“Pull over dad: I think we’ve probably reached one of the nastiest post ever!”

I know what you’re thinking: Rey’s gone nuts. There’s just some things you don’t talk about, either in the private intimacy of ear friends or in the public arena of the web: especially when you’re using your real name. But no worries–I have no intention of getting graphic. It’s just that recent extenuating circumstances in my abode have caused me to scratch my head and wonder: how does diarrhea happen?

Yeah we all know what causes it like a virus, some sort of bacteria, food poisoning, bad water or even some medications. We know that if something like the mentioned happens we get diarrhea (because it is after all a symptom) but do we ever stop and think why it comes out like that at all? I mean, you catch a virus and the bug decides to attack your feces of all places? Doesn’t it have something better to do, like wreak havoc on your body?

We have to look at how the digestive system normally works. First you eat food which begins to be broken down by your teeth and the enzymes in your saliva. As it hits your stomach, the acids kick in to break down the food even more. What the body is trying to do is break it all down until your food is liquid.

Aha! That’s why it happens! –not quite.

You see, during the normal process of digestion, food is continued to be kept in liquid form by water from the gallbladder, small intestine and the pancreas. So the water pours in, keeps the food liquid, passing it all along down through the intestines. Now as the food passes into the lower part of the small intestine and the colon, your awesome body factory starts to absorb the water from the liquefied food turning it into the solid fecal matter you’re used to.

But when your body is infected with say a bacteria, those little buggers start releasing toxins into your stomach (or intestines) that your body wants to flush out. Your body ups the amount of water being poured in to that liquefied food to get the toxins out of the body. When all that excess liquid gets to your colon your body tries to absorb it back, but there’s just too much liquid: so it demands expelling. Thus diarrhea.

Ironically enough, this means that the best treatment for diarrhea is not Peptol Bismol but actually more water! You want to help your body flush out those toxins by making sure you’re properly hydrated since diarrhea can result in the loss of a quart of water a day.

Constipation, on the other hand, is a problem of the food moving through the intestines. The longer it sits in a single area, the more water that is absorbed and the harder the fecal matter becomes. That’s why some people can actually become constipated by repeatedly suppressing the urge to defecate.

So there you go: diarrhea happens when the excess liquid in your body isn’t being reabsorbed into your body and thus released as excess.

reference:MedicineNet, Wikipedia, Mayo Clinic, Nationwide Childrens

Technorati Tags: diarrhea,constipation