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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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.
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.
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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.
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).
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.
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