Why taking 5 to 10 minutes to eat out of your busy schedule is so important! The risk of developing Gastroparesis from undereating

Imagine that you’re a Georgia Tech student. Your day starts at 8:25 AM, with your first class, Systems Physiology, which you know you have a weekly quiz in. You wake up at 8:05 AM, and by the time you finish brushing your teeth and changing into your clothes, you see that is 8:10 AM. Your class is not nearby. These are not the times of virtual classes after all! You have to make it all the way across campus, and you have barely any time to do so. You can’t take the bus because the bus is running late. So, you are unfortunately left with only one choice, to run quickly to class and skip breakfast, or eat breakfast, miss your quiz, and hurt your grade. Which do you pick? The answer that many students at Georgia Tech would pick would be to skip breakfast. After all, your stomach can wait right? Your hunger can wait? So what that you don’t eat for a few hours, what is really the worst that can happen? Eventually, skipping breakfast leads to skipping lunch because you are too busy throughout the day to eat lunch, and eventually, next thing you know, you’re skipping dinner because there’s no time to eat any dinner. You have that test to study for that’s happening in the morning that you need to ace, and you can’t even waste a second taking a break to eat. This is unfortunately the reality for many Tech students, and college students, in general, and I hope to tell you today why this reality is so dangerous and the significant harm that it can cause.

Sure, one or two days of late eating or skipping meals may not harm you. Heck, even if you do it for a few months, nothing might happen. However, what I am here to tell you and what I hope to instill in your minds today is that this is not something that you will get away with over the longer term. Contrary to what you may have been told, your digestive system is not ironclad. Just like other parts of your body, your digestive system is prone to diseases and issues. You just don’t realize it because, well, how could you? When your digestion is working as it should, you are less inclined to pay attention to it because you are not in a constant state of pain or distress. It is only when things go wrong that you start to realize how truly important eating properly is, and the impacts of not eating properly. Over time, not eating properly can wreak havoc, not just on your digestive tract, but ultimately your entire body. In fact, not eating properly can be a risk factor for many chronic diseases in the digestive tract and throughout the body that can ultimately increase the risk for cancers, autoimmune conditions, tissue damage, etc. if they continue long enough.

Perhaps, one of the most devastating consequences of chronically undereating, caused by skipping meals is the development of a condition called Gastroparesis. Gastroparesis is a condition that is caused, when the stomach empties significantly more slowly than it should. Think of it this way, normally when you eat something like a sandwich, over 90% or so of that sandwich should be gone from your stomach within 4 hours. Put another way, if someone were to take a look in your stomach after four hours, they should see almost none of the sandwich there. Contrast that to someone with Gastroparesis, where, even after 3 to 4 hours, a noticeable amount of that sandwich may still be remaining in that person’s stomach (perhaps, even as much as 40% to 50% of the meal, or, in some cases, even more). Now, you might think, surely it’s not that big of a deal that your stomach takes longer to empty? What’s the worst that’s going to happen? You’re going to feel a little more full for a little more time, so what? Unfortunately, the symptoms are usually much more severe than this and most people feel much more uncomfortable than just feeling full for a longer period of time. When the stomach does not empty as it should, many people can feel nauseous, have stomach pain, feel like their stomach is overly stretched for long periods of time, etc. (Gastroparesis).

Additionally, the discomfort of Gastroparesis does not just stop with the symptoms of the disease itself. Many people who have Gastroparesis are at risk of developing a significant complication known as a Bezoar. This is when undigested food matter essentially forms a large clump in your stomach or your intestines and effectively blocks the flow/passage of other food or fluid (Palchaudhuri 26). One example is a Phytobezoar, which is made up of matter from cellulose and other cruciferous vegetables that are poorly digested in those with impaired gut motility. There are other types of Bezoars, but the key theme with all of them is that they can be life threatening if not addressed immediately because they can prevent the delivery of nutrients to your tissues. Gastroparesis can also affect your blood sugar levels. You may not think about it, but, usually, when you eat, your stomach moves food to your small intestine throughout the day, keeping rises and falls in your blood glucose levels extremely stable. However, for someone with Gastroparesis, when food that is stuck in the stomach for so many hours suddenly moves to the small intestine all at once, all that sudden absorption of large quantities of food can cause such a significant and rapid increase in Blood Glucose levels. This can have extreme complications, such as causing Ketoacidosis, and causing rapid cell shrinkage, due to a person’s blood becoming significantly more concentrated than it was before(Shakil and Church 1699).

So now that you have heard so much about Gastroparesis, you are probably wondering, how does skipping meals cause Gastroparesis? How does my stomach suddenly lose its ability to digest food properly, just because I skip meals? Well, it turns out that the answer is actually much more logical than you might think. Just like other muscles in your body, the muscles and nerves in your stomach need to be used periodically in order to effectively work. Just like other muscles and nerves in other parts of the body, the muscles and nerves in the stomach atrophy or weaken when they are not being effectively used. For example, have you ever seen the movies about children who were in wheelchairs all their life, and then suddenly tried to walk? Did you notice how it took these children a very very long time to learn how to walk afterwards? Similarly, have you noticed how when you lift weights at the gym, you build muscle, but after a period of time, when you stop working out, you end up losing all that muscle? This is a natural consequence of muscle atrophy. Believe it or not, the same thing happens in your stomach. Moving food is essentially the work out for the muscles in your stomach, and if they stop getting this work out, they get weaker and weaker (Santonicola and Gaglidari 10). To an extent, these muscles can become stronger again by being used again, through eating properly, but it is a slow and difficult process and it is one that I don’t think anyone should have to go through, especially for something this preventable.

So why did I tell you all this information about a random health condition? Well, my intention was not to scare you, but rather just to convey that taking care of your physical health is just as important as success and grades. These days, so much stress is put on our age group to meet certain expectations that I think we forget the importance of taking care of ourselves sometimes, and that is really a significant problem in and of itself. The incidence of many diseases in young people are rising, especially in the western world, and one significant factor is that, these days, young adults are so stressed out that they do not take the time to put as much effort into their health or their physical and mental well being, as they do their success. So, I hope with this post, I have emphasized that not taking care of your health can have significant consequences and is just as important as being successful in school and other facets of life.

Citations:

Chawla, Rajeev. “Gastrointestinal Complications of Diabetes.” Complications of Diabetes, 2012, pp. 100–100., https://doi.org/10.5005/jp/books/11685_10.