Top 10 Helpful Tips for Those with Gastric Pain

1. Avoid overeating but never starve

Consuming too much food stimulates your stomach continuously to digest the excessive intake, leading to distension of the stomach. The aftermath of overeating is abdominal discomfort, bloating, and uneasiness. To enhance absorption, divide your meals into smaller portions and consume them throughout several small meals.

Avoiding hunger is equally important. When hungry, hydrochloric acid and digestive catalysts in the stomach are at a high concentration, leading to a state of 'self-digestion' of the mucous membrane. Eating excessively or too little can harm the stomach's protective mechanisms. Therefore, eat slowly until you feel full, and don't let yourself become excessively hungry or full. Maintain a regular eating schedule to allow the stomach time to digest and regulate. Eat three meals a day, with a hearty breakfast and a light dinner. Following this simple habit will help stabilize your stomach and allow it time to rest.

These eating habits have become a leading cause of gastric pain and can worsen the condition if not changed. In addition to avoiding overeating or starvation, remember to chew your food thoroughly. Eating too quickly prevents proper chewing of food, forcing the stomach to work hard to digest, increasing the burden on the stomach and causing damage to the stomach lining.

Can you adjust these eating habits?

2. Don't exercise immediately after eating

Gastric pain is prevalent in many Vietnamese, affecting over 50% of the population, spanning across all age groups. The cause may stem from daily eating habits and lifestyle, regardless of age.

After eating, your stomach, whether normal or suffering from gastric pain, needs to work to digest the food. Exercising immediately after a meal causes abdominal muscle contraction, jolting the stomach and triggering gastric pain. Therefore, it's best to rest after each meal to allow the stomach to focus on digestion. If desired, you can take a one-hour walk after eating.

To minimize the chance of gastric pain recurrence, instead of exercising after meals, engage in physical activity before eating. Pre-meal exercise enhances the body's conversion of fats into energy more efficiently. Doctors advise against immediate post-meal exercise; it's recommended to exercise before a meal or one hour after to keep the body flexible and prevent the accumulation of excess energy as body fat. This helps support effective gastric pain treatment and maintain a healthy digestive system.

During summer, having a sip of cold water to cool down becomes essential. However, for those with gastric pain, it's a big no-no. Cold water tends to stimulate and increase the speed of digestive tract movement, affecting the body's nutrient absorption. Additionally, it dilutes stomach fluids, impacting the digestion process. Moreover, the elderly, who generally have impaired digestive function, should avoid consuming too much cold food to prevent digestive disorders.

People with gastric pain experience compromised digestive functions in the stomach. Consuming cold food can stimulate the digestive tract, affecting the digestive system and worsening the disease's condition. After a meal, food remains in the stomach and other digestive organs. If you immediately drink cold beverages, it causes the stomach to expand blood vessels, reducing blood flow to other organs, hindering normal digestion. This exacerbates the illness.

Individuals with gastric pain need to be cautious about their diet, especially when it comes to spices. So, how should one choose spices if they suffer from gastric pain? Most favorite spices among Vietnamese can be harsh on the stomach. Particularly, highly spiced foods like fried dishes, smoked meats, or grilled items can cause feelings of fullness, belching, and diarrhea, so it's best to stay away from them to protect your stomach effectively.

Two leading spicy contenders, pepper and hot chili, can increase stomach stimulation, causing discomfort in the upper abdomen and the possibility of reflux episodes. Although garlic has many health benefits, it's a spice to avoid when dealing with stomach issues. Consuming garlic, especially raw garlic, can lead to symptoms like heartburn in individuals with acid reflux. Hot and spicy foods are considered the enemies of gastric pain. Consuming spicy food can irritate the gastric mucosa. The spiciness and heat of the food increase the secretion of digestive acid. Therefore, patients may feel the stomach burn. Belching and acidic burps are common symptoms when people with gastric pain eat such foods.

All spicy foods containing chili, ginger, etc., can cause irritation to the stomach. Therefore, you should avoid them if you have a stomach ulcer. Consuming spicy food serves no purpose in healing the wound. It makes the stomach produce more acid to digest it, putting a strain on the stomach and causing irritation to the stomach lining. This is similar to pouring vinegar on a wound on the skin; it causes immediate pain and makes the wound very sore!

Onions can also exhaust the stomach by causing belching and acidic burps in patients with gastric pain, especially when accompanied by eating a lot of food in one meal. Meanwhile, excessive use of mint can weaken the sphincter between the stomach and esophagus, leading to acid from the stomach flowing back into the esophagus, causing discomfort.

Sour spices like lemons, tamarinds, and vinegar are also commonly used by Vietnamese to prepare dishes. However, using them excessively is not beneficial for people with gastric pain.

Individuals with gastric pain should refrain from consuming alcoholic beverages. The habit of drinking alcohol is a primary cause of gastric pain. Those who consume alcohol, tobacco may exacerbate the symptoms of gastric pain.

Beer and wine contain a large amount of alcohol. The alcohol in beer and wine damages the gastric mucosa of the drinker. Additionally, alcohol has the ability to increase acidity in the individual's stomach. The increased acidity will inhibit the protective ability of the gastric mucous lining. When drinking beer, especially beer with ice, drinkers often have the habit of adding ice to their drinks. This habit is common among people in Vietnam. However, with ice from an unsanitary source, users may continue to introduce harmful bacteria into their stomachs. For those who have not yet experienced gastric pain, the bacteria in ice can cause inflammation and ulceration. For patients with gastric pain, drinking cold beer can make the condition worse.

In summary, foods such as alcoholic beverages or other unhealthy foods like coffee, canned food, high-fat foods... are detrimental to stomach health. Therefore, you should stay away from them. Instead, opt for stomach-friendly foods such as bananas, ginger, apples, papayas, yogurt... in moderate amounts. This will help the stomach digest better and reduce feelings of bloating and discomfort.

Seemingly unconventional but crucial for individuals with gastric pain. If you've experienced gastric pain, you've likely found yourself massaging your stomach.

So, why not massage your belly as part of your daily exercise routine? For instance, after dinner, before bedtime, you can massage your abdomen clockwise around your navel 64 times. Finish massaging your hands in the lower abdominal area. This simple routine helps keep your stomach in a stable state, allowing it to function better, especially in the evening.

Fruits like oranges, lemons, tomatoes, etc., are acidic and should be avoided by individuals with gastric pain. Therefore, refrain from consuming lemon water, plum juice, coconut water, as these can stimulate the production of gastric acid, causing damage to the stomach lining and hindering the healing of wounds.

These fruits increase the acid concentration in the stomach, making ulcerated areas more severe, leading to increased reflux and acidity. They cause gas formation, bloating, and more contraction in the stomach, worsening serious gastric conditions and increasing the risk of stomach perforation if ulcers are too severe.

While these fruits are excellent for normal individuals, those with gastric issues need to be cautious. If you want to supplement vitamins, opt for juices that are good for the stomach, such as banana, apple, papaya juices. These are rich in good dietary fiber specifically for gastric patients. Soluble fibers aid better water absorption, soften stools, ease digestion, and reduce transit time in the intestines. For example, bananas are a familiar fruit with many vitamins and essential nutrients. Bananas have beneficial effects on digestion, especially for the stomach. Nutrients in bananas stimulate the healing of ulcerated areas. Bananas can neutralize stomach acid, reduce inflammation, lower blood pressure, and improve digestion. Patients with gastric pain can incorporate bananas into their daily diet. They serve as not only a delicious dessert but also as a remedy supporting the healing of gastric ulcers.

Many people have the habit of staying up late for work. However, do you know that staying up late not only reduces the quality of life but can also be a factor that causes stomach pain and makes the condition more serious?

When staying up late, the stomach does not get a rest, and the body consumes energy, causing the stomach to work overnight. This frequent occurrence can overload the stomach, increase acid secretion excessively, damage the stomach lining, and worsen gastric ulcers.

Stomach pain and staying up late not only cause more severe inflammation but also increase the likelihood of obesity. Most people who stay up late tend to have late-night snacks. Eating heavily at night weakens the digestive system, affects the quality of sleep, and leads to obesity. Late-night eating puts a strain on the digestive system, and frequent acid secretion causes stomach pain.

Staying up late will undoubtedly make you develop a habit of eating late to compensate for not having time to eat during the day. This is detrimental to health, especially for the stomach. Accepting food at night forces the stomach to produce too much hydrochloric acid, leading to ulcerative conditions. Moreover, eating late can affect sleep due to a full stomach and make it challenging to control your weight.

For many, drinking soy milk or enjoying a warm cup of tea is an ideal habit, but for those with stomach pain, caution is advised.

For example, when drinking tea with stomach patients, the most suitable drinking temperature is between 30-32°C. A temperature lower than the body temperature can cause blood vessel constriction, reducing the stomach's protective barrier and affecting its health.

Other healthful drinks, like soy milk, are beneficial for the general population. It is a food rich in energy and contains many nutrients essential for health. Soy milk contains nutrients such as iron, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin K, saturated fat, fiber, and more. However, individuals with stomach pain should be careful. After eating, they often experience bloating, indigestion, diarrhea, belching, and acid reflux. According to traditional medicine, soybeans have a cooling nature and are beneficial, so they are not suitable for those with a weakened spleen and stomach.

Soy milk can exacerbate symptoms such as kidney deficiency, nocturia, frequent urination in some patients. Medical research indicates that soy milk contains a certain amount of oxalate that affects the stomach, especially in cases of acute and chronic inflammation. The use of soy products by patients may hinder absorption, leading to stomach discomfort and bloating. Especially for those with stomach damage, consuming such foods can intensify the pain even more.

Aside from affecting the lungs and heart, smoking poses many risks to your digestive system, especially the stomach. Don't be surprised if you have stomach ulcers despite never fasting. Just smoking is enough to put your stomach at risk of various digestive diseases, regardless of how scientific your dietary lifestyle is.

Specifically, cigarette smoke contains a high level of toxic nicotine, a substance proven to stimulate and damage nerves, respiratory organs, and other parts of the body. In those with gastric ulcers, nicotine in cigarette smoke, when inhaled, stimulates the production of cortisol, an agent that causes inflammation of the gastric ulcers and increases the risk of disease if the patient is infected with H. pylori bacteria.

Smoking makes your condition worse. When you smoke too much, it can reduce the pressure of the lower esophageal sphincter, weaken the acid removal capacity in the esophagus, keep the esophageal mucosa in an acidic environment for a long time, directly affecting the function of mucosal cells.

Smoking not only increases gastroesophageal reflux but also promotes the function of the lower esophageal sphincter, and reflux of the stomach and intestines, increasing the concentration of lecithin in the blood and bile in the stomach. This hinders the healing of esophageal ulcers. Smoking actively or passively is dangerous. It affects most organs in...

Many people have the habit of smoking a cigarette after eating, but they are not aware that immediately after eating, the stomach and intestines contract strongly, blood circulation increases rapidly. Therefore, smoking a cigarette at the time after eating will make the body absorb toxins tenfold. So if you have a cigarette, please dispose of it!