So What About Bile !? 🤔 💭 The What, Why, and How to Help!
April 16, 2022
Bile is a critical component of a healthy digestive tract, but many people don’t really know much about it… let’s change that! Let’s dive in to learn more!
So, what about Bile? 🤔 💭
What is it, why is it important and how can I support my body’s bile?
Bile is here to help us in our digestion. Bile plays a critical role to help us in many ways including:
Absorb Fat and fat-soluble nutrients
Improve stool formation, preventing diarrhea / constipation cycles
Supporting bowel movements
Improving cholesterol breakdown via fat metabolism
Support the flow of digested food
Bile is produced in the LIVER, stored in the GALLBLADDER.
Unfortunately, many people today are struggling with sluggish livers, and overburdened gallbladders. The American population continues to have shockingly high increases of fatty liver disease, gallbladder attacks, gallstones, and surgical removals of gallbladders too!
Bile is so so important that your body makes sure to produce enough for storage, to have at the ready when you eat a meal. At mealtime, bile gets released from the gallbladder to help you breakdown the food into smaller and smaller components to help support absorption of nutrients and promote digestive flow.
The liquid substance called BILE is made of two ✌️ compounds called bilirubin and biliverdin.
Bilirubin is orangish yellow in color and biliverdin is green. Together they slosh around with a bunch of other complex juices that our digestive system uses to help us digest food and absorb nutrients, and then poo out the waste!
Now, have you ever heard the adage to eat the salad first at mealtime? Or have you ever heard of eating bitter foods to support your liver?
EXACTLY.
When we consume bitter foods, often green foods like arugula, watercress, moringa, spinach, and other bitter foods… it sparks our digestive tract into motion to prepare for a full meal. We start sending signals for the release of bile from the liver and gallbladder and signal the pancreas and other organ systems to work together to get ready to digest the oncoming meal.
But let me also say… when we think about the Standard American Diet… we eat a bunch of ultra-processed fast foods and junk foods that are incredibly sweet and are consumed very quickly. This is one of the primary reasons why we have liver and gallbladder problems so much! Those organ systems aren’t able to prepare and respond in time when we slurp down a big soda, spoon our 3rd bowl of ice cream, or guzzle down some sweetened juice or even a sugary fruit smoothie.
We need real food, whole food, with a calm environment so our organs can listen and communicate back and forth without the distractions and disruptions that happen under stress, eating with flashy screens or other forms of technology around. Our organs can’t hear what’s going on.. and before they know it…. we’re dropping food down our throats hitting our bellies without any chance to plan ahead, prepare for digestion!
When we eat like this it's like we’re surprising our neighbor knocking on their door screaming in the middle of the night to ask them to borrow a cup of sugar without sending them a mindful text asking if they are awake.
It’s like we’re splashing a bucket of cold water on an unsuspecting child resting quietly in bed.
It’s like we’re opening up the firehose from a firetruck at a random flower bed just minding its own business, drowning it in water and pressure… completely destroying it’s resting place in the garden. 🌷 🌻 🌸 🌼 🌺
We should be kinder to our bodies, don’t you think? We should be kinder, honoring our body’s beautiful abilities in all of their wonders. But, our standard ways of eating are simply destroying the ways in which our bodies were designed to eat and digest food!
So now.. what can we do to support our Bile abilities?
Eat in calm environments.
Consume bitter foods often, and early in mealtime.
Add herbs and spices to mealtime.
Consume healthy fats in appropriate small portions (like an avocado, an olive, a nut or seed)
Avoid liquid sugar drinks, meals, and snacks
Reduce and avoid fried foods, ultra-processed foods, highly processed oils
Now, if you know me, you know I LOVE herbs and spices. Let’s dive into a big leaf pile of herbs and spices shall we?
Some of my favorites to support our bile production, flow, and promote healthy liver and gallbladder function for healthy digestion include:
Holy Basil (tulsi)
Cilantro
Parsley
Peppermint
Dandelion Root (greens and teas)
Burdock Root
Green Tea
Turmeric
Artichoke Leaf
Milk Thistle
Nettles
Fenugreek
Licorice root
Ginger
Personally, I LOVE digestive teas that contain a lot of these ingredients to keep within my regular routine to support my digestion, healthy bile production, and to help keep me feeling my best (as best as I can at least!. If you want a product suggestion for awesome teas… let me know! Happy to point you in the right direction! :) Here’s an example below!
(ps. I always buy organic varieties without additives or sweeteners)
You might also think about adding in complementary gut supportive foods like lime and lemons, celery, spinach, artichokes, cabbage, sauerkraut, mustard greens, kale, brussels sprouts, dill, and apple cider vinegar (in small amounts at mealtime).
Next up, you can think about BINDING. How does all that food and bile work together to form a stool? You can thank fiber for the opportunity to bind our food and juices together. Think about whole foods, plant foods, beans, legumes, whole fruits and vegetables and many more REAL FOOD options.
Okay okay… now to say what I need to say that you probably already know:
Reduce intake of soda, soft drinks, highly processed junk foods and candies, added sugars, cookies, cakes, etc etc. highly processed plant oils like vegetable oil, corn and peanut oil, soybean oils, trans fats, etc. etc. All the things you know that big food brands manufacture for overconsumption that end up leaving us feeling lousy in the long-term and never even give us the nutrients we desperately need!
Crazy to think about but other activities outside of diet can help support our healthy bile flows too! Think about exercise, swimming, strength training, rest, yoga, walking and talking meditation, stress reduction, honoring your sleep.
Bile is super duper important for our healthy beautiful bodies as you can imagine by now. Do you think you’ve learned something new today!?
Tell me all about it in the comments below!
Share with a friend too!
Did you also know that Bile - with the help of a healthy liver and gallbladder - helps us detoxify waste products after we get sick, helps protect our immune system from harmful chemicals, toxins, and even heavy metals! Bile helps us have healthy bowel movements on a regular basis… and if you know… you know… there’s truly something special about an abundant, clean and clearing morning poo!
Have a food, nutrition, or health question you would like me to answer? Leave a comment reply and let me know! Your voice matters to me, so feel free to share it!
Wow… what a day… what a beautiful body we have when we know what we can do to help it be at its best! Tell me one thing you got from this post that you’ll think about implementing into your healthy lifestyle and do me a huge favor and give me a shout out to your friends, recommend they subscribe, send them something you learned today. Share the love and help me get this helpful info to more people.
I’m only here to help, 💙 Much love fam - Jonathan
Good Food + Good Living:
CookSmarts | Done-for-You Meal Plans and More. Become a Healthier Home Cook! Sign up today for a 14-day Free Trial!
Otamot: Can you pass the pasta sauce please? Like, no.. seriously. I love this stuff. Can we find a way to run this sauce “on tap” for lunch and dinner? Personally, I use it for salad, soups, sauces, and dressings, homemade hummus and more. Check them out here! My favorite whole-food organic pizza and pasta sauce! Get 10% off: Use code "Jonathan10" at Checkout!
BluBlox: continues to bring us new product solutions focused on safer electronics use, mitigating blue light exposure, glasses and frames, promoting red light reading lamps, and now they have EMF-blocking gear and attire including hats and beanies. The Anti-Radiation Hats shields up to 99% of EMF radiation, including those found in the 5G network. Check them out here if you’re interested in this kind of stuff! Currently, 30% off sale for select items. Want to learn more about EMF? Be sure to Use discount code “zigzag” at checkout and save an extra 15%!
Clean Beauty: Speaking of cosmetics, mitigating toxic chemicals, protecting skin, gut, and our infinitely interconnected biomes, my friends at MIG LIVING are still striving strong. Want to dig deep (skin deep) and learn more about clean beauty, safe regulations, items and ingredients to be worried about? Check out the EWG!
"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his/her patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease" --Thomas Alva Edison
If you like to hang out online, come find me and say hello! 😁
· Instagram 📸 🌱 🌶️ · Twitter 🐦 🐥 · LinkedIn 👔 👨⚕️ 💼
· Medium Writing Blog 📝 ✍️ · Facebook 😼📚 Community
· Youtube 🎥 💡