What Should I Eat After Throwing Up

What Should I Eat After Throwing Up? Many people wonder how to eat after throwing up. If you are sick, it is likely that you may throw up. Besides having a painful stomach and feeling nauseous, you may feel weak and dehydrated. While the idea of eating something that you throw up is not pleasant, doing so will help your body recover faster and replenish your nutrients and energy stores. List below are foods that you can eat after throwing up.

What is vomiting?

Vomiting, or throwing up, is a forceful discharge of stomach contents. It can be a one-time event linked to something that doesn’t settle right in the stomach. Recurrent vomiting may be caused by underlying medical conditions.

Frequent vomiting may also lead to dehydration, which can be life-threatening if left untreated.

Causes of vomiting

Several disorders of the digestive system, nervous system, and balance-related issues can make you throw up. Regain strength after vomiting by replenishing fluids and electrolytes and eating a bland diet while you recover.

Several disorders of the digestive system, nervous system, and balance-related issues can make you throw up. Bacterial, viral, and fungal infections can also cause nausea and vomiting. Vomiting often rids the body of excessive stomach acid or other harmful substances you’ve consumed. Repeated vomiting can cause dehydration. Vomiting that goes on for days can also reduce your nutritional intake. The fastest way to regain strength after vomiting is to rest your stomach while replacing the water and nutrients lost.

Most vomiting lasts only a day or two. The common causes of vomiting are:

Gastroenteritis

Usually, gastroenteritis is a viral infection of the digestive system. You may also have diarrhea.

Gastritis

Excessive acid in the stomach can irritate the lining and cause vomiting. Spicy food, fried foods, or alcohol are the usual causes. Acidity also happens in response to stress, fatigue, poor sleep, etc.

Food poisoning

Improperly stored food allows bacteria to grow and produce toxins. Besides vomiting, food poisoning causes cramps, fever, and diarrhea. 

Sometimes, dangerous conditions like appendicitis and meningitis cause vomiting, but such conditions have other symptoms like fever or severe pain. 

Vomiting that lasts for days to weeks could be caused by nervous system disorders, migraine, an inner ear condition, pregnancy, kidney infections or stones, certain medicines, and gall bladder inflammation. 

What is the fastest way to recover from vomiting?

Most often, an upset stomach causes vomiting. This may be because of a stomach bug, alcohol, or spicy food. Your stomach tries to remove the harmful substances by vomiting.

It’s best to give your stomach some rest. Don’t eat for a couple of hours, and have only sips of plain water or bland liquids. When your stomach no longer holds whatever it found irritating, it will return to its job of digesting your food and drink.

Once your stomach is back to normal, you should help your body recover. Drink lots of water and other liquids to replenish the shortfall created by the vomiting. Sweet juices and oral rehydration fluid provide both energy and water. Your body also loses salt while vomiting, so salty snacks can help you recover. For a day or two, eat and drink small amounts frequently to let your stomach recover.

Dangers of dehydration

The chief danger of vomiting is dehydration. If you throw up often, you will keep losing water and salts. Vomiting also prevents you from eating and drinking. 

Dehydration can be deadly if severe. If you vomit a lot, watch for these signs of early-stage dehydration:

• Restlessness
• Fatigue
• Thirst
• Fast heartbeat

At this time, you should drink lots of water and other liquids. If you can’t drink or keep throwing up, you should talk to your physician. Without treatment, you may progress to severe dehydration, which causes lethargy, sunken eyes, dry tongue, breathing difficulty, unconsciousness, and low blood pressure. This is a dangerous condition and can be fatal.

Severe dehydration needs hospitalization. Your physician will prescribe intravenous fluids and medicines to treat it.

How to Rehydrate After Throwing Up

Vomiting can quickly lead to significant loss of water from the body — particularly in children. Throwing up once or twice is unlikely to leave you or your children dehydrated, but stomach infections, food poisoning and certain medical treatments can lead to many hours or days of vomiting. Continually rehydrating with stomach-friendly fluids is crucial, but don’t forget the minerals and simple sugars. However, if these methods aren’t helping or you feel extremely sick, get immediate medical attention.

Ice Chips

Vomiting and nausea usually go hand in hand, so keeping any liquids down can sometimes be challenging. Extreme nausea and chronic vomiting are common side effects of radiation and chemotherapy for cancer patients. According to the American Cancer Society, sucking on ice chips or frozen juice chips is a great way to replenish some lost water after throwing up if you feel too queasy to swallow significant amounts of fluids. Most of the water from the ice chips is absorbed through the mucous membrane in your mouth instead of having to pass through your stomach. If ice chips are inconvenient to make, then try a frozen ice pop instead.

Purified Water

If you think you can keep down fluids, start with small amounts of water. After you stop vomiting and feel stable, begin by consuming 1 teaspoon of cool water every 10 minutes and gradually increase to 1 tablespoon every half hour. If your body accepts the water and you no longer feel like you might throw up, try larger amounts — but sip it, don’t gulp. Purified water is perfect for rehydrating, but it typically doesn’t contain enough minerals to replenish lost electrolytes or salts, so eventually you’ll need to drink other fluids.

Clear Liquids

Clear liquids other than water that are appropriate for rehydrating after vomiting include diluted apple juice, weak lemonade, sport drinks, mint tea with honey, flat ginger ale and specially formulated electrolyte drinks available at most pharmacies. These fluids contain some sodium and potassium, as well as easily digestible sugar — which is important for brain function and to fend off hypoglycemia if you haven’t been able to eat for a while. Make sure that the apple juice or lemonade is not too sour, otherwise it may upset your stomach. Aim for at least 8 ounces of clear liquids per hour until bedtime.

Broth

Another excellent source of water and electrolytes is chicken or beef broth, particularly if you’re starting to regain your appetite but aren’t ready for solid food. Broth also contains a little fat and some vitamins, which are nourishing if the nausea has dissipated. Cool the broth down first, because the acid in the vomit often makes the mucous membranes of the throat and esophagus sensitive to heat for a few hours or so after throwing up.

Best Foods to Eat After Vomiting

So long as you’re a normal human being, you must have vomited at one time or the other, and chances are, you’ll still vomit again in future. So, it’s kind of normal, but unpleasant.

The question now is, how can you stop it? Depending on certain kinds of foods to help relieve one of vomit is not the first thing that comes to mind talking about solutions to vomit. Like, for crying out loud, you can’t keep anything down. So why should you eat when you’ll end up throwing it up?

The truth of the matter is that food can help you stay hydrated, strong enough to fight sickness, and help your stomach settle. Some foods are specifically helpful after vomiting. They are not heavy, and they can arrest the cause of the vomit almost immediately.

Here are the 10 best foods to eat after vomiting:

1. Banana

When you’re feeling sick, you’re most likely to lose some weight and energy. This is because most foods (if not all) will be unpleasant to you. So you tend to eat less. This loss of appetite is understandable, but it is left for you to do what you can in order to better equip your system to fight the sickness.

Eating banana is one of the best ways to get along after vomiting. It is a nutrient-dense fruit which contains a lot of energy and other compounds that can keep your body strong enough to pull through. It is one of the few foods that are easy to eat even when your stomach is troubled and you’ve lost appetite for food.

2. Ginger

There is hardly any culture and tradition that does not revere ginger as a culinary and medicinal spice. It has a lot of health benefits, one of which is reducing nausea. It’s also good for fighting PMS symptoms, boosting testosterone, and reducing inflammation.

Ginger contains over 100 active ingredients. Some of them are Gingerols, Zingerone, Zerumbone, Flavonoids, etc. Most of these compounds have anti-oxidant effects which are effective in fighting tumors, inflammation, pain, and nausea.

3. Broth

If you want a healthy life, then make Broth a part of your diet. It’s highly nutritious and known to promote digestive health. It has some amino acid contents which help in digestion and calming an upset stomach.

You don’t even have to force the broth down your throat. Most part of it is fluid, which makes it less unpleasant to ingest when feeling nauseous.

4. Applesauce

This is a no brainer. It’s always been a go-to food for people suffering from nausea or diarrhea because it’s a good sedative recommended for people with an upset stomach. Applesauce is particularly helpful for children but can be equally effective on adults.

The thing about applesauce that makes it such a go-to food for people with diarrhea or nausea is that it promotes good digestion due to its high pectin concentration. It promotes the growth of probiotics which are very good for calming your guts and keeping them healthy.

5. Water

Eating solid food may be the most unpleasant and hardest task for you when you feel nauseous, but whatever you do, always drink water. Drinking may be unpleasant as well, but not half as unpleasant as eating solid food. You need water to keep you hydrated all the time to help get you through the sickness. It can also help reduce the feeling of nausea.

Aside from water, you can sip on other clear beverages too. You can have drinks like –

• Iced tea
• Flavored water
• Soda
• Oral rehydration solution
• Coconut water
• Clear juices, etc.

Try not to take a lot in a single go. Little sips every now and then work better.

6. Cold foods

Nausea does not go well with hot food. This does not have anything to do with the temperature. It’s just that hot foods tend to give away stronger aroma and flavors when hot, which may trigger vomit. A pregnant woman, in most cases, experience lesser vomit if they stay away from hot foods.

Talking about cold foods, here are some good examples of foods that can help you avert vomit:

• Ice cream
• Chilled fruits
• Jell-o
• Frozen popsicles
• Custards
• Ice cubes, etc.

This does not mean you should eat all your foods cold. When you feel a bit better, you can eat your foods hot.

7. Rice

When you’re nauseous and can’t keep anything down, try eating some rice. It can be white or brown rice, it doesn’t matter. Just try to make the recipe as simple as possible or you may not tolerate it. Colorless, odorless, strongly flavored, and bland foods are more easily tolerated because they are less likely to trigger nausea and vomit.

Rice has a lot of health benefits too that can be of help to your health, especially when you’re down. They are high in calories, which means they provide your body with energy. They contain minerals like calcium, iron, vitamins, riboflavin, thiamin, etc. Rice is also heart friendly.

8. Noodles

Ask college students and they’ll tell you that noodle is a life saver for them. Not necessarily because it is delicious, but because it is very easy to make and nutritious as well. They are inexpensive too, and great comfort food to help tone down vomiting.

Just to help keep things tight and healthy, it is necessary to throw in a little bit of fiber and protein to your noodles because noodles are generally low in both. You can eat it with eggs, meat, beans, or any other protein source you can tolerate. As for fibers, vegetables and fruits are great options.

9. Potatoes

This is another starchy food that’s easy to prepare and very effective in calming of troubled stomachs. Potatoes contain about 77 calories for every 100 grams; enough calories to keep the body going. It is also bland (bland foods help to ease the symptoms of nausea and vomit) and may not be as unappealing as many other foods.

There is a good number of potato recipes that are suitable foods for you after vomiting. You can choose to boil them and eat them with a simple sauce or even butter. Roasted or baked potatoes with milk or butter is a good combination too.

10. Herbal tea

Herbal tea is very good for the health owing to its nutritional value. It can also help you calm your stomach if you’re nauseous or if you just finished vomiting. According to studies, professionals recommend herbal tea to pregnant women to help them get along with the feeling of vomit which comes with pregnancy most times.

In the same way, you may want to pick up a cup of coffee at the first sign of stress, that is how you should take herbal tea at the first sign of nausea and vomit. Drinking teas made of herbs induce a sedative effect on you and helps your stomach to relax.

As a rule of thumb, you should see your doctor if you experience severe nausea or if symptoms persist after one to two days. Before then, you can rely on any of the foods mentioned above to get you back to good health. Drinking water or any clear healthy fluid is a good way to keep up your body hydrated, but be careful not to drink too fast. The same goes for eating.

Guide to kid vomit

From what causes kids to vomit to how to make clean-up a little less awful, here is everything you need to know about dealing with puke.

Barf. Puke. Vomit. Call it what you will, but rest assured that as a parent, you’ll encounter kid vomit—and it won’t be fun. Even the most seasoned, BTDT parents can find themselves fully frazzled when their kid starts throwing up.

But the fact is, kid vomit happens. And when it does, you may have some questions. Here are the answers:

What can cause a child to vomit?

Here are some of the most common reasons kids throw up:

• Viral gastroenteritis, also known as “stomach flu,” is the most common culprit. This infection can last anywhere from a couple of days to more than a week.
• COVID-19. Some variants more than others, but COVID has been known to cause vomiting, especially in children.
• Motion sickness is a common reason for vomiting. About 50 percent of kids sometimes feel sick to their stomachs while moving in cars or planes, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• Food poisoning. The symptoms mimic viral gastroenteritis, and begin anywhere from a few hours to a few days after eating contaminated food.
• Some kids are just a bit barfy by nature. They throw up when they cough, cry or get too excited, or if they see something that turns their stomach, if they eat or drink too much, or run around after eating, and so on.
• Some long-term illnesses or digestive issues, such as lactose intolerance or celiac disease, can cause chronic vomiting, off and on for months at a time.
• Vomiting can be caused by other kinds of infections, some of which can be quite serious. If your child is vomiting repeatedly and has other symptoms such as fever, lethargy or pain, consult with your doctor.

Do I have to worry about my kid getting dehydrated if they’ve been vomiting?

Yep, dehydration is the top concern when a kid is vomiting. They’ll likely feel pretty thirsty afterwards (along with wanting that yucky taste out of her mouth). But that doesn’t mean you should give them a big glass of water, because it’s likely to come right back up.

What should I give my kid to drink after they’ve thrown up?

Try small but frequent sips of water or very watered-down juice.

You could also offer an oral rehydration solution, like Pedialyte, which contains just the right balance of sugar and salts to maximize fluid absorption. If you go this route, alternate it with water for the first six to 12 hours. You may need to spoon the fluid in every few minutes. Or try a Pedialyte freezer pop.

What about ginger ale? Although many swear it relieves nausea and some studies back that up, too much of the sugary pop can also exacerbate stomach problems. Warm ginger tea, sweetened with a bit of honey, is a better choice.

If your baby is breastfeeding, keep breastfeeding! Do so frequently, following your baby’s lead. This will help ensure that lost fluid is replaced.

Most importantly, keep a close eye on your kid for signs of dehydration. These include:

• Peeing less frequently than usual
• Dry mouth
• No tears when crying
• Lethargy and/or irritability
• Deep, rapid breathing

See your doctor if some or all of these signs are present.

Can kids eat after they throw up?

As gross as this sounds to adults, it’s pretty common for a kid to vomit the contents of their stomach and ask for a snack five minutes later. Should you let them?

Advice on this one goes both ways. Some doctors recommend waiting as many as eight hours (!!!) before offering food if your child is vomiting from gastroenteritis. Other doctors say you can go ahead and offer small amounts of food if your kid says they’re hungry right after vomiting.

What should my child eat after vomiting?

Here, again, experts have different views. Many recommend sticking to the “BRAT” diet: bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. But newer research shows that sick kids can actually eat the same foods they always do, without repercussions. It probably makes sense to avoid fried, greasy foods, as well as dairy and excessive sugar. Ask your doctor for advice.

5 ways to vomit safely 

To vomit safely and to prevent discomfort or serious complications, you should: 

1. Wash your hands thoroughly

Washing you hands is very important to prevent the transmission of bacteria and other microorganisms to the throat, which can cause infections like tonsillitis. 

2. Kneel in front of the toilet

Kneeling in front of the toilet is one of the most comfortable and safest positions to vomit in. You should avoid putting too much pressure on the stomach, as it can cause more discomfort. 

3. Place a finger in your throat 

There is a point at the front of your throat that can be squeezed to stimulate the vomiting reflex. To reach it, you should place a finger in your mouth, and slightly press down on the area behind the tongue, where your throat starts. The desire to vomit will appear almost immediately, although some people will need to do this 2 to 3 times to be able to vomit, as the brain may try to block the signal the first few times.

4. Drink 1 cup of water

After vomiting, it is important to drink a cup of water to remove any excess stomach acid that remains on the stomach walls. This can reduce any stomach burning and inflammation from acid.

5. Wait 30 minutes before washing your teeth 

Although you may feel the desire to brush your teeth immediately after vomiting, it is best t o just rinse and gargle with water. The teeth will be quite sensitive after coming in contact with stomach acid, and brushing your teeth may worsen this. Therefore, you should wait about 30 minutes after vomiting to brush your teeth.