This one is kind of gross but we were dealing with an instance of food poisoning recently and it got me wondering… If I understand correctly, both diarrhea and vomiting are mechanisms the body uses to combat infection. If you ingest something that your body deems dangerous, is there a reason your brain might trigger diarrhea instead of vomiting, or vice versa, for any given situation?
In: Biology
Diarrhea can be the body’s response to encourage the passage of some irritant, but it can also just be a symptom that has no use. Some toxins created by pathological bacteria simply cause diarrhea, sometimes to the point that it’s fatal. That’s the bacteria’s attempt to spread to new hosts, not your body’s response to something dangerous.
For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiga_toxin
At the end of the day your body isn’t making a wise decision either way, it’s just inflammation, irritation, or specific chemical receptors activating a chain of events that causes vomiting/diarrhea. Sadly those same receptors can fall victim to outside interference. At the end of the day both vomiting and diarrhea serve the same purpose those, they seek to reduce the exposure time to something harmful.
Think of vomiting as your body’s quick-response team. When you eat something bad, like spoiled food, your stomach quickly realizes that it’s harmful. To protect you, your brain sends a signal to immediately get rid of it by throwing up. This is a fast way to eject toxins or bacteria before they can move further into your intestines and cause more trouble. Vomiting is especially useful for getting rid of toxins that are still in your stomach.
On the other hand, diarrhea is like the cleanup crew that comes in when the harmful substances have made it past the stomach and into the intestines. Your body speeds up the movement of the intestines to flush out the bad stuff quickly. This can also happen when your body tries to get rid of toxins produced by bacteria that have made it into your intestines. Diarrhea ensures that these toxins don’t stay long enough to get absorbed into your body.
Basically it comes down to how far the nasty stuff made it through your digestive tract before your body figured out something was wrong.
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