How does the body pass gas’s when sleeping but contain motor control to the muscles regulating bowel movements at the same time? In other words, how can we continue sleeping and pass gas, but not shart the bed?
Secondly, what mechanism makes us wake up to go the the bathroom if it’s serious enough to actually have a bowel movement (like if we were suffering from diarrhea and sick?). Same applies to urinating? How does the body know to hold it in, but when serious enough, wake us up?
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When we’re sleeping our brains aren’t all the way “off”. A lot of the systems are on low power mode, but the brain is still paying attention to the body, and can keep a few important instructions (like “don’t mess the bed”) running.
It’s like when you’re extremely anxious about something that you have to wake up early for, and despite having an alarm, you wake up earlier than the alarm.
Your brain is never fully shut, because of instincts (like sensing danger /stupid example but get the point/), so it sets “diarrhea” as a danger to the body, so it wakes you up, or same with full bladder, you wake up from your deep slumber to go pee.
The hooman body is fascinating.
(english is not my first language, so if something is wrong, correct me).
I have very unpredictable movements and often have intense gas. I’ve never had an incident while sleeping (maybe a small leaker but nothing ever hitting the sheets). There have been numerous times I’ve woken up and felt them bracing the gates against the incoming threat and quickly left bed to relieve it. Our bodies are quite good at delegating conscious tasks and unconcious ones. As far as I know, burping cannot be done while sleeping and most people will wake up to burp or vomit. All these rules start to change when drugs and alcohol are involved since they furher inhibit consciousness.
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you need a doctor to give you a real answer.
but you have a special reflex that operates to manage this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectoanal_inhibitory_reflex
it’s controlled by the autonomic nervous system, which regulates bodily function, and is generally unconscious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system
i’ve heard this reflex described as a kind of sense, apart from the familiar touch, taste, smell, see, hear that we normally think of as the five senses.
so maybe it’s The Sixth Sense.
People have two anuses. One internal close to the external one and the other the external one.
Gas passes by the first and the brain decides based on the situation ( visual, sleep, social) what to do with the second anus.
Gas is released without danger.
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ELI5: The tube that contains our poop is able to sense between farts (gas), diarrhea (liquid), and poops (solids). It help us fart but not poop our pants. Although sometimes you trust a fart and your poop sampler makes a mistake and you poop a little.
#nevertrustafart
The rectoanal inhibitory reflex (RAIR) (also known as the anal sampling mechanism, anal sampling reflex, rectosphincteric reflex, or anorectal sampling reflex) is a reflex characterized by a transient involuntary relaxation of the internal anal sphincter in response to distention of the rectum.[1] The RAIR provides the upper anal canal with the ability to discriminate between flatus and fecal material.
The ability of the rectum to discriminate between gaseous, liquid and solid contents is essential to the ability to voluntarily control defecation. The RAIR allows for voluntary flatulation to occur without also eliminating solid waste, irrespective of the presence of fecal material in the anal canal
Because our relaxed state is a closed butt, but air can slip out easily because it’s just bubbles that don’t require the muscles to force out in the same way as poop. We trained ourselves not to poop or pre at night, and at night there’s a hormone released that helps our bladder to stop giving the signal to eliminate. This stuff happens in the background while we’re awake and it happens in the background while we’re sleeping too. You don’t just chose when you need to pre or poop. You do it when your body tells you
Whenever I wake up in the morning it takes 30 minutes for my bowels to be “switched on” again. I always take a shit in the morning, 30 minutes after waking up like clockwork. I’m pretty sure that sleep stops your bowels movement, why else does it take me 30 minutes to get it?
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