Academy Swim Club

Was your mother right? Is it dangerous to swim after eating? Do you really have to wait at least thirty minutes after eating to avoid stomach cramps and possibly drowning?

This “old wives” tale has been around for quite some time and has been perpetuated generation after generation by well meaning, but incorrectly informed, parents. There is not even one recorded case of anyone experiencing stomach cramps and drowning while swimming immediately after eating. As a matter of fact, long distance swimmers eat while in the water, swimming their endurance events.

Consumption of low fat, high carbohydrate foods can be nutritionally beneficial to elite competitive swimmers. However, not eating at all, or eating particular foods immediately before swimming will neither harm nor enhance the swimming ability of most typical recreational swimmers.

Engaging in intense exercise immediately after eating a heavy meal is not beneficial to proper digestion. You shouldn’t try to run a marathon immediately after consuming a Thanksgiving feast, nor should you compete in a long distance competitive swimming event. However, it wouldn’t hurt to go for a short walk around the block after a moderate meal, and neither would it be dangerous to swim a few laps. Just use common sense to decide when it’s appropriate to swim after eating.

An exception to this may be children enrolled in swimming lessons: Because there may be some anxiety or water ingestion, it would be prudent to not eat meat or dairy products within 2 hours of a lesson or any other rigorous exercise.

Many parents limit swimming to the warm summer months believing that their child will get sick if they swim during the winter. The fact is children are no more likely to catch a cold from swimming during winter than during summer. Children are more susceptible to colds and the flu during winter, it’s true, because school is in session and they are in close contact with each other. Also, the viruses that cause infections thrive during the dry cooler months. And those viruses are sneaky little ninjas. Of course you wouldn’t send your child to school if he is sick, but he’s contagious even before the first symptoms of illness appear. Kids, being kids and not particularly concerned about hygiene, spread these germs across everything they touch or breathe on. With their brand new immune systems, children don’t have the anti-bodies to fight off most of the viruses they run into. Most children come down with 6 to 10 viral infections a year! It’s not the water making kids sick – a properly chlorinated pool is probably one of the cleanest places a child can be.

So here are a few points to consider regarding winter swimming:

* Swimming in winter poses no threat to children with functioning immune systems. Our pool is indoors and the water is heated to 90 – 92 degrees. As long as you quickly and thoroughly dry your child and change him into warm clothes he’s no more at risk from catching a cold after swimming than he is after his bath.

* Regular exercise helps keep the body, including the immune system, strong. Studies conducted in Germany indicated that swimming children are actually healthier than their non-swimming friends. (Take that evil virus ninjas!)

* Year round swimming ensures that children do not forget skills learned between summers. Plus, it allows new skills to be taught at the most advantageous developmental age.
If you want more information on colds and flu’s, check out the links below.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/disease.htm

http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site1719/mainpageS1719P0.html

http://coldflu.about.com/od/cold/f/coldandweather.htm