EGI – Raise your hand if you didn’t grow up hearing the admonition of mom and dad (or whoever took their place on the beach): “You have to wait three hours before bathing after eating”.
And raise your hand if you hated that interminable time spent bored on the hot sand or on the sunbed under an umbrella while ‘the grown-ups’ whiled away the wait with sonorous naps or sleepy card games at the bar of the establishment.
Well, for years they’ve been making fun of us: the three-hour wait is little more than a popular belief. A sort of ancestral warning with which they, the ‘grown-ups’, always sought an explanation to force the others – ‘the little ones’ – to stay away from the water while serenely giving in to a post-prandial nap without the obligation to keep an eye on the offspring so that he would not drown in the waves.
Are the risks there or not?
But really it is not risky to take a bath after eating? The answer is that there is no scientific evidence linking drowning to having had lunch shortly before.
In truth, the process of digestion or its interpretation varies from parent to parent but also from the amount of food ingested during lunch. Therefore the interval can last from 30 minutes to 2 hours. But the question that arises is, in every beach holiday season: what can happen if you dive early? The name of the threat is known – blockage of digestion. And if this is interrupted, popular wisdom says, you can drown. True or false?
There are those who say that diving into the water after it has not yet digested can lead to cramps which, as paralyzing or semi-such, can lead to drowning. You can paralyze your arms and legs.
Scientific evidence and legends
Ma there is no scientific evidence for these claims, which appear more like a popular belief. Especially since a scientific research on the subject published in 2011 in the International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education, states that “there have been no recorded cases in which eating before swimming has caused or contributed to fatal or non-fatal drownings”. In short, a false mythology. Like an urban legend.
If anything, according to Jesús Sueiro, spokesman for the Galician Association of Family and Community Medicine (Agamfec), the question “it has more to do with thermal shock, with suddenly entering very cold water. It is a circulatory collapse, hypotension occurs or a drop in blood pressure, a kind of syncope. Dizziness, even vomiting may occur, and if you are in the water at that moment, it can cause drowning due to loss of consciousness,” explains the specialist.
An advice? Always enter with cautionslowly and progressively. And by letting the body acclimate a little at a time, the risk is already as good as eliminated.
From the Spanish School of Aid and First Aid, its director Alberto García Sanz points out that two different phenomena can be distinguished. What we commonly refer to as “impaired digestion” is actually poor digestion, he explains.
Therefore, “when we have eaten, the digestive system needs a increased concentration of blood and oxygen, which makes us sleepy, for example. So there is less input in the brain. If we perform a physical activity, what we are doing is that the muscle groups acting in that activity will also need a supply of oxygen and blood and will increase the respiratory and cardiovascular rate. At the expense of what? At the expense of that digestive activity,” he says.
Better take it slow
In short, here water has nothing to do with it: any physical activity on a full stomach can cause gastrointestinal disturbances, nausea, vomiting or dizziness. If this happens to us while we run, nothing happens; if we are swimming, we can drown. But the culprit is temperature change and not digestion, it points out.
In summary: in this phenomenon, which forces us to wait after eating before going in the bath, there are actually three factors that interact: temperature, physical activity and food. The first is a risk in itself: if we suddenly enter cold water after spending a lot of time in the sun or after exercising, i.e. if our body temperature is highthermal shock is greater and can cause syncope This could also happen to us if we take a cold shower after playing sports, but here the greatest danger would be “that we will get hit if we lose consciousness”, explains García Sanz.
What does food have to do with it?
The question of food therefore comes into play when it is related to physical activity. “The general recommendation is not to exercise after eating (this is why athletes eat several hours before a game or competition) or anything that could cause physiological stress, and that would include sudden entry into the water and a thermal shock when the water is cold. And it is considered cold below 24ºC more or less,” says Luis Miguel Pascual, head of a research on the causes of drowning.
That is, “if you enter the water immediately after eating, but there is not much difference in temperature between the water and the body or you do it progressively, and your intention is only to dive and not do any type of physical activity , there would be no risk. And beyond the normal ones when you are in the water”, observes El Paìs.
But enough talk of digestive blockage. In any case, it is always advisable to enter the water gradually. Never abruptly and diving.
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