How exactly does food poisoning work? How does the body know that the food is contaminated and which way to expel it out? How does it know when things are safe again?

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How exactly does food poisoning work? How does the body know that the food is contaminated and which way to expel it out? How does it know when things are safe again?

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27 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

As other people have said, it is a built-in mechanism of your body.

Bad stuff detected > Get it all out!

The problem is that once “trained” it is hard to overcome the reaction.

I got food poisoning from my High School Cafeteria. I ate a bad cheese burger that had ketchup and pickles on it. I spent 3 days in the hospital; running at both ends and plugged into a plethora of IV’s.

I cannot eat a cheeseburger with ketchup and pickles to this day. I get to “enjoy” a stomach purge just as I have the taste epiphany of cheese/ketchup/pickles.

It can be quite distracting for other restaurant patrons if my burger is prepared with those three magic ingredients.

Anonymous 0 Comments

One of the most common causes is due to so called toxins (proteins) made by a bacteria called staphylococcus aureus, that lives on healthy peoples skin. These bacteria may grow rapidly on food at room temperature. When ingested these toxins can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea for which there seem to be several mechanisms relating to the immune system.
[in depth reading](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153270/)

Anonymous 0 Comments

One of the most common causes is due to so called toxins (proteins) made by a bacteria called staphylococcus aureus, that lives on healthy peoples skin. These bacteria may grow rapidly on food at room temperature. When ingested these toxins can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea for which there seem to be several mechanisms relating to the immune system.
[in depth reading](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153270/)

Anonymous 0 Comments

One of the most common causes is due to so called toxins (proteins) made by a bacteria called staphylococcus aureus, that lives on healthy peoples skin. These bacteria may grow rapidly on food at room temperature. When ingested these toxins can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea for which there seem to be several mechanisms relating to the immune system.
[in depth reading](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153270/)

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m going to try a little more ELI5 answer:

*The body will definitely and quickly try to throw out the baby with any contaminated bath water.*

Let’s say you’re out ~~of~~ at picnic and out of nowhere you see one ant. You know one ant isn’t going to throw off your entire picnic so you kind of just ignore it and you just let it pass by without letting it harm you. We could probably see the same for five ants, 10 ants, 15 ants etc so let’s just metaphor carry until the next paragraph.

Now imagine that 2 ft to the left of your picnic is an ant hill the size of a small apartment building. And all of a sudden those ants have now infested your picnic because you were reading this text post on Reddit and not covering up your food.

What are you going to do now? You could certainly try to start killing ants one at a time but you realize that your picnic is now just overwhelmed and infested.

Let’s say you have a fire hose. What do you think is the best option, continuing to fight it one at a time or just fire hosing the hell out of all the water which may mean you lose any food that was at the picnic but you’re sure as heck going to try to drown every single ant at once.

So that’s what your body does when it comes across contaminated foods. Explosive diarrhea is one method that your body uses to flush everything out of your body at one go with every ounce of water you have in your body at one time in one acute episode. Basically whatever’s in your stomach at the time that your body calls red alert will be flushed out at one time. The end result of that is what we call food poisoning because our body has been poisoned by some sort of contaminated food and the response of the poisoning is to evacuate all personnel from the stomach area in an attempt to scuttle the contaminant.

It’s safe again traditionally when you’ve rehydrated yourself from the episodic explosive diarrhea which basically drains your body of every ounce of water that you have. That’s what Pedialyte is for rehydrating yourself with electrolytes and basically very mild saltwater to replenish the all hands on deck that your body called for to evacuate and abandon stomach ship.

I remember one fascinating fact that Mr Miller my 10th grade high school biology teacher who I’m pretty sure was a transvestite but that’s really not important to this story but it is an interesting memory is that he told me that the answer to the question for what you do when you’re both constipated and having diarrhea is the same. Both are symptoms of you being dehydrated and the solution is to just drink the hell out of water.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m going to try a little more ELI5 answer:

*The body will definitely and quickly try to throw out the baby with any contaminated bath water.*

Let’s say you’re out ~~of~~ at picnic and out of nowhere you see one ant. You know one ant isn’t going to throw off your entire picnic so you kind of just ignore it and you just let it pass by without letting it harm you. We could probably see the same for five ants, 10 ants, 15 ants etc so let’s just metaphor carry until the next paragraph.

Now imagine that 2 ft to the left of your picnic is an ant hill the size of a small apartment building. And all of a sudden those ants have now infested your picnic because you were reading this text post on Reddit and not covering up your food.

What are you going to do now? You could certainly try to start killing ants one at a time but you realize that your picnic is now just overwhelmed and infested.

Let’s say you have a fire hose. What do you think is the best option, continuing to fight it one at a time or just fire hosing the hell out of all the water which may mean you lose any food that was at the picnic but you’re sure as heck going to try to drown every single ant at once.

So that’s what your body does when it comes across contaminated foods. Explosive diarrhea is one method that your body uses to flush everything out of your body at one go with every ounce of water you have in your body at one time in one acute episode. Basically whatever’s in your stomach at the time that your body calls red alert will be flushed out at one time. The end result of that is what we call food poisoning because our body has been poisoned by some sort of contaminated food and the response of the poisoning is to evacuate all personnel from the stomach area in an attempt to scuttle the contaminant.

It’s safe again traditionally when you’ve rehydrated yourself from the episodic explosive diarrhea which basically drains your body of every ounce of water that you have. That’s what Pedialyte is for rehydrating yourself with electrolytes and basically very mild saltwater to replenish the all hands on deck that your body called for to evacuate and abandon stomach ship.

I remember one fascinating fact that Mr Miller my 10th grade high school biology teacher who I’m pretty sure was a transvestite but that’s really not important to this story but it is an interesting memory is that he told me that the answer to the question for what you do when you’re both constipated and having diarrhea is the same. Both are symptoms of you being dehydrated and the solution is to just drink the hell out of water.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m going to try a little more ELI5 answer:

*The body will definitely and quickly try to throw out the baby with any contaminated bath water.*

Let’s say you’re out ~~of~~ at picnic and out of nowhere you see one ant. You know one ant isn’t going to throw off your entire picnic so you kind of just ignore it and you just let it pass by without letting it harm you. We could probably see the same for five ants, 10 ants, 15 ants etc so let’s just metaphor carry until the next paragraph.

Now imagine that 2 ft to the left of your picnic is an ant hill the size of a small apartment building. And all of a sudden those ants have now infested your picnic because you were reading this text post on Reddit and not covering up your food.

What are you going to do now? You could certainly try to start killing ants one at a time but you realize that your picnic is now just overwhelmed and infested.

Let’s say you have a fire hose. What do you think is the best option, continuing to fight it one at a time or just fire hosing the hell out of all the water which may mean you lose any food that was at the picnic but you’re sure as heck going to try to drown every single ant at once.

So that’s what your body does when it comes across contaminated foods. Explosive diarrhea is one method that your body uses to flush everything out of your body at one go with every ounce of water you have in your body at one time in one acute episode. Basically whatever’s in your stomach at the time that your body calls red alert will be flushed out at one time. The end result of that is what we call food poisoning because our body has been poisoned by some sort of contaminated food and the response of the poisoning is to evacuate all personnel from the stomach area in an attempt to scuttle the contaminant.

It’s safe again traditionally when you’ve rehydrated yourself from the episodic explosive diarrhea which basically drains your body of every ounce of water that you have. That’s what Pedialyte is for rehydrating yourself with electrolytes and basically very mild saltwater to replenish the all hands on deck that your body called for to evacuate and abandon stomach ship.

I remember one fascinating fact that Mr Miller my 10th grade high school biology teacher who I’m pretty sure was a transvestite but that’s really not important to this story but it is an interesting memory is that he told me that the answer to the question for what you do when you’re both constipated and having diarrhea is the same. Both are symptoms of you being dehydrated and the solution is to just drink the hell out of water.