Comment by mian2zi3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mian2zi3 | Hacker News Reader

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> Have a drink about 30 - 60 mins after you have eaten, not during a meal. This ... allows food to be digested more efficiently before the digestive enzymes get diluted by a drink

I hear this claim a lot and it always sounds simplistic. The most reliable refutation a quick google turned up was:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/digestion/AN01776/

from a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic. I quote:

"There's no concern that water will dilute the digestive juices or interfere with digestion. In fact, drinking water during or after a meal can actually improve digestion. Water and other liquids help break down the food in your stomach and keep your digestive system on track."

Food stays in your stomach as long as 5 hours. Water must get absorbed/passed on much more quickly. (I couldn't find numbers.) I imagine your stomach is pretty smart about maintaining a proper environment for digestion.

I am not sure if it's 100% true or not. I was told to do this by a nutritionist because I was drinking a pint at a time. I would drink this all in one go, but I imagine sipping would be fine. But drinking later ensures that I don't feel uncomfortably full.

But surely a large, sudden, water intake will dilute the stomach (not intestine where most of the nutrients are absorbed) juices and pH?

As I hope the tone of my post made clear, I'm not sure either, but I am very skeptical of the claim.

There seem to be two issues here: how full you feel (which I don't have an opinion on one way or another) and whether drinking water impedes digestion by diluting stomach acid and digestive enzymes.

Yes, it would seem plausible that a large intake of water would dilute the stomach juices. However, it also seems equally plausible that the stomach regulates pH equally quickly by passing along the excess water to the small intestine (where, I believe, water is typically absorbed), just delaying digestion temporarily.

I imagine different foods (whole grains vs. pasta vs. steak) must need different amounts of time to break down in the stomach. Is the stomach sensitive to when foods are ready to be passed along to the small intestine?

doc here: anything remotely close to normal water intake will not effect the efficacy of the digestive process. A big slug of cold water might be a skosh uncomfortable, but I've never heard of water intake causing diarrhea.

> A skosh uncomfortable

Are you military or ex-military, by any chance? They're the only other people I've ever heard use "skosh" (from the Japanese skoshi, a small space or time). (I'm an Air Force brat and Navy vet.) EDIT: Looks like you might be a Navy doc?

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