"If there's a weak spot in those blood vessels that gets stressed, that could cause a heart attack," Petitpain said. The spike in sodium can also cause blood pressure to soar, putting pressure on blood vessels in the body, Petitpain said. Ingesting excessive sodium can impact kidney function. "My concern is, if your stomach is so full of food, how are you going to get the other compensatory liquids in?" Hot dogs about to be eaten at the 2004 contest. "If they're absorbing too much sodium, their thirst mechanism is going to kick in and they're going to drink a lot of water afterwards," Jain said. It would take fewer than five hot dogs to go over the daily limit. The USDA's 2020–2025 Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans consume less than 2,300 milligrams of sodium each day. According to the nutritional information on Nathan's website, one of its Original Coney Island natural casing beef hot dogs contains 170 calories, 16 grams of fat (including 6 grams of saturated fat), and 480 milligrams of sodium. It's not just the large quantity of food that's a problem. "Some athletes have reported arthritis in the jaw, excruciating pain in that area," Petitpain said. Some speed eaters have noted pain in their face, jaw and neck afterwards because of the amount of chewing and swallowing involved. Participants can become sweaty, light headed and faint in the aftermath, experts said. Other side effects of competitive eatingĬompetitive eating impacts more than just the stomach. They also report gastrointestinal distress in the day or two after a competition. In the immediate aftermath of eating contests, participants report feeling extremely bloated and tired. The study noted that competitive eaters have reported using "varying methods of training" to try to expand their stomach capacity, including ingesting "vast amounts of cabbage" or "water loading," which can be hazardous. "You could potentially end up with a big bag that doesn't contract properly," Metz said. ![]() The stomach muscles will stretch to accommodate food as people eat, but every muscle "has its point at which there's no return." It's made of two parts: a receptacle on top and a grinder, of sorts, on the bottom. The average, empty stomach is about the size of a fist or a fist and a half, he said. David Metz, who was one of the authors of the study and has worked as a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, said speed eaters have the ability to relax their stomachs so they can ingest more food. "His stomach now appeared as a massively distended, food-filled sac occupying most of the upper abdomen, with little or no gastric peristalsis and emptying of a small amount of barium into the duodenum," the researchers wrote.Īt the end, they said his abdomen protruded "enough to create the distinct impression of a developing intrauterine pregnancy."ĭr. ![]() At the 10-minute mark, the competitive speed eater had ingested 36 hot dogs researchers asked him to stop because they were worried for him. The control subject ate seven hot dogs before he felt sick and needed to stop. Researchers studied the participants' stomachs beforehand, and asked each man to ingest an effervescent agent and high-density barium before eating the hot dogs so they could watch the food as it moved through the participants' bodies.īased on fluoroscopy scans during the study, the researchers found the competitive eater's stomach was capable of expanding to accommodate significantly more extra food. While most contests call for including the buns, the study stuck to just hot dogs. In the study, a control subject and a competitive speed eater - a 29-year-old man who was ranked in the top 10 worldwide - were asked to eat as many hot dogs as they could during a 12-minute period. What happens to the stomach of competitive eaters? A 2007 University of Pennsylvania study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology offers some clues. Still, gastroenterologists have some idea of what happens when a trained competitor speed-eats dozens of hot dogs. Competitive eating champion Joey "Jaws" Chestnut wins the 2021 Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest with 76 hot dogs, at Coney Island in New York City, on July 4, 2021. "Nobody is going to get funded for a randomized, controlled trial where you say, 'Hey, I'm going to quadruple your stomach size and see what happens to you,' because there's no reason to do that type of thing from a medical perspective," Jain said.
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