What is Health Risks of Eating Too Fast?...Dr Badran Answers

Eating too quickly is bad for your health. Often, fast eating is just one part of an overall fast-paced lifestyle.

The link between eating quickly and becoming unhealthy has been known for a while. Eating at your desk or on the run can mean you can gulp down your breakfast or lunch in less than five minutes.

Look around any restaurant, and you’re likely to see at least some of the diners chowing down like it’s the last 30 seconds of a speed-eating contest.

Obesity

People who eat quickly are more likely to weigh more. Researchers from a university in Japan examined data from 59,717 people with type 2 diabetes. Researchers asked people to describe themselves as fast eaters, medium eaters or slow eaters. People who were the slowest eaters had the lowest risk of obesity. People who self-described as medium-eaters had a bit higher risk, but the highest risk was in the fast-eating group.

Eating quickly may disrupt gut hormones that help regulate appetite and tell you when you’re full. Fast eating also reduced the thermic effect of food — the boost in metabolism that occurs after eating.

When we eat, the signals of hunger have to move from our stomach and gut to our brain. It takes the brain about 20 minutes to shut off the urge to eat. If you’re a fast eater, you’ll consume more food in 20 minutes than a slow eater. By the time a fast-eater gets the satiety signals, it’s too late — they have overeaten and are uncomfortably full.

Eating at a slower pace allows you to feel satisfied before you eat too much. A different study showed that the reduction of eating speed suppressed weight gain and prevented obesity.

People should take more than 20 minutes to eat a meal — ideally about 30 minutes — so that you can have an opportunity for your brain to catch up with your stomach. When you eat quickly, the body doesn’t get a chance to signal to the brain that you are getting full. Receptors in the stomach that respond to being stretched by food, and the hormones that signal to the brain that partially digested food has made it to the small intestine, can take 15 to 20 minutes to kick in.

Diabetes

Fast eating in itself doesn’t cause type 2 diabetes. But it’s possible that habitually bolting down your food might give your body an extra nudge in that direction. In a large study, middle-aged men and women without diabetes who said they were fast eaters were at increased risk for insulin resistance. This condition, in which the body doesn’t use insulin effectively, may lead to diabetes over time.

Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolic syndrome is a clustering of at least three of the following five medical conditions: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides, and low serum high-density lipoprotein (HDL). Insulin resistance is closely related to metabolic syndrome — a cluster of factors that increase the risk of developing not only diabetes, but also heart disease and stroke. Approximately 20–25 percent of the world's adult population has the cluster of risk factors that is metabolic syndrome.

Metabolic syndrome comes with a cluster of comorbidities like heart disease, diabetes and stroke risks, than people who ate at a normal pace.

Fast eaters were 11.6% more likely to have developed metabolic syndrome – defined as having any of three risk factors out of obesity (around the waistline), high blood pressure, high levels of bad fats (triglycerides) and high blood sugar after a period of fasting. Normal eaters were 6.5 percent likely to develop metabolic syndrome, slow eaters were just 2.3 percent likely to do the same.

In particular, fast eaters were prone to having large waistlines and low levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol. These are two of the risk factors that make up metabolic syndrome.

Most of the disorders associated with metabolic syndrome don't have obvious signs or symptoms. One sign that is visible is a large waist circumference. And if your blood sugar is high, you might notice the signs and symptoms of diabetes — such as increased thirst and urination, fatigue, and blurred vision.

Gastritis

Those who eat faster tend to feel less satiated than those who eat slower and, consequently, tend to eat more. Speed eaters can eat large food quantities fast because their stomachs tend to empty faster or quickly enlarge to fill with food.

Fast eating has been linked to erosive gastritis — inflammation that eats away at the lining of the stomach, causing shallow breaks or sometimes deep ulcers.

Although the pathophysiology of erosive gastritis has not been clarified yet, it is thought to occur because of an imbalance between the defenses of the stomach wall and offensive factors in the stomach. The defenses of the stomach wall include mucus, bicarbonate, tissue regeneration ability, and mucosal blood flow, while the offensive factors include gastric acid, pepsin, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, alcohol, and Helicobacter pylori.

If the stomach loses its ability to return to normal size, there is a chance it loses its capacity to contract and muscles do not contract to push the food into intestine. People who gulp down their food are more likely to overeat. And overeating, in turn, causes food to sit around in the stomach longer, so the gastric mucosa is exposed to gastric acid for longer durations. Thus, the likelihood of gastrointestinal diseases increase.

Choking

Choking is the stoppage of the flow of air from the environment into the lungs. Choking prevents breathing, and can be partial or complete, with partial choking allowing some, although inadequate, flow of air into the lungs. Prolonged or complete choking results in asphyxia which leads to anoxia and is potentially fatal. In adults, a piece of food often is the culprit. Young children often swallow small objects.

Certain activities or habits can also increase the risk of choking as eating too quickly, not sitting down while eating, not chewing food properly and eating while lying down.

Slow Down, You Chew Too Fast

Allow enough time. Make meals a priority item on your schedule. Enlist all your senses. When you first start eating, take a few moments to really notice the aroma, flavour, crunchiness, texture and other sensory properties of the food. Then keep noticing these things as the meal goes on.

Choose more chews. Take small bites, and chew them thoroughly. In addition to slowing you down, chewing well makes food easier to digest, which increases the absorption of nutrients.

No need for competitive eating, an activity in which participants compete against each other to eat large quantities of food, usually in a short time period.

Revive the art of table talk, chatting between bites is one of the most pleasant ways to stretch out a meal.

Apply the pleasure principle, not only does eating slowly and mindfully help you eat less, it enhances the pleasure of the dining experience. To master the art of slow eating, put on some music, light a few candles and concentrate on your meal.