Dr. Marina Studenkina, a gastroenterologist and eating behaviorist, confirmed that drinking a cup of coffee on an empty stomach can cause pancreatitis within a month
According to her, the risk of developing pancreatitis depends largely on the initial condition of the pancreas, lifestyle, and the amount of sugar and alcohol consumed. Even regular coffee, without sugar, is no less dangerous.
She says: “Drinking a cup of coffee in the morning on an empty stomach triggers several reactions in the body, including the stimulation of bile secretion. For people with cholecystitis, gallstones, biliary dyskinesia, or sphincter of Oddi spasm, this can lead to gastroesophageal reflux. This means that digestive enzymes, instead of being sent to the intestines to digest food, bounce back into the pancreatic ducts. Sooner or later, this reflux leads to damage and inflammation of the pancreas, and may eventually develop into chronic pancreatitis.”
In cases of chronic pancreatitis, the patient suffers from an enzyme deficiency, a disorder in the body's production of enzymes. Enzymes are proteins that act as catalysts, speeding up the digestion of food. A deficiency in these enzymes leads to bloating, gas, abdominal pain, diarrhea or constipation, and weight loss.
One of the serious complications of chronic pancreatitis is the development of type 2 insulin-dependent diabetes, which often appears in later stages of life, when the body is exhausted as a result of years of stress, and the pancreas works continuously at its maximum capacity, eventually reaching a stage of "inability to adapt," and is no longer able to produce a sufficient amount of the hormone to use glucose.
She says, "A predisposition to pancreatic dysfunction may be genetic, but lifestyle is often the deciding factor. When glucose doesn't reach the cells, the body suffers from an energy deficit." Glucose itself, when elevated in the blood (above the normal level of 6.0 mmol/L), begins to damage the walls of blood vessels. The most common complications of diabetes are impaired blood flow to the brain, heart, kidneys, eyes, and lower extremities.
