DRINK WARM WATER BEFORE DINNER:

Drinking water is a normal tradition and most probably you already drink water before dinner. But you need to learn the proper way and timing of drinking water before dinner to make it healthy for you. Otherwise, even water might become harmful for you.

The best health benefit you can get from water will be if you:

Drink warm water 30 minutes before dinner. It will help aid digestion by getting the digestive system up and running when you start eating.
Take small sips of water during the dinner. It will help with digestion by dissolving contents of food.
Drink warm water after dinner. It will also aid digestion by breaking up the food.

The added benefit of drinking water is that it lowers your hunger so you don’t over eat. Just like drinking a soup as a starter does, which is also another healthy thing to do before dinner.

DON’T DRINK COLD WATER AFTER DINNER:

As beneficial as it is to drink hot water, drinking cold water after dinner can be disastrous to your health. Icy water feels really good to drink but you don’t know what your body has to go through after you drink that icy water.

Let’s list all the dangerous effects that icy water has on your body.

It reduces the body temperature below the optimal value which is very important for the proper functioning of body enzymes.
It causes the clumping of the food in the stomach which makes it harder to digest.
It causes solidification of oil in all kinds of oily foods which makes oily foods even more harmful than they already are.

So try to avoid drinking cold icy water especially after dinner.

DON’T SLEEP IMMEDIATELY AFTER DINNER:

You know how much tempting it is to go to sleep after eating dinner. But feeling sleepy is one of the signs that show that you should NOT go to sleep immediately after dinner. The reason behind this is that after dinner our blood concentration gets concentrated towards the stomach to digest food. Lower blood towards the brain makes us feel sleepy.

The reasons behind why we should not sleep after dinner are:

It slows down digestion.
The horizontal angle of our food pipe causes acidic juices to travel up the food pipe causing heart burn.
It puts pressure on the abdomen.

So make a habit of watching TV after dinner or the best habit of going for a short walk after dinner and go to sleep after about 1-2 hours after dinner.

SHORT WALK AFTER DINNER:

There are so many uncountable advantages of walking. You will see advantages of walking everywhere on the internet. There are so many times given too that are best for a walk. One of those is a short walk after dinner.

It will, again, help your digestive system. To save you of the extremely scientific terms related to how do it help, just think of it as, the movement during a short slow walk helps stomach in missing the food.

So every day after dinner, go out with your family or loved one and have a slow walk of 20-30 minutes. It will help you socialise as well as help with digestion. Just make sure that you don’t turn a slow walk into an aggressive walking routine as exercise after dinner can be harmful.

DON’T EXERCISE AFTER DINNER:

Now you will be confused as we said before that take a short walk after dinner and then we are saying not to exercise after dinner. Well it’s not that confusing. A short slow walk is not considered as an exercise as most probably you won’t even sweat in a short slow walk. Heavy exercising after dinner has 2 main disadvantages.

It disrupts your sleep-wake cycle.
It causes heart burn and acidity problems.

Sleep-wake cycles are disrupted by any kind of heavy activity at night which will raise your body temperature. This is because our body is designed to get active when an activity raises its temperature. Acidity and heart burn, on the other hand, are caused because heavy exercising causes the acidic fluids in stomach to splash out into the food pipe.

BRUSH TEETH AFTER DINNER:

Now this one is something that your mom and dad would be telling you to do since childhood. And it has its elite importance to justify being forced to do this.

Teeth are not just a person’s beauty, but they are also very important in eating. It’s not important just because it helps you chew; it has a psychological effect too. People without teeth, or people with artificial teeth, loose their interest in eating food.

After dinner you have to sleep which means your mouth will be closed for a long period of time with no movements. This is a perfect time for the bacteria to break loose inside your mouth. So it is very important for the health of the teeth that you brush your teeth after dinner, even if you brushed before dinner too.

DON’T SMOKE:

This seems to be a recurring topic in health articles, doesn’t it?

One of the countless dangers of smoking is that it interferes with digestion especially if you smoke right after a meal (as most smokers do). This is because the blood flows to protect the blood cells from harm and so it doesn’t reach the stomach where it is actually required for digestion.

Furthermore, smoking increases the risk of Irritable Bowel Syndrome and ulcers.

DON’T TAKE A BATH AFTER DINNER:

Now this is one of the most dangerous things to do after dinner. To simply state the horrifying fact of taking a bath after dinner, we just have to tell you that it can cause paralysis!

Yes, paralysis in which the patient cannot move any part of his/her body because the part of the brain that is supposed to control the movement of that part is damaged or get a blood clot in it. Now how does this relate to taking a bath after dinner?

Blood circulation is concentrated towards the stomach after eating dinner.
So the brain is operating at its minimum blood flow that it can sustain.
A bath cools down the body which reduces the blood flow. This is why we feel relaxed after a bath.
The further reduction in blood flow to brain takes it into the dangerous zone in which any part of the brain can fail at any time.

So don’t take this lightly when we tell you that you should never ever take bath within 50-90 minutes of eating dinner.

CHANGE VERY TIGHT CLOTHES BEFORE DINNER:

This fact is quite simple to understand. Tight clothes can put a lot of pressure on the abdomen when you are eating dinner. So it is always advisable to change into loose comfortable clothes before eating dinner.

But this has a slight disadvantage to it as wearing loose tend to make you eat more. It is a psychological research that people wearing loose clothes during dinner eat a lot more than people wearing tight clothes.

But you don’t need to get confused. Health is more important as there are many other remedies to obesity but once you develop an abdomen problem, there is no way back.

DON’T LOOSE YOUR BELT AFTER DINNER:

Now this might seem strange to you at first that wearing loose clothes during dinner is advised but loosening your belt is to be avoided. Makes you feel like it is non-fair to men. Well, to be honest, it is really an advantage for men.

Belt will tend to stop you from eating when your stomach is full. And if you don’t loosen your belt, you will avoid over-eating.

But the main theory behind it is that, when your stomach is full and pushing out at its full force, the belt-unlike tight clothes-is actually helping the abdomen bear the force.

So stop eating more food rather than loosening your belt after dinner.

DON’T EAT FRUITS IMMEDIATELY AFTER DINNER:

Many people will advise you to eat fruit but nobody tells you to the most beneficial time to eat them but according to experts eating fruits right after dinner is one of the worst times to eat them and here is why.

The reason that fruits are recommended so profusely by nutritionists is that they contain a lot of nutrition and also because they are digested very quickly. And herein lays the problem. Fruits are digested in the intestines and most fruits are typically digested within 20 minutes of consumption. But same cannot be said majority of other foods because their digestion process starts in the stomach where they are treated with the acid.

If you eat the fruits within one hour of eating dinner then these particles rest atop the pile of other food particles in your stomach and will simply have to wait for their turn to pass into the intestines. This may take up to an hour or even two in some cases, during this period the fruit particles start to spoil and the effect spreads to all the food particles.

If you want to eat fruits then there is no better time than to eat them in the morning.

DON’T DRINK CAFFEINATED DRINKS AFTER DINNER:

Caffeinated drinks, such as coffee are very harmful for health, if you drink them immediately after dinner. The first and foremost problem that it causes is that it keeps you awake.

“But that’s what I drink coffee for”, you ask.

Well drinking a coffee after breakfast, it helps you to be awake. But after dinner comes the time to sleep. Drinking a coffee or any other caffeinated drink such as energy drinks etc. can disrupt your sleep-wake cycle which can lead to many mind disorders.

DON’T DRINK TEA AFTER DINNER:

Yes, drinking tea may benefit you in a lot of ways such as preventing cardiovascular diseases among others. But many nutritionists are of the opinion that drinking tea immediately after having dinner can have a very adverse effect on your health and here is why.

Tea is said to contain polyphenols and tannins which makes it harder for our digestive system to extract the nutrients from our foods. This effect is particularly noticeable for vegetables as these compounds strongly bind iron molecules to the food particles.

Instead you can try drinking coffee after a meal as the caffeine can reduce your appetite and enables you to go hungry for a longer period of time.

DON’T DANCE AFTER DINNER:

Have you ever been to a party where you eat your diner and then just get on the dance floor? Or at home when you have a family get together and after eating dinner everyone just wants to have fun and enjoy dancing. What happens next after a while?

Everyone is asking for tablets for acidity and heart burn. Yes dancing right after dinner is the same as doing heavy exercising after dinner which is defined above.

So whenever you organise a party or go to one, don’t have dinner until you are done dancing.

DRINK SOUP BEFORE DINNER:

Drink it just like the Chinese. Soup or other starters are very good for you. But you would be thinking that you won’t be able to eat much if you take a starter before dinner right? Well that’s the advantage of the starters.

The Chinese all have a perfect body build not because they are all kung-fu fighters. They just eat as much as it is healthy for them. And the secret behind their control over over-eating are starters most importantly soup. So grab a bowl of soup before all dinner meals.

ALWAYS WASH YOUR HANDS BEFORE DINNER:

It is absolutely imperative for every member of the family to wash their hand thoroughly before and after dinner. Just imagine the things you touch in everyday life: door handles, walls, TV remote control, keys, your cell phone. Now imagine the places these things have been or who else must have touched these. Gross, right?

Even if you don’t touch anything your hands can attract droplets from the atmosphere released through a single sneeze or cough or even a single breath. Other threatening sources of bacteria may include:

Shopping carts in public supermarkets
Ladies’ purses
Kitchen tap handle
Dish sponge
Keyboard or mouse
Kitchen countertop
Toilet seat

These everyday items must be cleaned but even more so if you have kids or pets, because they are just an ecosystem of bacteria on legs.

Now most people do wash their hand before they eat but forget to do so after eating. This is because they don’t realize that food particles in our fingers or under our nails pose a very serious threat to our skin because it excretes acid.

EAT CHOCOLATES AFTER DINNER:

Chocolate is one of the most wonderful creations of our mother Earth. There are umpteen reasons as to why one should eat chocolates and here are a few:

It helps the digestion process because the cocoa beans contain a lot of fibres.
It has iron and magnesium which are really good for health.
It contains phenyl ethylamine which makes you feel happy and there is nothing better than going to bed with a light mood.

“But… but… but… it makes you fat”

No, it doesn’t. Overeating chocolate can make you fat, yes, but overeating anything can have that effect, so stop incriminating that delicious, smooth, sweet, slightly bitter block of awesomeness.

So now you see how things that you do before or after a meal can change the positive effects of a meal to a negative one. I hope that this will help you out with taking the best out of your healthy meal and having a peaceful sleep at night after dinner.

Do’s

Take a small walk after you take your meal.
After meals, drinking hot beverage like green tea benefits in digestion.
Divide your plate into sections. Fill half of it with green vegetables and salad.

Don’ts

Don’t smoke after eating your meal. This will hinder your digestion
Don’t drink water at the end of the meal. Wait for at least half an hour before drinking water.

Do not over eat. Leave 1/3^rd of your stomach empty for better digestion and bowel movement.