Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
When I was a kid, we believed that you had to wait an hour after eating before swimming. If you broke this rule, you might get stomach cramps so severe that you could drown due to not being able to swim to the edge of the pool or other body of water.
It wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized this advice is false.
According to the Mayo Clinic, there is no need to wait an hour (or 30 minutes, as some families apparently taught).
While it might be a little physically uncomfortable to swim vigorously if you’ve eaten a very large meal, even that isn’t dangerous. At worst, you might get mild stomach cramps, but if that were to happen they would not be severe enough to prevent you from swimming to safety if needed. (Or, you know, calling for help!)
The much more likely scenario, though, is that nothing untoward happens at all even if you swim after a meal every single day of your life. You simply have a good meal and a nice swim without any side effects.
I wish I had known this when I was seven and eagerly counting down the minutes until I could jump back into the pool or lake!
*Although I haven’t done either of these in a long time and definitely would need to recondition my body for them. That is to say, let’s pick the easiest versions of these things if you want to do them with me.