With the holiday season quickly approaching, food is everywhere! From festive Christmas parties to dinners and catch-ups with family and friends, this time of year certainly tends to centre around food! This is why that this time of year is often accompanied with a few extra kilograms or a few bouts of abdominal pain, caused by overeating.
The reason that we get that uncomfortable feeling of tummy pain after a big meal is quite obvious- When the stomach is overloaded, food takes longer to digest. Therefore the food stays in the stomach longer and leads to bloating and constipation.
With normal sized meals, food is broken up into small pockets and moved through the intestines in waves of contracting and relaxing, contracting and relaxing. But, when the stomach is overloaded it is forced to move too much into the intestines at once. The intestines are jammed, like a traffic jam, and hardly anything moves. This causes weary muscles, and a longer transit time.
As a result of this longer transit time, more water is extracted from the stool, and therefore it becomes dry and compact, making elimination painful.
Below is a guide to help avoid abdominal discomfort and weight gain this holiday season:
