(Ecns.cn)—Among the huge population of 1.3 billion in China, 120 million are suffering from enteritis, 10% of which have symptomatic peptic ulcer disease (PUD) and 30% of which are chronic gastritis patients. With regards to such a severe health situation, experts advocated for healthier eating habits with medical advice on how to better protect the stomach on the Life Times, Tuesday.
Here is a list of five unhealthy diets that can make us vulnerable to stomach cancer.
Irregular diet
People who have irregular diets suffer 1.3 times the incidence of stomach cancer than those who eat at a fixed time.
Professor Zhang Ye, dietitian from the No.360 Hospital of the PLA, said that the stomach is an organ that favors a fixed schedule to process food. When it has no food to digest, gastric acid and pepsin start to digest the stomach mucous membrane instead and damage the stomach. Therefore, it's important to eat on time.
Medical experts suggest that for those who can't eat on a fixed schedule, bring some snacks as a way to not starve the stomach. However, they did stress that the only completely healthy way is to change your eating habits.
Hot and stimulating food
Hot food increases the risk of the stomach cancer by 4.22 times. This is because digestive tract mucous membrane in the human body is pretty frail and can only handle food with a temperature of 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Otherwise, the stomach will get burned. The constant eating of hot food can burn the digestive tract's mucous membrane and cause pathological changes, which eventually can lead to stomach cancer.
As a solution, we should try to avoid food with a temperature higher than 50 degrees. Even hot teas can hurt the stomach as they normally have a temperature as high as 80 to 90 degrees. Besides, eating as much vegetables and fruits rich in Vitamin C as possible may help at barbecues when we are tempted with hot roasted meat.
Adding to destructive hot food, stimulating food including smoking, alcohol, and anti-inflammatory pills are hurtful to the digestive tract's mucous membrane and should be avoided.
It's a misguided belief that nicotine only enters the lungs. It actually can sneak into the stomach through the digestive tract and cause vasoconstriction and convulsion under the mucous membrane, which in the long term will end in ulcers. Alcohol has similar effects on the stomach by causing hyperemia and even bleeding on the mucous membrane. Anti-inflammatory and corticoid pills on the other hand, bring damage in a different way. They increase the secretion of gastric acid as well as pepsin, and therefore, one can also end up with ulcers.
'Distracted diet'
To save more time, many chose to grab a quick breakfast on their way to the office and eat while reading and watching the computer screen. These are indeed bad eating habits. The digestive process in the stomach can be really stressful on the body. It requires a certain amount of blood supply in the stomach in order to digest and this is hard to meet if the body or the brain is in motion. In the long term, such a diet can undermine the digestion capacity of the human stomach and leads to gastritis, even gastroptosis in worse cases.
Suggestions offered by medical experts are that it would help if we get up 15 to 20 minutes earlier and focus on breakfast. For the same reason, we should concentrate on having meals rather than walking or reading at the same time.
