It’s Sunday. Yesterday you went out to dinner with friends and you wake up with stomach upset, pain in the extremities, migraine … But, a moment! If you did not try a single drop of alcohol. What’s wrong? This is known as the “hangover” of food.
Experts say that although these hangovers are not recognized by the medical community, they are increasingly common. This is confirmed by Tracey Strudwick, nutritional therapist at Nuffield Health (UK): “Many people experience them regularly, because they are eating foods that their bodies can not tolerate: they are high in fat, high in salt, high in sugar or high starch , or even all at the same time, added to the daily stress affects our digestive system and the rest of our body.
Other symptoms are feeling lethargic, as if one lacks energy. Something that can be cause of an unhealthy diet, high in carbohydrates and in fats. Therefore, going back to normal and healthy routines will make that sensation disappear.
An example are those foods that are high in sugars. These foods release glucose into the bloodstream quickly, causing the pancreas to produce insulin (the hormone that regulates the amount of sugar in the blood and stimulates cells to absorb it for energy). Such is the speed, that the pancreas can not calculate how much insulin to release, thus ending with our reserves of blood sugar. Strudwick explains: “This leaves you with a very low level of blood sugar, so that the morning after eating a large plate of pasta or something sweet, you can wake up with a good headache, coming to feel dizziness or nausea.Your brain needs glucose to function and without it you will find it difficult to concentrate. ”
Another example is complex carbohydrates, such as cereals or vegetables, which can also trigger a food hangover in your body. Moreover, in 15% of people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome. If we eat a lot, our small intestine will not be able to digest all the food, which can cause it to reach the bulk indigestible. This causes us to have gas, feel swollen and therefore, have strong belly pains.
The conclusion we can draw is that a balanced diet will mean that we do not have to suffer those symptoms anymore, because there is nothing worse than getting up with alcohol hangover, as if to add a meal
