"Don't drink water while eating. It will hurt your stomach if you don't digest it!" Have you heard this since you were a child? However, some people personally objected, "I have been eating like this since I was a child. It is okay to eat and drink at the same time." Some netizens shared that the highest record was that they drank nearly 1 liter of water in one meal. There is also relevant popular science that gastric juice secretion is dynamically balanced, and eating while drinking water has no special impact on the digestion and absorption of food. Different people have different feelings about this. Some people feel bloating, while others feel nothing at all. So will eating and drinking affect digestion?
Yangzi Evening News/Ziniu News reporter Wang Menghang
Chen Lu, attending physician at the Department of Gastroenterology, Zhongda Hospital Affiliated to Southeast University, said in an interview with reporters that for ordinary people, drinking an appropriate amount of water (100~200ml) during meals is no problem, but drinking a large amount of water at one time is not advisable and may Will affect digestive function. “Because the digestion of our food mainly relies on gastric acid and digestive enzymes in the stomach, if you drink too much water in a short period of time, the gastric acid will be diluted quickly, and drinking a lot of water in a short period of time will cause the space in the stomach to become smaller and the gastric tension to increase. It is easy to produce indigestion feelings such as nausea and fullness.”
For people with weak gastric function, she pointed out that even if they don’t drink much water during meals, they may still experience discomfort such as indigestion. Special attention should be paid to these four groups of people: the elderly, children, and patients with reflux esophagitis. , diabetic patients, patients with oral diseases.
"Patients with reflux esophagitis usually experience reflux of gastric contents. Drinking water during meals will aggravate the symptoms of reflux; similarly, the gastric motility of the elderly and children is relatively weak, so they need to avoid drinking water that affects their normal appetite and appetite. Nutritional intake; for patients with oral diseases or people with poor teeth, the food is not chewed thoroughly, and drinking water will cause the food to not be fully ground; for patients with diabetes, there is a clinical disease called diabetic gastroparesis, which Such patients will have delayed gastric emptying and are prone to fullness and discomfort." Chen Lu said, "These people should strictly control the amount of water they drink when eating to reduce the burden on the gastrointestinal tract."
Experts remind that for vulnerable people, it is still recommended to drink less or drink in portions or no water during meals. Even if your stomach function is very strong, it is not recommended that you drink too much water at one time. If you are really thirsty, you can drink water or soup before meals to increase your feeling of fullness, which will help reduce food intake and better control your weight.
In addition, these behaviors in life are also harmful to the stomach, so check yourself quickly: 1. Do not eat a lot of persimmons and hawthorns on an empty stomach before meals. These fruits contain a lot of tannic acid, which can easily form stomach stones; 2. Do not wolf down your meals because the grinding function of the stomach Insufficient food can easily induce various complications; 3. Three meals should be regular, and do not overeat, otherwise it is easy to damage the gastric mucosa and cause functional indigestion; 4. Do not eat late-night snacks every day, and control the amount of heavy-flavored foods, such as pickled foods. Food, spicy and irritating barbecue, etc.; 5. Do not smoke a lot and frequently drink high-concentration alcohol, which can easily cause gastric mucosal damage and complications such as stress ulcers and bleeding.