What’s happening to your body?
Dysmotility is a technical term which means 'slow or unco-ordinated movement'. When you have dysmotility, it means your stomach takes too long to empty. So, instead of the food moving down to your intestines to continue the digestive process, it just sits there. As a result, you can feel queasy and/or have a heavy, bloated stomach. It's just like you've eaten a big Christmas dinner - but you most probably have only eaten normally. Sometimes, in bad cases, the stomach’s normal churning process can almost go into reverse. This forces the food back up, making you feel even more nauseous - or even sick.
The main causes
Generally, the key reason you will suffer from dysmotility is because of what you eat or the way you eat. Nowadays, our lifestyles mean we don’t always have time for properly balanced meals at set times of the day - in fact only 36%5 of us eat three regular meals a day. Confused eating habits can mean your stomach isn’t able to keep up and, as a result, it has difficulty digesting food.
Key triggers for many sufferers are:
- Fatty and heavy or rich foods. These are more difficult for your stomach to process, slowing its normal digestive rhythm down
- Drinking too much alcohol, as this can slow down the stomach’s processing powers.
- Eating late at night. Your stomach will have to digest your food while you are in bed, leaving you feeling as though your meal is just ‘sitting there’
- Eating 'on the run'. Grabbing a sandwich, rushing your food may mean your stomach finds it hard to digest your food properly
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How to avoid
Luckily there are a number of simple things you can do to try and avoid dysmotility symptoms. So don’t feel you're stuck with it for good:
- slow down, take a break and relax a bit. And, above all, don’t eat on the run.
- make sure you don’t gobble your meal and always chew your food well before you swallow. Once you’ve eaten, give yourself time to digest your food properly before going on to do something else. In other words, allow your stomach’s natural digestive rhythm to keep up with you. Often it’s not what you eat but how you eat.
- try eating smaller, lighter meals rather than making one big one last all day
- don’t eat just before you go to bed
- try to avoid fatty, rich foods
- cut down on the amount of alcohol you drink
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