eli5 How come your appetite decreases when you are ill?
In: Biology
Your body is devoting a lot of energy into healing itself, so digestion and appetite don’t take as much precedence. As previous commenter mentioned, you can go to around 2 weeks without food. The same reason for why you shouldn’t drink milk if you’re sick, it’s not being digested as fast so it’s sitting in your warm stomach and spoiling—and then you throw up. (At least from what I understand)
Edited to clarify
Your body needs to rest so it can fight the illness. If you’re busy moving about/looking for food you arent resting and your body is using extra energy to digest and breakdown your food.
So, by not letting you feel hungry, you can comfortably rest and recover.
There are two parts to your nervous system next to the brain (parasympathetic and sympathetic). The “active” and “passive” part. They are in opposition for energy and resources. Digestion, sleep, slowing your heart rate are part of the passive. Sport, fighting illness and such are the active part.
If you need to fight an illness the active part needs more energy and he takes that from the passive part, so his duties get shut down as much as possible. To reduce energy taken due to digestion you have lowered appetite and sometimes even throw up already eaten food. Thats why you should eat simple fast digested food if ill, like broths.
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