Office workers often face high work intensity and numerous social engagements, making them prone to irregular diets and excessive physical strain. Consequently, they are a high-risk group for stomach diseases. To maintain good stomach health, remember to avoid the following 9 taboos.
1. Avoid Mental Stress
When a person is tense, worried, or angry, these negative emotions can spread from the cerebral cortex to the limbic system, affecting the autonomic nervous system. This directly leads to gastrointestinal dysfunction, causing excessive secretion of gastric acid and pepsin, leading to gastric vasoconstriction, pyloric spasm, delayed emptying, and damage to the gastric mucosal protective layer, resulting in self-digestion and ulcer formation.
2. Avoid Excessive Fatigue
Whether from physical or mental labor, excessive fatigue can cause insufficient blood supply to the stomach and disrupt secretory functions. This leads to excessive gastric acid and reduced mucus, damaging the mucosa.
3. Avoid Excessive Drinking
Alcohol can directly damage the gastric mucosa. It can also cause cirrhosis of the liver and chronic pancreatitis, which in turn aggravates stomach damage.
4. Avoid Irregular Meals
When hungry, the high concentration of gastric acid and pepsin in the stomach, with no food to neutralize it, can easily lead to the self-digestion of the mucosa. Overeating can impair the stomach's self-protection mechanisms; excessive expansion of the stomach wall and prolonged food retention can also contribute to stomach damage.
5. Avoid Unhygienic Food
Helicobacter pylori infection is a major cause of gastric and duodenal ulcers. The detection rate of this bacterium in ulcer patients is as high as 70-90%, and it disappears after the ulcer is cured. Ulcer patients can transmit the infection through close contact such as utensils, toothbrushes, and kissing. Contaminated food is also a source of infection.
6. Avoid a Heavy Dinner
Some people tend to concentrate their day's nutrition in dinner or enjoy late-night snacks or something before bed. This not only leads to poor sleep and obesity but can also stimulate the gastric mucosa to secrete excessive gastric acid, inducing ulcer formation.
7. Avoid Eating Too Quickly
After food enters the stomach, it is stored, ground, and digested into a chyme-like substance before being emptied into the intestine. If food is not chewed properly and is swallowed hastily, its coarse texture increases the burden on the stomach and prolongs its stay time, which can damage the gastric mucosa. Furthermore, chewing slowly increases saliva secretion, which reduces gastric acid and bile secretion, helping to protect the stomach.
8. Avoid Coffee and Strong Tea
Coffee and strong tea are both central nervous system stimulants. They can reflexively cause ischemia of the gastric mucosa, destroying its protective function and promoting ulcer formation.
9. Avoid Abusing Drugs
Drugs that can easily damage the gastric mucosa mainly fall into three categories: acetylsalicylic acid drugs like aspirin; non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as phenylbutazone, indomethacin, and ibuprofen; and steroid hormones like corticosteroids. Therefore, the use of these drugs should be avoided as much as possible. If they must be taken, the dosage and treatment course should be controlled, and it is best to take them after meals.