How to improve protein digestion

Digesting protein is important to get amino acids for hormone production, hair, skin, and nails among other body functions.

Amino acids are the building blocks of the cells of your body. Without amino acids, your body can’t regenerate itself.

One of the reasons why I started my gut health journey was because my hair was thinning and falling off…

At first I thought it was because I had some sort of iron deficiency, not enough collagen in my diet, but none of that fixed the issue… the root cause was that I wasn’t digesting proteins and that made me deficient in amino acids…

One thing to understand about digestion is that breaking food down into key nutrients requires enzyme activity. Building cells from those key nutrients also requires enzyme activity. Therefore the way to fix the issue is to fix enzyme activity.

You can’t just supplement with nutrients or digestive enzymes because if the problem is poor enzyme activity, then those nutrients won’t build themselves into new cells…

Enzymes require you to have the right environment to function…

This is the core lesson I learned from brewing beer… To digest proteins in barley or wheat malt, I needed a specific environment… Grains needed to soak with water & minerals at ~130 °F and a slightly more acidic pH compared to digesting starch which required a higher temperature and slightly more alkaline pH…

That’s why you’ll hear me say that gut health is all about understanding water, minerals, pH, temperature and probiotics…

To improve protein digestion you have to create the proper environment…

That’s why the Beer Diet Project journey starts with proper hydration… water is needed for your body to produce stomach acid… minerals are needed to activate enzymes…

Vitamin D strengthens probiotics which ultimately break down food for you…

Here are some strategies I used to help improve protein digestion…

Hydration

Not only is it important to be hydrated, but also important to watch your timing when you drink water. If you are eating a protein heavy meal, know that water can dilute stomach acid. So you want to time your water intake so that you stop drinking water at least 30 minutes before a protein heavy meal, and wait about an hour after the meal to make sure you don’t dilute stomach acid.

Proper pH

To help with the acidity of your stomach, you can look into raw apple cider vinegar, lemon, or fermented foods and beverages like kombucha and sauerkraut.

This probably helps you understand why my main meal is ground beef, avocado and sauerkraut with my home brewed kombucha…

The Germans had it right by combining sauerkraut with their bratwurst…

Avoid sugar when eating protein

Sugar feeds bad bacteria in your gut… if you have trouble digesting protein, it could be bad bacteria in your gut. This is one reason why many people find that going keto helps them digest protein…

Pineapple and papaya

To digest food you need enzymes… some of the best protein digestive enzymes are bromelain and papain which come from pineapple and papaya…

There’s no need to buy digestive enzyme supplements. You are better off eating raw foods that contain the digestive enzymes that you need to properly digest food…

If you just need a boost to help digest, this smoothie helped me get protein digestive enzymes in my diet…

2 organic oranges (fresh squeezed juice)

1/2 organic pineapple

1/2 small organic papaya

The problem with this smoothie is the sugar content… not a problem if you have a healthy gut… if you have yeast overgrowth, then you may need to ferment pineapple instead. By fermenting you remove the sugar and also activate enzymes. So if this recipe doesn’t help, you may want to look into our pineapple coconut ale…

Eat foods that don’t require protein digestion

When I started, I couldn’t digest protein… improving protein digestion doesn’t happen overnight…

So rather than going without amino acids, I searched for foods I could eat that didn’t require protein digestion… That’s how I came across blue green algae

On the next lesson we’re going to go over how to improve carb digestion to reduce gas, bloating, and constipation…

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