Why does diarrhea / gas cause crippling pain?
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The best answer is a question: what is pain? The simple answer is that pain hurts. But some people hurt from things that don’t hurt others. So how is that reconciled? The truth as we know it is that pain is a sensation generated in the brain from possible (or actual) injury or damage to the body and the brain guesses whether that sensation is dangerous or not. Much of that guess is based on a persons history. If it guesses dangerous, it leads to the sensation of pain, so that the organism (eg you and me) try to fix it.
So diarrhea and gas can cause pain for different reasons. Diarrhea can be due to inflammation or difficulty absorbing a substance and gas causes stretch of the bowel. It would make sense that an organism had a certain degree of stretch in which it would want the organism to be aware that something bad might be happening. But when it makes that call (when someone has pain) is different for everyone.
Source: Pain specialist
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