Dealing with tummy pain after Christmas
Eat just enough food during the festive season.
What you need to know:
Caution. In case you get problems in your tummy after that sumptuous meal, these are some of the things you can do.
If I had to explain those occasions when I overate, I could think of only two reasons; Christmas and boarding school. In boarding school, visiting days were a rare opportunity to test your mother’s cooking after what seemed like years of eating posho and beans. When you were done with your mother’s food, you then went on to taste the different brands of rice your classmates’ mothers had made.
Being that it comes around only once in a year, Christmas is like boarding school in that you get to eat different meats, starches and vegetables all fried up with fancy spices that your mother or wife never has time to use the rest of the year. The Christmas festivities is a time of merry making which usually means cooking and eating massive amounts of different varieties of food, even those that we do not regularly eat.
The result is that our digestive system is shocked by the amounts and unusual types of food. Thus it is not surprising that many develop a stomach upset after the holiday feast.
According to Dr Alfred Yayi, the District Health Officer for Yumbe District, the first thing to note is that overeating is not good. We should therefore be aiming to prevent it from happening.
“Overeating stretches the body systems. When you overload the stomach, a lot of blood is pumped to the stomach to aid in digestion. This reduces the flow of blood to the brain and could result in dizziness,” explains Dr Yayi.
One of the other side effects of binge holiday eating could be peptic ulcers which result from regurgitating food while the stomach acids are at work. Once the acids touch the oesophagus, this could result in ulcers. In case one happens to overeat, there are some remedies depending on the level of satisfaction.
“Instead of sitting around or driving after a heavy meal, do some light exercise like walking around to aid digestion. Drinking a glass of orange juice also aids digestion,” advises Yayi.
In severe cases of overeating such as when it affects one’s breathing, the
