Contents:
- Medical Video: Fact or Myth? - You should wait 30 minutes to swim after you eat?
- Can you swim immediately after eating?
- Swimming after consuming alcohol is more dangerous
Medical Video: Fact or Myth? - You should wait 30 minutes to swim after you eat?
Swimming is a fun activity for children and adults alike. However, have you ever heard the suggestion not to immediately swim after eating and have to wait up to one hour?
Yes, this seems to be a powerful sentence that is often said by parents in all parts of the earth to their children not to immediately swim after eating. The reason often revealed by one of them can cause sinking due to stomach cramps.
However, sometimes parents do not know exactly what they say is true or not. In addition, there is no strong evidence to support the warning that swimming after eating can result in drowning. So, is this a fact or just a myth?
Can you swim immediately after eating?
Gerald Endress, exercise physiologist and director of diet & fitness center at Duke University, said swimming with a full stomach did not significantly affect swimming ability. Basically, blood does flow into the stomach to help with the digestive process, but it doesn't cause your muscles to lose their energy and ability to cause you to sink.
Roshini Rajapaksa, a gastroentrologist from New York University School of Medicine notes that a full stomach after eating can cause cramps if you swim too excitedly, but the sinking event causes death because a full stomach after eating is only less than one percent. So, the chances of you drowning from a full stomach after eating are very small.
There is no evidence to suggest that exercising after eating is dangerous. It's just that exercise that is too strong can direct blood flow away from the digestive area to the skin and muscles of the arms and legs. So, if your food is still half-digested but you have done strenuous exercise, you may feel nauseous.
Basically, being involved in any strenuous activities after eating can cause cramps, nausea and vomiting. Swimming after eating must be accompanied by heating.
Warm up with low intensity to avoid stomach cramps. Swimming is an activity that can be received perfectly after eating, provided it is carried out at a reasonable intensity. Don't maneuver so much that your stomach isn't surprised.
Take a short break after you eat if your stomach feels tired or satiated. Wait for a while until you feel your stomach getting better and ready to be taken to swim. In general, children and adults can swim immediately after eating snacks.
Whatever it is, the parent's command not to swim immediately after eating certainly has a good purpose. Having you rest and avoiding pain that might occur in the stomach may be the cause. So that it tells the child that they might drown if they immediately swim after eating is one way for parents to listen to it, even though this is not supported by scientific evidence.
Swimming after consuming alcohol is more dangerous
The thing you should worry about is actually swimming after consuming alcohol rather than swimming after eating. Limit the amount of alcohol you consume if you plan to swim. Usually, two glasses of alcoholic beverages are quite dangerous for most adults who consume them even though you yourself might feel that you don't feel a change.
Two separate studies found that as many as 25 percent of teenagers who drowned in Washington in 1989 were associated with alcohol consumption, while 41 percent of adults in California were drowned in 1990 due to motion sickness.
