Thanksgiving: How Much Can You Eat Before Your Stomach Explodes?

Yes, you can "explode" your stomach from eating too much. You probably won't, but the possibility exists.

The average human stomach holds about 1 liter's-worth of contents. You might have heard that the stomach can shrink or stretch, and to a certain degree that's true. At capacity, the stomach can stretch to hold anywhere from a half gallon to slightly more than a gallon, according to various estimates. It varies from person to person, but past that point is where it really starts to get risky.

The actual term for what people refer to as an "exploded stomach" is gastrointestinalperforation, according to Healthline. If you do suffer a gastrointestinal perforation, you won't necessarily die—but you can. Not only is there the physical rupture itself to deal with, but the contents of your stomach (which would be considerable) will begin to spill into the rest of your body, and because it has no business being there you can quickly become septic. The earlier you receive treatment, the better your chances of survival.

Despite its popularity, the term "explode" isn't particularly accurate, explains Theresa Strong, director of research programs at the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research. The stomach contents won't burst forth in the way an exploded water balloon would; rather, the intestine wall is pushed to the point where it splits.

"[T]he imagery that comes to mind is quite sensational," Strong explained to Newsweek over email, "and not accurate, the stomach wall stretches to the point where there is necrosis and/or rupture."

Gastrointestinal perforations from overeating are rare, according to Business Insider. The human body is equipped with all kinds of survival mechanisms, and one of those mechanisms is vomiting. Your body vomits not only when it believes its been poisoned, but when doing so can prevent a ruptured internal organ. The vast majority of people are physically unable to burst their stomach wall through eating alone because they won't be able to suppress the urge to vomit that will kick in long before that happens.

There are, however, physical and psychological conditions that can compromise that reflex in one way or another. People with eating disorders like bulimia, binge-eating disorder, anorexia, or OSFED (other specified feeding or eating disorder) might have abused their body's natural cues around hunger, fullness, and vomiting to the point that they're no longer effective. Or their stomach muscles might be too weakened to actually be able to vomit, or perhaps their stomach's shrunk so chronically and severely that it would take comparatively less food to burst.

People with the rare genetic disorder Prader-Willi syndrome suffer from a malfunctioning hypothalamus, the region of the brain that regulates, among other things, appetite. This results in a constant, debilitating, and literally insatiable hunger. People with Prader-Willi don't respond to overeating with the nausea and instinct to vomit that the average human body does. It's still uncommon to experience a gastric rupture, according to Strong, but it does happen.

In one heartbreaking scene from a New York Times Magazine article on the condition, a 17-year-old boy with Prader-Willi died on Christmas Eve after rupturing his stomach overeating at his family's annual party. His parents later learned that relatives had seen him binging but hadn't said anything, because they didn't take his condition seriously.

"I think the problem with most people's perception of Prader-­Willi is: It's just a fat kid," the boy's father told NYT Magazine. "They don't understand that food is a death sentence to these kids. He was usually really good with us at parties—until the last one."

There have been reports of people without these kinds of medical conditions rupturing their stomachs by a combination of overeating and consuming sodium bicarbonate—baking soda, which people sometimes mix with water to help soothe indigestion.

When the stomach is already approaching its breaking point, it's technically possible that the release of extra carbon dioxide gas can push it over the edge. But this, like everything else that can rupture your stomach, is very, very rare.