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Snacking With Your Medicaton

If you want to eat something small with your medication, then a few nuts combined with a piece of fruit is good. Bananas especially are quite easy to digest. I would advise avoiding melon however, as this is not as easy to digest as other fruits.

Another option could be a boiled egg, or a slice of toast with butter. Soup is also good, but although this is light on your stomach, be mindful that if you are on restricted fluids, it adds to your daily fluid intake.

Reducing Nausea

My tip here is to drink herbal tea. Ginger or fennel are best, and fennel is also a vegetable that you can slice into a salad. It's got a very nice flavour and it’s very good for your stomach.

Avoiding Heartburn

If you have trouble digesting your meals, especially if you have heartburn, then my tip is to avoid drinking fluids when you eat.

Every time you drink, the liquid lowers the amount of stomach acid and the less stomach acid you have, the more problems you will have when digesting the meal. I understand it might sound strange, but this is a really good tip to try.

STEP AWAY FROM THE SHAKES!

If you haven’t got the appetite or energy to eat, then sometimes it might feel very easy to take a meal replacement shake instead. However, they are highly processed and often contain things on the ingredients list that you can’t even pronounce.

They contain a lot of additives and often a lot of sugar. You need to avoid processed foods in general, whether you have PH or not – but especially if you have cardiovascular disease.

I filmed a video with the PHA UK earlier this year about quick and easy one-pan meals, so watch this at www.bit.ly/one-pan-meals and it might give you some alternative ideas.

Everybody is different, and everyone reacts differently to certain ways of eating and drinking, so my advice is to try some of the tips above and see if they work for you. Ultimately, it’s important to become more aware of what nutrition does to your body.

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