‘You can’t go swimming yet!’ As a kid who spent most of every summer in the water, Rachel heard this one a lot. The rule was that you had to wait at least one hour before you could jump back in the pool or the lake after you had eaten. We suspect this regulation sprang from the grown-ups’ fatigue with keeping an eye on us in the water all the time. But there also seemed to be a genuine fear that if you took so much as a leisurely lap in the pool while food was in your tummy, you might be gripped with horrible cramps that would lead to you drowning right then and there.
Kids will love us and adults may curse us, but there really does not seem to be any proof to back up this claim. In our research, we cannot find any cases of drownings, or near drownings, attributed to eating. While that doesn’t mean it could never happen, there is no proof that this is a real danger. Expert groups don’t really say that you have to wait to go swimming either. Neither the American Academy of Pediatrics nor the American Red Cross has any recommendations about how long you should wait after eating to swim. As early as 1961, expert exercise physiologists were already saying that this idea of getting cramps while swimming after eating was ‘questionable’.
Isn’t it still possible? Couldn’t you get horrible cramps because your body is so busy trying to digest the food in your stomach? It is true that the digestive system diverts some of the circulating blood away from your muscles and towards your gut when you have eaten and need to digest food. As with any exercise immediately after eating, you might feel somewhat uncomfortable after a big meal. But, even if you were to get cramps, it is very unlikely that you would be completely incapacitated. If you get cramps, you should just get out of the water and give your body a rest. Whether you have been wolfing down sandwiches or not, you should not be swimming in dangerous places from which you have no ability to escape if your body is tired or you have muscle cramps. Making sure that you or your children only swim in safe places should give you peace of mind, even if you end up getting cramps.