Why do we throw up when we work out really hard?
In: Biology
Fight or flight.
Your digestive system takes up a lot of energy, your body goes into flight or flight and realises that it might need that energy for something else – A mild shock response – so gets rid of it.
Your body diverts blood from your digestive system to your muscles. This slows your digestive system and if you had a meal in there before it’ll just sit and cause an upset stomach. Additionally the build up of lactic acid in your blood causes your brain to desire to remove the toxins so it makes you [vomit](https://www.stack.com/a/why-intense-workouts-make-people-throw-up-and-how-to-prevent-it)
If we’re discussing reasons related to your body’s healthy functioning (physiology) then there are probably three (or four) main ones:
1. Although low-intensity exercise speeds up your body’s ability to move food from your tummy to your pooper, high-intensity exercise does the opposite and slows down food’s journey. Even if you haven’t eaten in a long time, it’s worth remembering that it takes several hours for you stomach to empty and a couple of days to get all the way through to your pooper. So intense exercise and the delayed movement of food through your body, aka delayed “gastric emptying,” is one cause for stomach issues and vomitting.
2. Another major one is not getting enough water to your body or “dehydration,” which can trigger a vomiting response. Even if you’re drinking water during exercise, it may not be optimal. In fact water with 8% sugar content can accelerate gastric emptying compared to regular water.
3. Another major one is getting TOO much water. Drinking too much during exercise while simultaneously sweating has the shitty effect of removing too much salt from your body, which has severe consequences since salt is necessary for your body’s healthy functioning. The fancy word for this is “hyponaetremia.” Once again, instead of simply water, an “electrolyte-carbohydrate” mixture in fluids (think sugars and salts) can help offset this.
4. Another issue is that too little water or, “dehydration,” further slows down your body’s ability to move food through your digestive system, worsening your delayed, “gastric emptying,” and worsening your body’s ability to bring blood to your digestive organs. The fancy word for the latter is called “visceral ischaemia”, because your viscera (all the organs in your belly, which includes your digestion organs) lose the ability to get the oxygen they need to work (ischaemia). All of which worsens the build up of food and tummy problems some feel during severe exercise.
Then there are severe issues that arise from over-exercise like kidney problems, heat stroke, damage from parts of your blood cells being released from damaged muscles…etc But for the most part, the above reasons cover most of your “physiological” reasons for vomiting, aka the reasons we would expect from a properly functioning and healthy body .
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