Mystery Behind Food Coma?

The common saying after a big meal is that you are about to ‘food coma’ and the pants come loose (or off in some cases haha). Some are even known to literally fall asleep after a big meal!

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Now this has happened to me on one occasion! 3 of us to be exact, snoring, sleeping talking one Christmas afternoon because we LITERALLY ate way too much food. I used to laugh about this but looking back I remember being tired for the next day too.

So why is food coma a thing? Our digestive systems are one of the most active systems in the body, and we do need to remember to rest it. It’s like going for a run, or heading to the gym, you give yourself a rest period, don’t you? Well our digestive system needs this too! It takes about two and a half hours for us to fully digest the last thing that enters our mouth. That is a lot of exercise! This is going through sorting out our nutrients, what is waste, what should be fluid and what is solid. Every area of the digestive system is important for moving food and liquid to either be broken down and absorbed to where they are needed or secreted as waste.

Each gland in our system needs a specific nutrient (sometimes more than one), to be able to work optimally. So, if we are constantly going into a food coma, this just moves all our food out to be waste… not only are we exhausting our systems, but the glands are starving from nutrients too. This is where you then get every gland working in fight or flight mode, the digestive tract is becoming confused on what to absorb and what not to absorb. This creates havoc in the body!

You can become moody, tired, agitated and experience stomach problems, simply due to overeating. Your body would be constantly secreting ghrelin, a hormone that tells you that you are hungry - meaning you literally cannot stop eating, no matter how hard you try, if your brain has been rewired to be hungry constantly. When this happens, it can often lead to mental health problems and eating disorders (especially those who are big binges). But it is not entirely on you – it’s just that your brain has rewired itself to thinking that it needs to depend on food 24 hours of the day.

So, what can we do? We can reset your system, we can investigate making sure your body is absorbing all that it needs, and we can give you your energy back! In a noninvasive, pain-free way!