How many times have you been inhibited from bathing on the beach or in the pool because you had just eaten? There are many people who take it for granted that they can suffer a digestion cut if they do it ‘because of the change in temperature’. Well, this is a belief that has just been refuted by a recently published study.
Researchers from the University of Santiago de Compostela and the University of Vigo explain that “there are no contraindications for bathing” after eating food. The belief that you can have a digestion cut may come from confusion with another problem that can occur due to temperature changes: thermodifferential shock.
When a person submerges “abruptly” and there is “a noticeable difference between body temperature and that of the water”. Long exposure to the sun or copious meals before diving can encourage this to occur. Thus, the mythical cut of digestion is really a hydrocution or thermodifferential shock.
And it is not the only myth that is denied by this study. Surely if you think of a person drowning, you imagine them waving their arms noisily. Well, the study ensures that this is not the case. “A drowning person does it quietly, does not scream and does not ask for help, tries to stick his head out and concentrates all his efforts on breathing,” they say.
Not only that, but the authors of this study also refute the idea that, after drowning, the victim must lie face down “to empty the water from the lungs”, some maneuvers that “besides being useless, they represent a waste of essential time”, so they recommend applying the basic cardiovascular resuscitation protocol as soon as possible.
For those adults who are going to spend the summer with boys or girls, the study warns that sleeves or floats do not prevent drowning in children. Instead, they create a false sense of security that can cause parents to drop their guard.
The researchers explain that these types of methods “do not guarantee that the head and airways remain out of the water at all times.” There is no better example that illustrates this than this viral video of a father throwing his daughter into the water with sleeves.
There are more myths. The study states that urine and other “home remedies” are useless against jellyfish stings, since they “do not alleviate the discomfort and could even increase the discharge of venom.”
Faced with this, they recommend cleaning the remains of the jellyfish and washing the area with seawater”, as well as requesting health care “in the event of any respiratory difficulties, dizziness or discomfort”.
Published in the Educación Médica journal, this is the first scientific document in Spanish that addresses this problem, prepared “by a multidisciplinary working group” with experience in emergency, pediatric and forensic medicine, nursing and first aid.
Its objective, highlights the USC, is that this document “serves as a guide for all types of audiences”, from the general population “to regulators and health professionals”, in such a way that it allows “resolving common questions that may arise in the beach season” and discarding ideas “that are in the popular ideology and that are not based on a scientific basis or the one attributed to them is obsolete”.
For this, they carried out a “screening of concepts”, based on the review of the scientific literature on this subject, finally reaching the identification of ten false beliefs, which were refuted based on medical knowledge.
The article was coordinated by researchers from the Clinursid groups at USC and Remoss at UVigo, Antonio Rodríguez Núñez and Roberto Barcala, together with Santiago Martínez-Isasi and Ignacio Muñoz, from the University of Santiago de Compostela; Patricia Sánchez, a doctor from the Public Foundation for Sanitary Emergencies-061; Ismael Sanch, from the Autonomous University of Madrid; Verónica Izquierdo, from the Santiago de Compostela Health Research Institute; and Silvia Aranda, from the University of Barcelona and doctoral student at USC.
