how does acute radiation poisoning induce vomiting, nausea within just tens of minutes of exposure, and in more serious cases, instant loss of consciousnesses?
In: Biology
It kill cells all over your body and that is the result. If enough cells in the brain dies you become you loss of consciousnesses.
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Radiation is especially damaging to soft tissues – skin, blood and blood vessels, GI tract, brain and nerves.
If you get a full body dose, the GI tract (stomach and intestines) are damaged and thats where the vomiting and nausea come from
Platelets are damaged and wounds and burns hemorrhage without an ability to stop bleeding
Take a big dose to the head, the brain and nerves are damaged, and along with the bleeding, it’s a terrible, terrible thing
The body doesn’t “understand” radiation poisoning, so when the body gets hit with a huge wave of radiation not normally seen in nature, the body interprets the massive body damage as regular poisoning that you’d get with spoiled food and starts the process of purging.
It doesn’t really have any way to react to or defend against radiation, but it can do what normally helps with illness or injury — induce vomiting to remove food that may be part of the problem (or just to stop the digestion process so the body can focus on other tasks), faint so you’re not doing things that may disrupt the healing process, and also faint to try to “reboot” the brain. None of this theoretically helps against radiation poisoning unless you ingested radioactive substances, but the body has to react somehow.
Been watching Chernobyl have you?