Do you usually drink a glass of water before a meal to moisten your throat so that you can swallow your food smoothly later? There is also a theory that drinking water before a meal interferes with digestion because it dilutes gastric juices, making it difficult to digest food and absorb nutrients.
So, should i drink or not?!!
The first thing to understand is our body’s digestive process, which begins with chewing in the mouth. The process of chewing breaks down and releases saliva containing enzymes to soften the food, which then travels down into the stomach. In the stomach, acidic digestive juices are released to break down the food and then into the small intestine where enzymes and bile are combined.
At this stage, about 75% of the nutrients are absorbed, with the rest being processed by the large intestine and colon. The digestion time from eating to excretion is about 24 to 72 hours.
So does drinking water interfere with these processes or not? The fact is that even if your stomach were filled with water, it would not have a significant effect on digestion and the presence or absence of water would not interfere with the enzymes. Water will be absorbed by the stomach within 20 minutes, so it will not affect the acidity of the gastric juices. Even if you dilute the gastric juices with water, they will recover quickly and this is the form in which the stomach reacts.
It doesn’t really matter whether drinking water with a meal hinders the digestion of food components, just as it takes the same amount of time to digest water with a meal as it does to digest soup with a meal. Rather than being a hindrance, it is a good helper because it softens the food so that it passes smoothly through the oesophagus into the stomach and then also facilitates the excretion phase, where the body needs enough water to soften the faeces in order to excrete them well.
The conclusion is that drinking water before and after a meal is beneficial, but this does not mean that drinking too much water is good as it can cause problems such as gastroesophageal reflux. Therefore, it is good to drink the right amount of water.
