Don't overeat during the Spring Festival! Don't!

The Spring Festival holiday has begun, and all kinds of delicious food have been placed on the table. Have you started the wonderful time of eating and drinking during the holiday?

I must remind everyone: Don't overeat! Overeating can cause more damage to the stomach than you think. Some of them may be fatal, while others may lead to serious consequences due to misdiagnosis.

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After overeating,

What changes will occur in the body?

The harm of "overeating" is undoubtedly the stomach first, followed by the intestines.

There are two main diet-related gastric emergencies during the Spring Festival, namely acute gastric dilatation and acute gastric mucosal lesions.

Acute gastric dilatation

Acute gastric dilatation is an emergency that is more common in past famine years: people do not eat for a long time and then suddenly get a large amount of food. After eating too much, the stomach expands rapidly, loses tension and suffers ischemia and necrosis, eventually leading to gastric rupture and death - commonly known as death from overeating.

This situation is rare now, but it is still necessary to be careful for some elderly people with large abdominal circumference. These people have a special condition called "esophageal hiatal hernia".

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The so-called "hernia" is medically defined as the passage of internal organs through normal orifices to places where they should not be.

Normally, our chest cavity and abdominal cavity are separated by the diaphragm, like the first and second floors, and the esophagus is like a water pipe running from the second floor to the first floor. There is a hole on the diaphragm for the esophagus to pass through, which is the esophageal hiatus.

The pressure in the human abdominal cavity is usually greater than that in the chest cavity. Therefore, when the esophageal hiatus becomes larger, the organs in the abdominal cavity - the most common one is the stomach - will be squeezed into the chest cavity through this enlarged hole. This is called "esophageal hiatus hernia."

We know that the stomach fundus plays a role of temporary storage when we eat. When we usually say someone has a large appetite, we actually mean someone with a large stomach fundus capacity.

Elderly obese people have esophageal hiatal hernias due to diaphragmatic relaxation and increased abdominal pressure. If you eat too much at one time, food will be retained at the bottom of the stomach, which can easily block the stomach and form something like a dammed lake. If the food cannot be discharged for a long time, the stomach may lose tension, leading to "acute gastric dilatation".

Acute gastric dilatation is easy to diagnose. The main symptoms are abdominal distension, abdominal pain, and obvious distension of the upper abdomen. If you have eaten too much food before, you should consider this emergency. Some cases of acute gastric dilatation are very similar to acute intestinal obstruction, and both require emergency treatment as soon as possible.

Acute gastric mucosa

Most acute gastric mucosal lesions are related to drinking. The damage caused by alcohol to the gastric mucosa is divided into direct damage and indirect damage. Direct damage is the direct damage of alcohol to the mucosal epithelial cells, and indirect damage is achieved by reducing the blood flow of the gastric mucosa.

In addition to the common abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting after drinking, the most frightening symptom of acute gastric mucosal lesions is vomiting blood. Most of the vomited blood is not fresh blood, but coffee-colored blood. If you vomit the contents of your stomach first, and then suddenly vomit blood, and there is also a tearing feeling behind your sternum, it may be that the mucosa of the esophagus and the cardia of the stomach fundus has been torn, which is also an emergency that requires hospitalization for observation and treatment.

Most acute gastric mucosal lesions can be completely relieved within three days, so there is no need to be too nervous. The way to prevent it is of course not to drink alcohol or drink less alcohol, and do not believe in any so-called folk remedies that claim to protect the gastric mucosa from alcohol damage.

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Ischemic bowel disease

The esophagus and stomach belong to the upper digestive tract, and the small intestine and large intestine belong to the middle and lower digestive tracts. Here we would like to remind everyone to pay attention to a relatively hidden but not uncommon disease that is closely related to the Spring Festival diet and may cause serious consequences if ignored, that is ischemic bowel disease.

The cause of this disease is similar to that of coronary heart disease. Although it is not as well known to the public as coronary heart disease, it is well known among doctors because many doctors and hospitals have been involved in lawsuits over it. I worked in a hospital for three years before, and the only medical dispute I saw during these three years involving carrying a corpse into a ward was due to a misdiagnosis of ischemic bowel disease.

Coronary heart disease is caused by cardiac ischemia, and ischemic bowel disease is caused by intestinal ischemia. Both occur on the basis of atherosclerosis.

Ischemic bowel disease mostly occurs after overeating. After eating, the intestines need more blood to function. If the blood vessels supplying the intestines have atherosclerosis, sudden overeating will cause the blood supply to the intestines to be insufficient. In mild cases, diarrhea and abdominal pain will occur. In severe cases, intestinal mucosal ulcers and even intestinal necrosis will occur, and symptoms such as bloody stools and shock will appear.

If you are a person with high risk factors for atherosclerosis such as high blood pressure, high blood lipids, diabetes, and smoking, in addition to avoiding overwork and emotional fluctuations during the holidays, you should also limit the amount and speed of food you eat to avoid inducing intestinal ischemia.

In short, most traditional Spring Festival diets are not healthy, which is reflected in the total intake and food composition, as well as excessive drinking and smoking. Preventing these situations is actually very simple, that is, avoid overeating.

This article is a work of Science Popularization China-Starry Sky Project

Produced by: Science Popularization Department of China Association for Science and Technology

Producer｜China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.

Author: Dr. Li Changqing, a gastroenterologist living in the United States

Reviewer: Tang Qin, Director and Researcher of the Science Popularization Department of the Chinese Medical Association