Stuffed to bursting

> Here’s what happens to your body when you overindulge with too much feasting during the festive seasons

appetite and leptin decreases appetite.

They are produced predominantly in the stomach and fat cells respectively.

Ghrelin is usually at a high level before you eat and goes down afterwards. Leptin tells the brain that we are full.

So you would assume that people with more fat cells would produce more leptin and, therefore, be more likely to want to eat less.

Obese people, however, build up a resistance to leptin, which means they have to produce more and more leptin for it to have an effect and reduce their appetite.

So here are a few things to bear in mind before you have that last wafer-thin mint.

What happens when I feel full to bursting? The food can go one of two ways: further into the digestive system or back where it came from in the form of vomiting.

Overeating causes indigestion, when the stomach acid churns up into the oesophagus.

The stomach is ‘numb’ to the acid but the oesophagus isn’t, which is why acid reflux burns.

The body also has to divert much of its energy to digesting the food, which causes us to feel tired and drowsy.

Can my stomach burst from overeating? Sadly, yes. There are cases where the stomach becomes so large that it ruptures from the sheer volume of food within it.

One 23-year-old woman had over 2,500ml within her stomach, which caused it to swell so much that it filled the whole of her abdomen, from her ribs to her pelvis.

It eventually perforated, necessitating emergency surgery.

Can I die from overeating? Again, yes, there are a couple of reports of people dying from over-indulging. This is very rare, but it happens.

One person died from tearing the oesophagus, the tube that connects the mouth to the stomach, and others have actually ruptured their stomach by overeating.

Still feeling hungry now? Well, here’s something for you to chew over.

One of the largest (Christmas) meals ever consumed was by an American woman.

In 2010, she consumed 50lb (22.7kg) of turkey, 30lbs of ham, 35lb (13.6kg) of potatoes, veg and stuffing, which was then washed down with eight pints (3.8 litres) of gravy and relish and followed by dessert.

This meal consisted of 30,000 calories; to put this into context, males and females are recommended to consume 2,500 and 2,000 calories daily, respectively.

In other words, this woman consumed 15 times the daily recommended calories in that one meal. – The Independent