After a long night of drinking, most end up having to ‘pray’ in front of the toilet and finally flushing everything in order to feel better. But why does this happen? According to a statement from the University of Texas at Dallas (USA), vomiting can occur precisely because alcohol is actually a gastric irritant and can, therefore, upset our stomach. In fact, drinking too much alcohol can even lead to gastritis, which is when the stomach lining becomes irritated, inflamed, and eroded. Symptoms vary, but include indigestion, stomach pain, nausea, upset stomach, and more vomiting.
Ethyl alcohol is present in alcoholic beverages such as wine (with around 13%), beer (5%), liqueurs (up to 50%) or spirits (up to 70%) and can poison our system if we drink a lot in a short space of time. Binge drinking is defined as 5 or more drinks over about two hours for men and four drinks over the same time period for women, the Mayo Clinic states.
The reason we can inadvertently drink so much is because alcohol passes from the mouth through the esophagus, through the stomach, and into the small intestine and into our bloodstream, even after we stop drinking. , which allows the alcohol in our body to increase. In addition, alcohol is absorbed quickly, but it takes much longer to leave our body.
According to a report from Colorado State University (USA), the act of vomiting is the end of a series of events. The first stage is nausea, which is linked to a decrease in our gastric motility or contractions of the smooth gastric muscles in the stomach and an increase in the tone of the muscle wall in the small intestine.
After the nausea comes the retching , which is essentially respiratory spasms. Most of the stomach contracts and other areas relax. Then the act of vomiting takes place, which is when the contents of the small intestine are propelled to the mouth and are expelled from the body.
The University of Michigan (USA) recommends waiting several hours before eating. And when drinking water, it’s best to ingest small amounts or chew on ice chips every 15 minutes for about 4 hours. After this time we can start to eat soft foods such as applesauce, rice, bananas or cookies.
