Your Digestive Furnace: The 3-Step Fix To Stop Bloating
Digest Protein Better, Avoid Heartburn and Stomach Pain, Get Your Money's Worth From What You Absorb
Imagine waking up every morning feeling your very best.
What would that take?
For most people, it’s a good night’s sleep, an exciting day ahead, and a stomach that actually cooperates.
Because let’s face it: You could be having the best day ever, but if you’re dealing with bloating, constipation, or any kind of “near-the-stomach” pain, you won’t enjoy it as much.
For years, I battled severe digestive issues: constant bloating, sharp stomach pain, and that awful sensation of last night’s meal still sitting heavy inside me.
It gave me insane brain fog—I almost felt hungover—and my eyes would be so bloodshot from inflammation that I wore blue-light blockers everywhere to hide it.
Those struggles escalated into full-blown autoimmune reactions until I made fixing my gut my full-time mission.
What I’ve learned is that your gut connects to everything: your nervous system, immune system, emotional state, and frankly every other system—endocrine, cardiovascular, you name it.
But the big question is: Where do we start? Probiotics? Colon cleanses?
Lord knows I’ve tried my fair share—digestive enemas, probiotic doses high enough to make someone poop themselves, and a parasite cleanse that left me vomiting in a Farmers Market trash can.
There’s one place to begin. It’s your internal furnace: digestion itself.
When digestion works properly, you break down food better, absorb more nutrients, reduce the burden on your stomach, clear out excess waste from poor digestion, and frankly just kick ass.
In this guide, you’ll learn why digestion slows down and my 3 steps to make any food go down like nothing, and give you the best bathroom break of your life. Let’s go!
Why Your Digestive Furnace Slows Down
Think of your digestive system as a high-efficiency furnace.
When it runs smoothly, it breaks down food, extracts nutrients, and eliminates waste without a hitch. It starts in your mouth, where salivary glands release enzymes like amylase and signaling molecules that tell the stomach, “Hey, food’s coming—turn on the furnace!”
Even your eyes spotting food can trigger the stomach to release HCl (hydrochloric acid), while the pancreas preps enzymes like pepsin. Food gets mashed and mixed into chyme, then travels down the intestines—a super-long highway—where nutrients absorb into the bloodstream. Finally, waste heads to the colon for excretion.
This process is incredibly intricate (even top medical experts struggle to describe every detail), but one key point stands out: Even a single issue in this furnace can cause a cascade of problems.
Here are the three primary culprits, based on insights from leading health sources:
The Enzyme Workers Went on Strike: Enzymes are proteins that speed up chemical reactions, breaking down carbs, proteins, and fats. Stress, eating too quickly, or an overworked pancreas can reduce enzyme production. Without enough, large food particles ferment in your intestines, feeding bacteria that produce gas—hello, bloating!
Your Stomach Acid Factory Shut Down: Hydrochloric acid (HCl) is crucial for breaking down proteins and sterilizing food to prevent bad bacteria overgrowth. Low HCl can lead to issues like SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) or SIFO (small intestinal fungal overgrowth)—both of which I personally battled. Undigested proteins feed the wrong microbes, causing more gas, bloating, and potential damage to the intestinal lining.
Your Bile Production Dried Up: Bile, produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder, emulsifies fats for absorption. Without adequate bile, fats aren’t digested properly, leading to nutrient deficiencies (since cell membranes rely on fats).
There are many more reasons digestion slows (food sensitivities, SIBO/SIFO, mold exposure, etc.), but starting with digestion itself can dramatically improve energy, help you see what’s really going on in your body, clear out excess waste, and set the stage for deeper healing.
You’ll notice more muscle definition, less stomach pain, and even weight loss from clearing out built-up debris—all in just 3 simple steps.
The 3-Step Functional Furnace Fix
Ready to reignite your digestion?
This holistic approach focuses on optimizing enzymes, restoring stomach acid, and supporting bile flow. I’ve incorporated evidence-based tips from nutrition experts and studies to make this actionable and effective.
Start with one step at a time, and consult a healthcare professional before adding supplements—especially if you have conditions like ulcers or gallbladder issues.
Step 1: Optimize Your Enzymes
Stop Making Your Gut Do All the Work
Digestive enzymes are your body’s natural food processors. Supplementing or stimulating them reduces bloating and improves gut health.
Take Digestive Enzymes: MassZymes and Gluten Guardian are among the most comprehensive, well-regarded options available. They help break down nutrients, making them more bioavailable so you get more from your protein and micronutrients. I highly recommend them—they’ve given me easier bathroom visits, no stomach pain, and amazing digestion. Start with 3 capsules 20 minutes before meals.
Eat in a Relaxed State: Stress kills digestion. Activate your parasympathetic “rest and digest” mode to boost enzyme production. My favorite is a quick breathwork session (like a Breathe with Sandy video) before dinner. It’s a fun way to get the family into biohacking!
Incorporate Probiotic-Rich Foods: Yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, and even some sourdough support enzyme activity by balancing gut bacteria (and provide their own enzymes). Aim for a serving with each meal—maybe sheep yogurt for breakfast or sauerkraut at lunch.
Try Intermittent Fasting: Give your system 12–16 hours of rest to repair and reset enzyme production. Stop eating around 7–8 PM and resume between 7–11 AM.
Chew Your Food 30-40 Times: One of the easiest (yet most tedious) ways to improve digestion. It releases salivary enzymes and mechanically breaks down food, easing the load on your gut.
Step 2: Restore Your Stomach Acid
Why You Need More Acid, Not Less
Low HCl affects up to 30% of people over 60, but natural remedies can help stimulate production without harsh meds.
Avoid Ice Water Around Meals: Cold liquids dilute HCl and reduce production. Skip drinks 15 minutes before, during, or after eating.
Supplement with HCl (Carefully): Products like HCl Breakthrough can restore levels. Start with 1 capsule about 10 minutes before or during meals and monitor how you feel. Sometimes I stick to just enzymes (like MassZymes or Gluten Guardian) to see how bowel movements respond first.
Try Apple Cider Vinegar: One tablespoon diluted in water before meals stimulates HCl naturally and helps regulate blood sugar. I take a quick straight shot like a champ!
Boost Zinc Intake: Zinc is essential for HCl production—eat oysters, beef, or pumpkin seeds (supplementing zinc is a separate topic).
Don’t Eat Late: Stop eating 3 hours before bed (finish around 6–7 PM if bedtime is 9–10 PM) to allow proper acid regulation overnight.
Add Ginger: Sip organic ginger tea or add fresh ginger to meals to promote acid secretion and reduce inflammation.
Step 3: Support Bile Production and Flow
The Secret to Absorbing Fat & Detoxing
Bile is key for fat digestion and detox. Support it with liver-friendly habits to prevent deficiencies in fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K.
Don’t Overeat: Excessive calories overwhelm bile production. Eat until 80% full, pause, and assess if you need more.
Support Your Liver: Bitter foods like arugula, dandelion greens, artichoke, and radicchio stimulate bile. Supplements like ox bile, TUDCA, or bitters help if you have gallbladder issues or sluggish flow.
Try Stomach Massage: Gentle clockwise abdominal massage for five minutes before meals stimulates bile flow and lymphatic drainage. I do this every morning, and it’s transformed my digestion.
Eat Healthy Fats: Include EVOO, coconut oil, grass-fed butter, avocados, or nuts with meals to signal bile release.
Stay Hydrated and Active: Drink plenty of water and get 30 minutes of daily exercise to promote bile flow and liver health. Lymphatic shaking, anyone?
Additional Tips for Holistic Gut Health
To supercharge these steps:
Increase Fiber Gradually: Aim for 25–30g daily from fruits, veggies, sprouted nuts/seeds, and even some grains like regenerative white rice if you’re not sensitive.
Manage Stress: Practices like meditation or yoga reduce cortisol, which hampers digestion. I do breathwork and yoga in the morning and before dinner to prep my nervous system.
Walk After Meals: A 10–15 minute stroll aids peristalsis, reduces bloating, and can lower blood sugar by as much as 33%!
When you optimize enzymes, stomach acid, and bile, you can extract 70–80% more nutrients from your food, eliminate bad bugs, and enjoy meals without fear.
Going out to dinner no longer means bloating for days. Healthy eating becomes pleasurable, not stressful.
Your Path Forward
Your body is ready to use all that amazing healthy food you’re eating. Let’s give it the tools.
Start with one technique today—buy enzymes, walk after meals, or try ACV. Small changes compound into massive improvements.
If you’re dealing with persistent issues, see a functional medicine practitioner for personalized testing, or work with me 1-on-1! Send me an email to get started.
The enzyme-acid-bile framework makes a ton of sense. What I like most is how this sidesteps the supplement rabbit hole and focuses on fixing the actual mechanics first. I struggled with similar issues a few years back, and the chewing thing was honestly the hardest to stick with but made a noticable difference once I committed. The bile flow piece is underrated too, most people obsess over probiotics but skip teh liver support entirely. Simple, actionabel, and logical.
Jack, call for untiy from the mountains high, to the wave crashed coast, in memory of Martin Luther King Jr:
"We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish togetherbas fools."
"The person down the street who votes differently than you is not your enemy. They are your neighbor. They worry about the same things you worry about. They want their kids to be safe and their bills to be paid and their country to be a place worth living in. They have been manipulated just like you have been manipulated, fed a different flavor of the same poison, sorted into a different tribe by the same algorithm, pointed at you as the enemy by the same people who point you at them.
The working class Republican and the working class Democrat have more in common with each other than either of them has with the billionaire class that funds both parties.
You share the same struggles. You face the same rigged systems. You are being crushed by the same economic forces that have transferred more wealth upward in the last fifty years than at any point in human history. And instead of uniting against the people doing this to you, you are screaming at each other on the internet about pronouns and flags and whatever fresh outrage the algorithm served up this morning.
This is exactly what they want. A nation at war with itself cannot resist a takeover. A people consumed by mutual hatred will accept any authority that promises to protect them from the manufactured enemy. Every empire that fell was divided before it was conquered. Every free people who lost their freedom were set against each other first.
The red versus blue war is not real. It is a show put on by people who own both teams. It is professional wrestling and you think it is a real fight. The wrestlers go backstage after the match and laugh together while you are still screaming at the guy in the other section who was rooting for the wrong character.
This Is Our Country Not Theirs
This nation belongs to the people who live here and work here and raise families here and will be buried here. It does not belong to billionaires who hold citizenship in three countries and will flee to their bunkers the moment things get bad. It does not belong to tech oligarchs who view democracy as an obstacle to efficiency. It does not belong to foreign interests who have purchased so much influence that they might as well be writing our laws themselves.
We have to stop letting them divide us. We have to start seeing each other as fellow Americans again instead of enemy combatants in a culture war that was manufactured to keep us weak. We have to remember that the person screaming at us online is also a victim of the same manipulation, and maybe if we stopped screaming back and started talking, we might realize we have been fighting the wrong enemy this entire time.
Turn off the television. It is not informing you. It is programming you. Question everything, including the sources you trust, especially the sources you trust. Talk to people who disagree with you and do it without trying to win. Listen to why they believe what they believe. You might discover that the monster you have been told to hate is actually just another person trying to make sense of a confusing world with imperfect information, exactly like you.
Remember who you are.
You are an American. Your ancestors came to this land or were brought to this land or were already on this land, and regardless of how they got here, they built something together that was supposed to be different from the old world’s tyrannies and aristocracies. That project is not finished. Every generation has to fight to keep it alive against the forces that want to drag us back to a world where a handful of rulers own everything and everyone else serves at their pleasure.
Stop letting them divide you. Your enemies are not your neighbors. Your enemies are the people who profit from your division and are building machines to replace you the moment you are no longer useful.
Start acting like it before it is too late". —The Wise Wolf