“I’m sure all of us have had that situation where we’ve eaten too much and we get stomach cramps,” Suneeta Krishnareddy, M.D., M.S., assistant professor of medicine in the faculty of digestive and liver diseases at Columbia University Medical Center, tells SELF. You might have eaten more than your stomach could handle.Įxperts say this tends to be the most common cause for this specific type of discomfort. Here’s what might be up with your abdomen: 1. You’ve got the anatomical and digestive basics down. Now, here’s why you might be dealing with abdominal cramps after eating. It waits there until you suddenly have the urge to go, at which point it is passed out in a bowel movement. For the next 36 hours or so, the large intestine absorbs water from the waste products and turns what’s left into stool, which moves to the rectum (the end part of the large intestine) through more peristalsis. Once the small intestine has gotten everything useful it can from the food, the waste products move into the large intestine. The walls of the small intestine absorb the extracted nutrients and water, which move into your bloodstream.Įven getting to this point can take an impressive six to eight hours. Your stomach gradually releases the chyme into the small intestine, which reduces it further by mixing it with enzymes from the pancreas and from bacteria, along with bile from the liver, all while pushing the chyme further through the digestive tract. Muscles in your stomach walls churn the food and release acid and enzymes, slowly mixing the food into a paste called chyme. The first organ the newly chewed food encounters after this is the stomach. Once the bite is small enough to swallow, your tongue pushes it to the back of your throat into your esophagus, which begins to contract automatically in a motion called peristalsis. Between the chewing action of your mouth and the enzymes and lubrication from your saliva, you start to break down what you’re eating, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) explains. Not only are stomach cramps painful at the time, but persistent ones can make you apprehensive every time you try to eat, particularly when it’s unclear why the cramps are happening and what you can do to try to relieve the pain.įirst, though, this all starts with one bite. But consistently feeling like your stomach is tying itself into knots after you eat isn’t normal, and it can have an impact that lasts long after you’ve left the table (or the couch). “Having an occasional belly ache is not a problem-it’s essentially normal,” William Chey, M.D., professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, director of the GI Physiology Laboratory, and codirector of the Michigan Bowel Control Program, tells SELF. It’s worth noting that experiencing some cramps in your midsection after eating can be no big deal as long as it doesn’t happen often. So if you get stomach cramps after eating, you’re probably determined to make them stop ASAP. Many of us can agree that eating something delicious is (or should be) the best part of the day! Even if you don’t take special joy in food or spend a ton of your time deciding what to cook for dinner, eating is something we have to deal with as part and parcel of living as human beings. Stomach cramps after eating are the absolute worst.
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