Which side is better to sleep on if you have a bad stomach?

The stomach is an important organ in the human body. Its main function is to digest the food we eat, then absorb the nutrients in the food, and cooperate with the intestines to excrete substances that cannot be absorbed by the human body. Nowadays, many people suffer from stomach diseases due to high work pressure or bad eating habits, which seriously affects their health. A bad stomach requires certain care. So, which side is better to sleep on if you have a bad stomach?

1. Which side is better to sleep on if your stomach is not good?

The main stomach diseases include gastric ulcer, various types of gastritis and digestive dysfunction. For these people, it is best to sleep on the right side.

From an anatomical point of view, the greater curvature of the stomach and the outlets of the stomach to the duodenum and the small intestine to the large intestine are all on the left side. Therefore, sleeping on the right side will not compress these organs and is conducive to the smooth flow of food from top to bottom in the digestive tract.

However, patients with a digestive disorder called esophageal reflux are better off sleeping on their left side. If you sleep on your right side, the amount of acidic fluid that refluxes from the stomach into the esophagus will be much greater than normal and will be continuous, easily causing stomach burning pain. In addition, if people with indigestion sleep on the right side, food can more easily fall into the duodenum through gravity, which can help digestion.

2. What to do if your stomach is not feeling well

Prevention: First, pay attention to keeping your stomach warm and add clothes in time; secondly, avoid eating raw and cold food to prevent stomach discomfort due to cold.

Maintenance: For gastrointestinal disease, “three parts treatment and seven parts maintenance”. People with a history of gastrointestinal disease should pay more attention to maintaining their stomach and intestines. For example, drinking millet porridge for breakfast is especially good for the stomach; for dinner, pay attention to appropriately reducing the intake of foods that are difficult to digest, such as beans and glutinous rice, to reduce the burden on the stomach and intestines.

Treatment: If you have an acute gastrointestinal disease, you should seek early treatment. It is best to choose Chinese patent medicine rather than Western medicine for both conditioning and treatment.

3. Dietary precautions for bad stomach

1. Pay attention to developing a reasonable diet system, eat at regular times and in fixed quantities, chew slowly, and reduce the digestive burden on the stomach.

2. Avoid eating too fast.

After food enters the stomach, it is stored, ground, and digested, turning it into chyme before it can be discharged into the intestines. If you do not chew thoroughly and swallow food in a hurry, the food will be rough, which will increase the burden on the stomach, prolong the retention time, and may cause damage to the gastric mucosa. In addition, chewing slowly can increase saliva secretion and reduce gastric acid and bile secretion, which is beneficial to the protection of the stomach.

3. Avoid uneven hunger and fullness

When you are hungry, the gastric acid and protease in the stomach have no food to neutralize them, and their concentrations are high, which can easily cause self-digestion of the mucosa; while overeating can easily damage the stomach's self-protection mechanism. Excessive expansion of the stomach wall and prolonged retention of food can contribute to stomach damage.

4. Avoid eating unclean food

Helicobacter pylori infection is one of the important causes of gastric disease and duodenal ulcer. The detection rate of this bacteria in patients with ulcers is as high as over 70%, and the bacteria disappears after the ulcer disease is cured. Ulcer patients can be infected through close contact such as tableware, toothbrushes and kissing. Unclean food is also one of the causes of infection.

5. Avoid having too much dinner

Many people like to concentrate their day's food nutrition on dinner, or eat something before going to bed. Doing so will not only cause restless sleep and easily lead to obesity, but also induce ulcer formation due to excessive secretion of gastric acid due to stimulation of the gastric mucosa.