Can you eat yourself to death on one occasion of very excessive eating? We know that America’s eating problem is bad, albeit gradual: No one’s ever died from eating three Big Macs, but plenty of people may have died from eating three Big Macs twice a week for thirty years (some, miraculously, have managed to avoid that fate). But what about the bingers? The people who, during Thanksgiving, or after
Can you eat yourself to death on one occasion of very excessive eating? We know that America’s eating problem is bad, albeit gradual: No one’s ever died from eating three Big Macs, but plenty of people may have died from eating three Big Macs twice a week for thirty years ( some, miraculously, have managed to avoid that fate). But what about the bingers? The people who, during Thanksgiving, or after receiving a bit of horrific personal news, find themselves eating way more than they’re used to? You don’t need to be an addict to overdose on drugs; might the same apply to food?
In this week’s Giz Asks, we posed that question to a number of medical professionals, who were simultaneously reassuring and disturbing—think exploding stomachs, infected esophageal tracts, etc. That stuff probably won’t happen to you, but that doesn’t mean it can’t.
Director of the Esophageal Program and Clinical Associate Professor of Gastroenterology & Hepatology at Stanford University School of Medicine
Thomas J. Layden Endowed Professor and Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at University of Illinois at Chicago
Director of the Division of Research and the Genetics Clinic and Professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Sciences and Pediatrics at Kansas University Medical Center
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