What processes are happening in your body when you hold in the need to go the bathroom?
In: Biology
You contract your sphincters. Pressure builds up, your first feel discomfort then mild pain. At this point, without medical condition, you are already shitting yourself/peeing your pants.
With medical conditions, things get worse. Your intestines will expand elastically as feces builds up and you will feel severe pain. Your bladder will also inflate like a balloon. Along with extreme pain, if the situation lasts too long, you may experience dizziness/nausea as the waste isn’t being evacuated from your body. Vomiting feces is also an unpleasant possibility
Then, I’m not sure what would kill you first : internal bleeding via intestine/bladder ruptures or necrosis, kidney failure or just symptoms related to toxin overload. Not a happy death.
At first the sphincters stay closed automatically. At some point you receive signals to evacuate. You can overpower these by tolerating the sense and even some pain. Eventually, the sphincter gets an emergency signal to open and dump. It’s impossible to resist for long. People with medical conditions are a different story. They get the signal, but can’t trigger the sphincter. For example, an enlarged prostate could block the flow even with the pain. Such people need a catheter to drain the bladder before damage is done to the bladder and kidneys.
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