Submitted by shaela-a-pinetree t3_10jxd5t in explainlikeimfive
Currently sick and after puking I feel worse. Is there a reason our bodies do this? I feel like it doesn't help because you lose nutrients and it dehydrates you.
Comments
[deleted] t1_j5n9c07 wrote
i love how the bodies only 2 responses are throw up or die.
BurnOutBrighter6 t1_j5n9oq4 wrote
Evolution is a lot like engineering: just-good-enough-to-work is the ideal solution. Why worry about creating systems to actually deal with all the types of poisons it could be when you can just have a universal eject function and then eat some food to replenish whatever nutrients you also ejected along with the poison...if it was even poison. Oh well, at least you didn't die to poison, so that's a plus.
Red_AtNight t1_j5nabtf wrote
If you were a horse, it’d only be one response. They can’t vomit, so when they eat something that gives them an upset stomach… they just die
[deleted] t1_j5nadp2 wrote
oh no!!
EpiHackr t1_j5nb64p wrote
Once your body recognizes that it has ingested a virus, toxin or poison it will expel it by inducing vomiting. Unfortunately, it takes a while for it to tell, so it keeps vomiting even when the stomach is empty (the toxin is in the blood by then). Alcohol is a great example of a toxin that is absorbed in great quantities before inducing vomiting. But you can short cut this by "thinking" something might contain toxins by thinking its really gross and throwing it up sooner, before a lot is absorbed.
[deleted] t1_j5n7ty3 wrote
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Hakaisha89 t1_j5o192a wrote
When you feel sick, its usually because of something you ate, so to get the bad stuff out, the body forces you to puke, however, there are times where you feel sick, without having eaten the bad stuff, but the body is reacting as if you did.
It's like a miss firing reflex? It is caused by the GI feeling irritated.
BurnOutBrighter6 t1_j5n8n5f wrote
If the sickness was being caused by something poisonous you ate, vomiting is a quick way to cure yourself. It could even save your life if the poison would have killed you!
Since the alternative is possibly dying to something you could have easily just thrown up, evolution has "decided" it's a better overall strategy to throw up when sick just in case.