or something. People might wonder why it looks like you’re zoning out or why your breathing is off. But when your blood pres- sure comes down, you start getting more fit and you are happier and more calm, they’re gonna ask what you’re on and want some. Last but far from least is gut health.
This area of our health is affected by many factors that I will touch on here and go into more detail in the future. Now I haven’t lived life on the road as a musician, but I have done a bit of traveling, both when I was on the pit crew for my dad in his motorcycle racing days, and now since my husband and I have devoted our entertainment and vacation agenda to traveling around to see the bands we love from the 60s and 70s. Because of this, I am highly motivated to keep all of you happy and healthy so we can continue seeing you play! I know it’s tough to focus on healthy eating when you’re living on a tour bus or in your own vehicle. Traveling that long and lonesome highway, stopping at rest stops or grabbing something brought in by some low- budget caterer isn’t ideal. If you’re not on tour, but busy at home, this part is a bit easier for you, but you can still pick up some sugges- tions. Here I will mostly talk about life on the road, but don’t worry, I’ll get to other lifestyles in future segments. First let me explain what’s going on in-
side you. Gut health is not just about being “regular” or not, but your bowel movements can say a whole lot about your overall health. If you have them too often, you may not be getting enough nutrients from your food. Not often enough makes toxins stay in your sys- tem too long, making you feel bad and setting you up for illness. So just like Goldilocks, you want them “just right.” Gastrointestinal issues are also a reflec-
tion of our gut health. The increase in GERD (acid flux disease), IBS (irritable bowel syn- drome), Crohn’s and Colitis, just to name a few, is staggering. The medications that are prescribed rarely address the underlying
cause and instead aim to mask the symptoms, leaving the original problem to cry out for at- tention, allowing it to continue to wreak havoc on your system. I won’t be able to go into great detail here, but digestion is a very important topic. I want to get you started on the path to awareness and relief. And no, you do not have to have these diseases to need to focus on good gut health. It’s all about proper digestion, so you can get the nutrients you need in order to be at optimal health, ward off disease and feel your best. That is paramount for all of us at any stage or station in life. The food we eat is crucial to our health,
and being able to digest properly is the key. I like to use this example to describe the basics of how digestion works, or doesn’t as the case may be. Say we eat a piece of lettuce. We chew the lettuce, the more the better. It gets pulverized and goes into our stomach. The stomach acid dissolves it into an enzyme, minus the fibrous leftovers. The enzyme con- tains all the information our body needs about the nutrients in that food. It is now a chemical, not a piece of lettuce. That chemical information goes to our intestines and tells receptors there that we got our lettuce needs met. Now imagine we don’t chew enough or our stomach acid isn’t strong enough to break down the lettuce and it passes through our system as a piece of lettuce. When it gets to the receptors that are expecting an enzyme they say, what the hell is this?! Of course it’s still a piece of lettuce, but at that point in our system it is identified as a foreign invader and our immune system attacks it to protect us from it.
Most of us aren’t allergic to lettuce in
its normal state. If the non-digested food process keeps happening, our immune system gets tired of the drill and puts lettuce in the attack-on-site category. So now every time we eat lettuce we have a reaction. This happens with any food that is not digested properly. We’ve seen an alarming increase in food sen- sitivities and allergies because of this and
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