How to Eat During Chinese New Year to Reduce Risk of Gastrointestinal Disease and Reflux

Here are the tips from Dr Chong Chern Hao, gastroenterologist from Mount Elizabeth Hospital Singapore:

• Reduce or avoid Deep Fried and Oily Food – deep fried and oily food is known to be hard to digest food. These food can cause abdominal bloatedness and increase risk of gastric reflux disease
• Eat smaller portion of regular meals – as the risk of over eating is high, you may consider to cut down your regular meals to smaller portion.
• Avoid over consumption of Black moss, Shitake Mushroom and Mandarin Oranges. – These food contain hard to digest fibre, skin and seeds become trapped mass in the stomach or intestines known as a phytobenzoar. Between 1996 to 2018, 60 of such cases were reported and 20% cases occurred within first 2 weeks before and after CNY.
• Drink lots of water and increase soluble fibre intake – drink a lot of water to stay hydrated and ensure passing motion every day to avoid constipation.
• Exercise – while everyone happily celebrate CNY, do not forget exercise as exercise can burn fat and improve gastrointestinal digestive and motility.
• Avoid consuming overnight reheat food. – As there are likely many left over food from CNY, some people will keep the leftover food in fridge and rehaeat and consume next meal/day to reduce wastage. Bear in mind these food are the main culprit for food poisoning cases where food was contaminated by bacteria and it’s toxin as well as viruses. My take for reheat overnight food especially those served and exposed too long to air – NO NO!.

Should you need help with gastro-intestinal symptoms, speak to our doctor to see how we can help you.