Eating your favorite meals takes a major effort lately. You feel full after just a few bites. When you try to push through anyway to finish a normal-sized portion, you become nauseous and want to throw up.
You may have picked up a bug, but also you may have a symptom of another condition. This inability to eat a complete meal or feeling like your stomach is full after a small amount of food is called early satiety. Early satiety can make you undernourished, which is something you should take steps to avoid.
Could It Be Gastroparesis?
The most frequent cause of early satiety is a condition called gastroparesis. When your stomach is working right, it contracts to crush food, which it then sends to your intestines. But with gastroparesis, your stomach can’t contract like it should, so food builds up there instead. Gastroparesis can be caused by diabetes, cancer, and other diseases, infections, and surgery, just to name a few.
Apart from feeling full after a normal meal, you’ll often feel bloated (tight or swollen in your stomach) with gastroparesis. Other common symptoms are:
- Stomach pain.
- Nausea and vomiting. You may need to throw up hours after you last ate.
- Shakiness, nervousness, and irritability. These feelings may result from your blood sugar level dropping because food stays in your stomach.
- Constipation. You have fewer bowel movements, and they may hurt.
- Heartburn. This feels like a burning sensation in your chest.
- A poor appetite. You already feel full, so you aren’t hungry often.
- Weight loss. The rest of your body is not getting enough nutrients and calories.
If these symptoms linger for days or weeks without improving, you should call a doctor. One of the first steps they’ll take is to figure out the cause so that it can be treated. You may need to change your diet or eating schedule, or take medication.
Could It Be an Ulcer?
Sometimes stomach acid can eat away part of the lining of your small intestine or stomach. Then a shallow crater can form in the lining. This crater is called a peptic ulcer, and it can interfere with your normal digestion. Peptic ulcers are often caused by infection and develop as you get older. More men get them than women do.
Peptic ulcers may come and go over the years even if you treat them. When they flare up, you may vomit or feel the fatigue and weakness of anemia. With that condition, your body doesn’t have the iron it needs to create red blood cells that carry oxygen. But the most common symptom of peptic ulcers, not surprisingly, is pain. You may experience that pain:
- In the upper-central part of your abdomen
- In your back
- As a feeling that may worsen on an empty stomach and sometimes improves with eating
- When you try to sleep at night
- As indigestion or heartburn
If they aren’t properly treated, peptic ulcers can eat all the way through the gut lining or wear away at the wall of a blood vessel until it bursts. That is a medical emergency, so if you are having a painful episode, you should see a doctor as soon as possible.
Could It Be Acid Reflux?
A kind of discomfort some people experience after eating, also known as gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, is another cause of early satiety. Food or the acids your stomach uses to break it down can flow back up into your esophagus, which is the tube that connects the throat and stomach. The lining of that tube may become irritated and cause discomfort in several ways.
The most common symptom of acid reflux is heartburn, especially after you eat a big meal or certain foods. You also may deal with:
- A bitter or sour aftertaste
- Chest pains (If you experience shortness of breath or pain in your jaw at the same time, you should get immediate medical attention, because these symptoms can point to a heart attack.)
- A dry cough, hoarseness, or sore throat
- The sensation of a lump in your throat
- Difficulty swallowing
Doctors can recommend a variety of treatments for acid reflux, from adjustments in your diet and in the timing of meals to surgery in the worst cases. Your doctor may also suggest weight loss as another way to treat it.
Could It Be Cancer?
It’s hard to think about, but a tumor in one of the organs in your abdomen also may bring on early satiety. For example, as stomach cancer gets worse, it is common for someone to feel fuller than normal. Other symptoms of cancer in the lining of your stomach include severe indigestion, nausea and vomiting, and a bloated feeling after you eat.
Tumors in the small intestine also can make you feel full despite not eating much. Symptoms of those cancers include pain in your abdomen, nausea, weight loss, and bleeding inside your intestine.
Cancer of the pancreas sometimes causes early satiety. The pancreas is an organ behind your lower stomach that aids digestion. Abdominal pain that reaches your back, loss of appetite, weight loss, and yellowing in your skin and eyes can be signs of a tumor in the pancreas.
Act Today
If any of these symptoms bother you just as your appetite drops off, then it’s smart to consult a doctor immediately. You can get started on a treatment plan that helps with the symptoms of a condition tied to early satiety.