Is it possible to eat so much your stomach bursts

It's still uncommon to experience a gastric rupture, according to Strong, but it does happen. Proceeds from the race will go to benefit the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research.

In one heartbreaking scene from a New York Times Magazine article on the condition, a year-old boy with Prader-Willi died on Christmas Eve after rupturing his stomach overeating at his family's annual party. His parents later learned that relatives had seen him binging but hadn't said anything, because they didn't take his condition seriously.

He was usually really good with us at parties—until the last one. There have been reports of people without these kinds of medical conditions rupturing their stomachs by a combination of overeating and consuming sodium bicarbonate —baking soda, which people sometimes mix with water to help soothe indigestion.

When the stomach is already approaching its breaking point, it's technically possible that the release of extra carbon dioxide gas can push it over the edge.

But this, like everything else that can rupture your stomach, is very, very rare. Newsweek magazine delivered to your door Unlimited access to Newsweek. Unlimited access to Newsweek. As a result, overeating after gastric sleeve or gastric bypass surgery becomes much more difficult.

Diarrhea is another risk that presents itself when eating too much after gastric sleeve or gastric bypass surgery. This is due to malabsorption of food as your digestive system tries to process it. Toggle navigation. So what happens if you overeat after bariatric surgery? The most common response to overeating after bariatric surgery is severe abdominal pain and cramps. Another common response is that your body rejects the food outright. Vomiting can occur if you eat too much, but it can also occur if you eat the wrong foods at the wrong time, as well.

However, it has the capacity to expand and accommodate a much larger volume. The specialized muscle is folded to allow expansion as the stomach fills, and it produces acid to help break food down as well as churning to mechanically smash up food. After food has passed through the stomach, it goes into the small intestine where digestion continues and the now broken-down nutrients are absorbed into the blood stream.

The small intestine, which is about 20ft long, connects to the large intestine, which is about 6ft long. The large intestine sees most of the water absorbed into the bloodstream and the remaining waste matter made into feces. We often feel very full after eating a large amount because there is a delay for signals from the stretching stomach to reach the brain.

You may wonder why you go from feeling hungry to feeling full to bursting without any in-between feeling. Our body has a very complex way of telling us when we are hungry and full; it requires a number of hormones that are produced in response to the presence or absence of food in the digestive system. If we get the amount of food we consume right, we have the feeling of satiety—fullness that suppresses the urge to eat.

Two of the most important hormones are ghrelin and leptin. If we consider these hormones simplistically, ghrelin increases appetite and leptin decreases appetite. They are produced predominantly in the stomach and fat cells respectively.

Grehlin is usually at a high level before you eat and reduces afterwards. Leptin tells the brain that we are full. So you would assume that people with more fat cells would produce more leptin and therefore be more likely to want to eat less. However, obese people build up a resistance to leptin, which means they have to produce more and more leptin for it to have an effect and reduce their appetite.

So here are a few things to bear in mind before you have that last wafer-thin mint:.