Why is ingesting fecal matter dangerous even though its just stuff from your body?
In: Biology
Your own really isn’t unsafe. You aren’t going to infect yourself with something you already have (except some parasites, they have complicated life cycles, so re-infection can be a problem). It isn’t toxic. It’s just useless – you’ve already taken all the nutrition out of it.
Urine is mildly toxic – it contains diluted toxins removed by your kidneys, but not enough to be actively poisonous. Again, it’s mostly just useless – if you drink it to combat dehydration your body will have to use all that water to remove the toxins you’ve ingested alongside, so it’s not much help at all. It doesn’t have any bacteria, though, so it won’t cause infection.
Other people’s faecal matter is extremely unsafe, though. It’s full of bacteria, some of them harmful. Lots of different ailments spread through fecal contamination: cholera, dysentery, typhoid, almost all parasites. That’s why the smell is so disgusting – it’s evolved reaction that protects us from infection.
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