After oesophagectomy, it is common to experience strange digestive disorders. Your stomach normally holds food after a meal and partially digests it before releasing it in small quantities into your duodenum. When your stomach is partially or completely removed it means that large amounts of food pass very rapidly from your gullet to your small intestine. When undigested food goes into your small intestine in this way it absorbs a lot of fluid from the fine blood vessels in the wall of the intestine. This causes the food to swell and stretch your intestine, which can lead to nausea, irregular or rapid heartbeat, decreased blood pressure, flushing of skin, vomiting, abdominal cramps and diarrhoea. The loss of fluid from the body, which is drawn into the food in your intestine, can also cause a fall in the blood pressure, this leads to dizziness, weakness and sweating. This is called dumping syndrome. The best way to reduce the chances of this happening is to change your diet and eating patterns. Having two or three large meals a day with plenty of fluids is the most likely way to cause dumping syndrome. So the thing to do is to change to having small, high calorie, high protein meals with drier food, five or six times day, taking drinks at separate times rather than when you are actually eating. Avoiding sweets and cutting down on puddings can also help, as does having some fat in your meals, as this slows the rate at which food passes into the intestine.