if you eat something dodgy, why do you get cramping and diarrhoea soon after consuming it, even though that food couldn’t have been digested yet? And why do the symptoms stop before your body has expelled the bad food?

Question

if you eat something dodgy, why do you get cramping and diarrhoea soon after consuming it, even though that food couldn’t have been digested yet? And why do the symptoms stop before your body has expelled the bad food?

In: 4

Answer 1

The last time this question was asked, someone provided a great “railroad car” analogy. Something like this:

You eat something disagreeable, but not so disagreeable that it makes you throw up.

Your body floods your intestines with water to start flushing it out so you can get rid of the disagreeable thing.

All the “railroad cars” ahead of the disagreeable thing on your track are liquified. (In normal digestion, water is being removed from the food you’ve eaten.)

The smooth muscle in your intestines “wring them out” to move those now-slushy railroad cars out of your system.

Once your railroad s clear, it can calm down and return to normal operation.