The Bitter Truth - Your Holiday Digestion Guide
All traditional diets had bitter flavors in them - we have bred the bitter flavor out, demonizing it, and paved the way to our own digestive demise.
Bitter is a dirty word (when it comes to food), but it didn’t used to be. And it shouldn’t be.
Food used to be bitter - across every single culture in history, all of our diets had bitter flavors woven into daily life, and that was good for us and our digestion. Now they are not, and that it not-so-good for us.
Try and remember the last time you tasted something bitter. Your coffee, perhaps? That’s about the only bitter food Americans currently consume on a regular basis, but that’s not enough to keep our digestion running smoothly, especially as we age, and especially-especially if we’re smothering the bitter flavor of the coffee with milk and sugar.
You literally need bitters
No bitter flavor in our diets equals a multitude of digestive problems. Bad news bears.
The flavor is the medicine. There are over 25 different taste receptors in the mouth that pick up on bitter flavors, triggering a cascade of reactions throughout the digestive tract. If that fact alone doesn’t tells you something about how imperative it is that we consume bitter foods, I don’t know what will.
Bitter stimulate the three pillars of robust digestion: stomach acid, bile, and pancreatic enzymes. Adequate saliva/mucosal secretions is also incredibly important, but that’s a conversation for another day. To digest your food properly (and to avoid things like bloating, heartburn and constipation), you need ample amounts of all three. For the vast majority of low-grade digestive problems that people experience, supporting these three pillars will go a loooong way towards resolving them. Now, we do that with more than herbs, but in my professional opinion, bitter herbs should form the backbone of any digestive health protocol.
Let’s dig deeper into these pillars one-by-one.
STOMACH ACID
The list of nutrients that require you to have robust, adequate stomach acid for proper digestion is almost as long as the list of reasons 99% of you should throw away those “anti-acid” medications. But I digress. Proteins, carbohydrates, and most super important minerals are on that list, mmmkay? Low stomach acid means poor uptake of nutrients (like protein and B12, for example) and weaker stomach tissues. Many people experience acid reflux or GERD because they don’t have enough stomach acid, despite the mistaken belief that they have too much. (For my nerds: bitters stimulate gastrin and increase the production of both pepsin and intrinsic factor)
BILE
Bile gets a bad rap. Which is a shame, because it’s freaking important and amazing. It’s your body’s built-in laxative “feedback mechanism,” keeping you from getting constipated (which is why people who get their gallbladders removed often develop issues with constipation). It’s essential to how you digest fats and, crucially, makes fat-soluble nutrients (A, D, E, K) more available for assimilation. A robust bile flow helps rid the liver of waste products and keeps you from getting gallstones.
Bitters stimulate bile. Think of them like strength training for your liver: they make it work so it can stay healthy, just like challenging your muscles when you exercise.
ENZYMES
You basically have two places in the digestion chain that secrete the enzymes necessary to break down carbs, proteins and fats (and other micronutrients) so that you can absorb them and put them to good use: saliva in the mouth and pancreatic enzymes from the…pancreas (the pancreas deploys it’s load of enzymes to the small intestine). Bitters stimulate secretions of enzymes in both places, facilitating awesome absorption of all those nummy nutrients from your holiday feast.
BONUS
There’s some reason to suspect that the stimulating action that bitters have on the pancreas extends to stimulating insulin too, since they’ve been known to help stabilize blood sugar and reduce cravings for sweets.
Bitters stimulate bile. Think of them like strength training for your liver: they make it work so it can stay healthy, just like challenging your muscles when you exercise.
So I tell you this because I love you: suck it up and take some bitters. And no, you can't dilute them.
Hopefully, if you’re in the US, you are being mindful of the skyrocketing COVID numbers and opting not to attend big holiday gatherings. Here are a few strategies for incorporating bitterness at your small, safe, COVID-conscious holiday:
If theres a salad, include some bitter greens alongside the milder lettuces! Dandelion greens, asian greens, mustard greens, raddichio, endive, frisée, etc are all available at the grocery store and add depth and color to a salad while also stimulating your bitter receptors. Even a big helping of cooked greens like mustard greens or collards is better than nothing, (and eating more leafy greens is great for you anyway).
That’s actually what OG salads were: nutrient-rich bitter greens and herbs (with vinegar or citrus juice to temper their bitterness) eaten at the start of meal with the specific intention of stimulating digestion of the heavier foods that came during the main course.
In herbal medicine, we make up for the lack of bitter foods in people’s diets by administering bitter herbs at mealtime. Now, the world of bitters is pretty vast and nuanced, so there’s probably a perfect plant for you based on the unique way digestion happens (or doesn’t) in your body. But there are some broadly applicable plants that play nice with most everyone, too. If you have access to a health food store or other tincture vendor, here are a few plants to look for that are tried-and-true digestion superstars:
angelica (angelica archangelica): bitter, warming, moves blood to digestive organs
yellow dock (rumex crispus): bitter, cooling, stimulates bile, specific for helping diminish heartburn
motherwort (leonurus cardiaca): bitter, cooling, calming to the nervous system, specific for easing stress that leads to a pounding or racing heart
artichoke leaf (cynara spp.): bitter, cooling, great at helping with constipation as it contains teeny-tiny amounts of the compound found in most commercial laxatives
ginger (zingiber officinale): not a bitter but so classic. warming, stimulates circulation to digestive organs, encourages muscular contractions to ease constipation. combine it with one of the cooling herbs above if your digestion runs on the sluggish side.
Dark, dark chocolate (at least 70% cacao), a hoppy IPA, and strong black coffee (decaf, preferably) are three more excellent options in a pinch.
In summary: Eat something bitter (or take a bitters formula) right before or alongside every meal for the holidays, and notice the difference in (or absence of) bloating, nausea, heartburn, gas or constipation compared to years past.
As usual, Jim McDonald says it better than I ever could, so I will leave you with his wise words:
“People associated bitterness with negative virtues such as spite and resentment, and yet, what emotional bitterness really originates from is stagnation; the inability to release a belief or feeling that no longer serves, but rather hinders, our wellness, development, and growth. The bitter person is oppressed by avoidance of the very thing they cannot let go. Only by embracing bitterness can we learn what it has to offer—to teach us. In this embrace we find it rich in medicine.
As it applies to herbs, these same factors resonate. We avoid bitterness because its taste seems uncomfortable; it challenges us. And yet when embraced, we find what it offers us is an abundance of medicine, which allows us to escape from a state of stagnation and release those things, both physiological and emotional, that hinder the blossoming of our wellness.”