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D Scott

Monday, November 20th, 2023 9:29am

I would be willing to bet that you've said this at least once after eating your Thanksgiving dinner - "I ate so much I feel like I might explode"

Apparently that can actually happen? 

The technical term is "gastrointestinal perforation" and that's what happens when your stomach gets too full and ruptures. What happens is that a hole will form in your stomach and the contents will leak into your abdominal cavity which can lead to infection or even sepsis, which can be deadly.

While every stomach is different, on average you can hold about 4 cups in your stomach. Because the stomach is very elastic, it can stretch and you could hold about 16 cups in there. Here's where it gets weird, it usually takes your brain about 20 minutes to realize that you're full so by the time you get that "full" feeling, you've already gone well past the capacity of your stomach. 

I know that we said that your stomach will "explode" but that isn't exactly what happens. When we hear explode we think "BOOOOM!!!!" and explosion. There's nothing left of you. You've blown up into little bitty pieces. That's not how this goes. It's more of a rupture or a tear. Then the inside of of your stomach leaks out into your body. Yes, you die from that. Please see above where we talked about sepsis.

Thankfully, this is a very rare occurrence so you shouldn't really be to worried about this happening. However, it is a possibility so keep that in mind.

Feature photo: Photo by Pro Church Media on Unsplash