at Joy Lab, we infuse science with soul to help you build your resilience and uncover your joy. And we are talking about what we eat and how it impacts our mood, but with a focus on the cephalic phase or head phase of digestion. Which sounds really boring I think, but it is very interesting.
So, uh, and very important, if you are a human who eats food, I think this is for you. And if you're a human who multitasks while eating your food, this is especially for you and me. 'cause I do that at lunchtime. Um, something I do in all our meetings I eat.
Henry: I hadn't noticed that.
Aimee: Yep. Not when we're recording, but...
Henry: Well, that's good.
Aimee: Yeah. So I, I struggle with this at lunchtime. I'm a multitasker when I eat. So if folks you can relate, then let's get into this. First I think the default here is to think of digestion as this internal process that just happens completely separate from our external experience. Like the food goes down the chute, saliva, secretion, acid from the stomach, enzymes from the pancreas, whatever gets involved, absorption, nutrients.
It just happens right? Then it gets evacuated, all the extras. It seems like this invisible internal, automatic process that happens without relationship to anything outside of our gut. And it's so far from the truth. That's what this head phase, the cephalic phase of digestion is all about. This phase, the cephalic phase is initiated really by the sight and the smell of food.
It sort of continues on as we taste. So let's do a guided visualization here for a moment. Just imagine you're walking into a bakery. And they're baking fresh bread. You open this door and the smell just kind of surrounds you, soaks into, you take a deep breath and then what happens? You start salivating, your body is like, okay, let's do this. Let's eat some bread.
So this head phase actually starts to fire up the digestive system. Research in this, uh, phase, the cephalic phase, it estimates that about 30 to 40% actually of our total digestive response to eating is due to this head phase. So we're talking about this as well during our element of savoring, because this is really about mindful eating in a lot of ways, savoring our food, noticing it being present while we eat.
Henry: it's true. Digestion starts in the brain. So you know that I like to look at things from an evolutionary perspective when I can. So the question is, why were we designed to savor our food?
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: So one reason I think is that it, it draws us to foods that are going to be nourishing for us. Things that look and smell good are more likely to be good for us. So remember, our ancestors did not have the smell of baked bread or really early on, or certainly not chocolate chip cookies like we do now. They were choosing between berries that were poisonous and others that were sweet and packed full of nutrients.
So why is this important today? Well, when it comes to mood, we are what we eat, but we're also how we eat. Because it's not just what we put into our mouths that matters. It is also how well does it get broken down? How efficiently does it cross the lining of the gut and go into the bloodstream so the body can use it?
And then how well does it get assimilated into our bodies? So as you said. It might seem like this happens on autopilot, but it doesn't work nearly as well as it does when we participate fully with our noodle. that, that might be a better term. The noodle phase of digestion
Aimee: I don't know. Our gluten-free folks might be like, Hmm.
Henry: yeah, it, it might be might be confusing. I
Aimee: better than cephalic though.
Henry: we'll keep working on it.
Aimee: Alright. Anyway, speaking of the participation that we have in this process, so there's a classic study that I wanna share to highlight that, you know, how we participate how distractions can impact digestion.
So in this study they were looking at mineral absorption in the small intestine for folks who were first relaxed, like in a relaxed state, and then they were distracted. So when participants first drank that mineral drink, in a relaxed state, it was fully absorbed a hundred percent. In the second step, the same participants drank the same mineral drink, but they had one person talking about like space travel to them in one year and another blathering on about financial planning in the other year. So they have these, multiple points of distraction. Which isn't far from what we do during a multitasking lunch, right? You've got like YouTube on and something else happening over here and you're eating. So this is not a out there scenario. So guess what the absorption rate was of the mineral drink for those folks.
Henry: 80%.
Aimee: That would seem like it. It was zero though. It was 0%.
It's wild. It completely halted for up to an hour. For those folks, the digestive system was like, nope, not until you pay attention to me. So they didn't assimilate it, they didn't get those nutrients from it for a much longer time compared to when they were in a relaxed state.
That just, it blows my mind. I think that that level of participation that is needed for digestion to happen more efficiently is surprising. And when we're talking about the importance of nutrients from our food to build a healthy brain, this is really important.
Henry: Well, you know, I can't help but wonder if that experiment, the, the folks listening to, you know, conversations in both ears if it was not only distracting, but also at least a little bit stressful.
Aimee: Yes, good point. And financial planning, please. Who doesn't get stressed out with
Henry: Yeah. Really stressful or boring or both?
Yeah. So our colleague, Carolyn Denton, likes to say that the last thing you need to do when you are being chased by a lion is to digest your food. So when we're stressed, even if it's a lot less intense than the chasing lion. The focus of our body turns away from digestion, not important at that time.
Now, I know some people when they get stressed, they have the urge to go to the bathroom, which seems like it's involving the digestive system. But really it's just another example that when this is happening, we are not in rest and digest mode. We are in fight or flight mode. So anything that is upsetting or that bumps up your stress level is best to avoid if you can while you're eating. I used to read the newspaper or listen to the news while eating multitasking, right? Um, but it almost always stresses me out. So now if I do anything, I might listen to music or something or else just eat.
So anybody who has ever taken a mindfulness based stress reduction class has probably done the famous raisin meditation, and that is where you are given three raisins, if you're lucky. Maybe
Aimee: Oh, I only got one.
Henry: sorry Aimee. You gotta pay more for the the three raisin class.
So you're given these raisins and then you're guided through at least a 10 minute experience of eating them mindfully, one at a time. Now, if you've ever done this with just raisins as your only focus, it's a little over the top, but it is very revealing about the way that we usually eat. We don't savor our food. We don't relish it. Often, we actually don't even notice it. We might just take a handful of raisins and toss 'em into the back of our throat, or in my case, a handful of peanut M&Ms. And then you start going for the next handful before it's really even half chewed.
So if you've never done it, give
yourself a chance to eat a meal in silence. No news, not even any music, nothing to read. Nobody to talk to. Just you and the food. And if you feel like it, maybe prepare some food that you just really like and so you know you're more likely to kind of really get into the experience of it. But give yourself a lot of time. No deadline. No checking your phone, no conversations. And don't even try to enjoy it. Just try to notice it and then see what happens. I think you probably will enjoy it. I also think you will slow down.
And I think when all is said and done, that might be the biggest reason why eating mindfully helps your digestion. Because when you slow down and notice and you actually see and smell your food, and that just naturally stimulates your saliva, and you'll notice that you're making more saliva. You won't notice this, but your stomach is also preparing to break the food down when you give it time. And then if you chew slowly, you've done a pretty good job of letting the food break down in your mouth.
So by the time it gets to the stomach, there's not as much work to do. It's so lot easier for the stomach juices to do their thing. And then the food will stay longer there. And get processed more. So by the time it gets to the intestines, the job is easier, and so on. So the other huge advantage to slowing down while you're eating is that you will almost certainly eat less because your, your body eventually tells you that you've had enough to eat.
There's a satiety mechanism that kicks in. But the way we eat, typically, we've already eaten more than that. By the time that the body has time to register that we've had enough. The signal takes a while to get there.
So eating mindfully gives us a chance that we'll notice this right when it's happening. And we might even pay attention to it and heed it because we're more present for the whole experience.
Aimee: Thanks for breaking it down. That was a pun maybe. All right. Um, I'm thinking too about the importance of family meals and where mindful eating can happen. There's so much great data on family meals and how it's beneficial in so many aspects of relationships, but also in health outcomes.
It just makes me think about having a calm family meal where we focus together on food and something we do as a family at the beginning is we, we take a moment and we smell our food. And then when we're eating, we pick out kind of one thing to notice that is interesting or special or that we like or that we don't like. And we have a five-year-old. So it's very fun. There's many answers that come from this. Um, but it does, you know, it doesn't have to be like an hour in silence while you eat your soup. I love the idea of doing a silent meal for sure. I think that's super valuable. But then this can take shape realistically around the dinner table with folks.
As long as people aren't talking about space travel and financial planning. I think you're set right? That's what the takeaway is.
Henry: Can I share a quick story, Aimee? I just last night, um. We celebrated my granddaughter's second birthday. So two years old and her family made her one of her very special, most favorite meals, which is a really, really rich, decadent baked mac and cheese. Okay. So just her favorite thing ever. And the thing that surprised me about this, and I re thought of this as you were talking, is that before she had really like overdone it. She just stopped eating. She still had mac and cheese left on her plate, and she just said, I, I'm full, I'm done. And she stopped and it's just like, wait, this is weird. This just doesn't happen, you know? No, that didn't stop her from eating her dirt cake with gummy worms in it.
But still I was impressed.
Aimee (2): That is a perfect meal to do mindful eating on. It is surprising. My daughter did the same thing yesterday when we made like a lemon cake together. And she ate half a, she's like, oh, it's so delicious. And then I was like, how is there half a cake there? I got slightly offended. And I was like, whoa, this is, she's satisfied.
Yeah. It's funny what kind of comes up when we discount our body wisdom, but our body is, is talking to us. Those little kids, they listen to it. Oh, I'm done. It was delicious. Anyway, so thank you. That was a great story, Henry. And I'll put it in the show notes, a link for Mindful Eating Practice. Some tips in there from our blog so you can head there for more, but also experiment with this.
Create a mindful eating practice with your family. Let us know how it goes. You could share some comments on YouTube or in our NMH community. I'd love to get more ideas around what a mindful eating experience would look like with dirt cake, Mac and cheese and family members. I think that's I great. So to close and kind of in line, I think with this idea of distracted eating, I'll share a lesson or a quote, I don't know who said it first. But hopefully it can serve as a bit of awareness, um, maybe a reminder to close some tabs, silence some distractions, and focus in on our food and our body's wisdom. So here it is: "My mind is like my internet browser. There's 19 tabs open, three of them are frozen, and I have no idea where the music is coming from."
Isn't that great?
Henry: I love that.
Thanks for joining us!: Thank you for listening to the Joy Lab podcast. If you enjoy today's show, visit JoyLab.coach to learn more about the full Joy Lab program. Be sure to rate and review us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Please remember that this content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice and is not a replacement for advice and treatment from a medical professional. Please consult your doctor or other qualified health professional before beginning any diet change, supplement, or lifestyle program.
Please see our terms for more information.
