Well, folks, every now and then when I am eating large meals I start to feel like my stomach isn’t emptying all the way. This past weekend I ate an ungodly amount of food, and capped it off Sunday night with an amazing salad.
Unfortunately, since Sunday night I have had a full feeling no matter how much I have eaten. It feels like the salad greens are just sitting there
Is there anything that you would recommend to help in digestion? I have no known medical issues with digestion.
I was thinking of taking a digestive enzyme from the pharmacy. Is this a good idea? Thanks!
I’m sure - I have been regular in that aspect. It just feels like I’m only working with ~60% of normal stomach capacity. I struggled to finish a 3-meatball sub the other day. :eek:
I rarely pig out but if I do, the above works. Except I still eat, but mostly fruit and vegetables, plus lots of water - after a day or two, that seems to get the system pretty well cleaned out.
There’s an otc drug (in Europe anyway) called Motilium which gets things moving along. If you’re feeling full all the next day though I suspect it’s a sign from your body that says “let me deal with this ton of shit first dude - and please don’t do that again.”
Yeah, the obvious answer is, “don’t eat that much at once.”
Once the damage is done, bitters are your friend. This is why many cultures eat their salad after the meal - and why their salads aren’t just iceberg. It’s why other cultures have “digestifs” - alcoholic drinks with carminative (gas relieving) or bitter herbs, like ouza, sambuca or grappa - that they drink after a large meal.
In the US, we don’t like bitter much. Our most common bitter is coffee, which is about a 2 on the imaginary Bitter Scale in my head. If you add cream and/or sugar, it masks the bitter taste and negates the functional effects. Dandelion greens are sometimes sold in the produce section (or if you have an unsprayed lawn, you can pick a couple from your yard and nibble a leaf or two) and endive is another very mild bitter.
Angostura bitters are sold here; they’re probably made with gentian, one of the bitterest plants I know (but the recipe is secret, so I don’t know that for sure). My mom likes to eat half a grapefruit with Angostura bitters splashed on it. I can’t handle that much bitter, but just a drop or two an Angostura or a drop or two of gentian tonic does the trick nicely.
If you can’t find any bitters, then try a sip of pickle brine. It may be that your stomach just needs a little boost of acid to finish digesting all that food.
Doesn’t matter if you are “regular”. Abdominal films would likely showed you to be FOS (politely, full of stool). As you get older, digestive capacity decreases. Unless you are running or biking or weightlifting intensely like the posted athletes on other threads, you don’t need that much food all at once. I echo the bitters suggestion, smaller portions, and stop when you are full the first time.
Also, try not to eat CRAP- Carbonated beverages, Refined sugars, Artificial sweeteners, and Processed foods.
SuperHal is right, too, about the Pepto. I like the way he put it:)
When I feel too full, I do that thing where you force yourself to burp. If you have that ‘skill’ (I honestly don’t know if everyone can do it), just burp about twenty times and see how that feels.
Exactly. I feel like I’m eating ~60% of what I desire to eat.
Not to mention it is incredibly tasty! Unfortunately it didn’t do all that much for me.
:eek: well it has been a few days and nothing has eaten its way outside of my stomach, so that’s a plus!
I’m not an athlete, but I perform heavy compound weightlifting ~5 rep max, 2-3 times a week, play full court basketball 3 hours every Monday, and walk my 2 dogs roughly 2 miles a day, so I am very active. I keep my sugars under 30g a day and that is mostly from whole milk. Smaller portions is a good idea all around.
I don’t understand your suggestion on bitters; what does “bitter” do to digestion?" I normally have 2 cups of black coffee while working at 9AM.
This may also be a factor: I have top and bottom dentures and grinding down things like vegetables can be difficult - it is possible I am not grinding down the material enough to give my stomach a change.
I cannot eat gluten, and one of the symptoms for me of a gluten exposure is that I will get “full” very quickly, and the feeling will just grow and grow and grow until I honestly want to just die. It’s like having someone expanding a balloon in your stomach area that appears to be expanding in all directions until you feel like it has to burst.
Gas-X helps. A ton of non-carbonated liquids helps. But I will have it for hours no matter what (and once that wears off, I get all sorts of other fun symptoms. Whee).
Oh, and this can be a sign of some bad stuff, so you should probably get it checked out soonish.
Get it checked out by a doctor. I’m really not saying this to scare you, in fact I wondered if I should even say it at all but someone I know was experiencing similar symptoms - feeling full without eating much, chronic indigestion pain, being able to eat progressively less than desired before feeling full.
She put up with this for months before seeing a doctor and then being diagnosed and treated for ulcers. When the ulcers did not respond to treatment she was referred to a specialist and diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer. Advanced because she did not consult a doctor earlier.
It seems that this is a common scenario with stomach cancer. People think they have indigestion and delay seeking medical advice until it’s too late.
There are other conditions that can cause these symptoms but you really should get checked just in case.
Its actually all matching up to symptoms of stress . Eating too much can result in production of adrenaline, and others (symptoms just like drinking too much coffee…) so now you suffer.
An hours walk should do great things to relax you.
It could be the overdose of ethanol , too much acid (Drink and food can make acid in the body… then the stomach acid level is too high ) , the lack of water, …
And it all adds on to the stress of being uncomfortable due to eating too much…
Relax, its very unlikely to be cancer, its just the upset due to binge eating , or drinking…
Drink some milk to cancel the acid.
Drink fluids to treat dehydration, and to help flush out the results of too much ethanol and perhaps irritant foods like spices.
Go for a walk to help relax your body (spine, diaphragm, hips, intestines, ) and reset all the muscles so they can coordinate and work properly …and trigger the slow down of stress hormones, and produce nice relaxing ones…
Keep a food diary - write in what you ate (broken down to ingredients if possible), when you ate it and how you felt.
Include any other relevant factors such as whether you drank alcohol, how hungry you felt beforehand.
It’s surprising how easy it can be to miss an obvious pattern/correlation when it’s not written down or otherwise recorded.
