Is it better to exercise before or after meals?

Now many people are talking about whether exercising before meals is good for health. Or is it better to exercise after a meal? In traditional Chinese thinking, exercising after meals can promote gastrointestinal motility and aid digestion. In fact, the abdomen is empty before exercise and no new fatty acids enter the fat cells, so exercising before meals will be more effective. Therefore, exercising before meals is more beneficial to your health.

It is not advisable to engage in strenuous exercise before or after meals. There should be a certain interval between exercise and meals.

During exercise, the activity of muscles redistributes blood throughout the body, and a large amount of blood flows to the muscles involved in the activity. The blood vessels of internal organs, such as the stomach and intestines, are in a state of relative contraction. Therefore, the digestion and absorption functions are also inhibited, the secretion of gastric juice decreases, and the digestive ability weakens. In addition, the sympathetic nerves are excited during exercise and the secretion of adrenaline is greatly increased, which can also weaken the peristalsis of the gastrointestinal tract and greatly reduce the secretion of the digestive glands. However, this state cannot be changed immediately after exercise. It takes a certain amount of rest to return to normal, so you cannot eat immediately after intense exercise.

If you eat immediately after intense exercise, it will affect your digestion and absorption ability. If this continues for a long time, it will cause symptoms such as indigestion, loss of appetite, and chronic gastritis. Generally speaking, it is more appropriate to rest for half an hour or even longer before eating after exercise. Similarly, you should not engage in strenuous exercise immediately after a meal. If you engage in strenuous exercise immediately after a meal, the blood that is currently involved in gastrointestinal digestion will be redistributed and flow to organs such as muscles, which will also affect gastrointestinal digestion and absorption. Participating in intense exercise immediately after a meal can also cause abdominal pain and discomfort due to gastrointestinal vibration and mesenteric involvement, which is not good for the body and exercise. Therefore, you should wait at least one and a half hours after a meal before exercising.

For our physical health, we must choose our own exercise time and do not exercise blindly. Not all time is suitable for exercise. I hope that we have chosen the time and can improve our physical fitness in the process of exercise, make our body healthier, and keep diseases away from all of us.