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Why does my body try to kill me when I'm sick? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by Danquebec@sh.itjust.works to c/askscience@lemmy.world
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I have a stomach flu. My government recommends me to eat as normally as possible.

I've generally had no appetite.

And the idea of eating foods, even bland, often makes me feel nauseous.

And when I do eat, I often want to puke what I ate.

Why does my body do this if I'm supposed to fill my guts with food?

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[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 45 points 4 months ago

The human body isn't too good at identifying the cause of illness. Sick? Maybe it was something you ate. Better get rid of it.

But the key words are as normally as possible. Find what you can keep down, and don't eat so much as to trigger another round of vomiting. Immune responses burn extra calories, so if you're not keeping anything down, you're going to be at a fair deficit.

In nature, without science and medicine, the body just tries to do the best it can on its own, and tries to get rid of the disease before it kills you. It doesn't have a very good rate of success, but then that's just nature. Wild animals get ill and die all the time.

[–] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago

You got sick by eating, clearly eating isn't going to help matters.

Your body's autonomous functions are run by a meat computer that developed a few hundred million years ago and has only added functions on top of the existing architecture in a bubblegum and string affair.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Not eating, or fasting, when you want to recover actually makes a lot of sense. It lets your body focus on the recovery autophagy. Not spending energy digesting food, which can be very complicated, especially when you're sick.

Keep your electrolytes up, but if you're not hungry don't eat.

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 months ago

You do need the calories and resources, but that’s why you should eat easy to digest things like soup.

[–] Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

I'm referring to my state's recommendations:

It is not recommended that you stop eating. It will not reduce the symptoms of gastroenteritis, does not provide enough calories and can delay healing.

[–] pugsnroses77@sh.itjust.works 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

digestion is hard. have you tried drinking calories? veggie broth, protein shakes, and fruit juice are my go-to

[–] Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

Thanks for the suggestions. I managed to eat and keep down bananas, bread, pasta, and rice with vegetables. Now thinking about the 3 last items makes me nauseous though. It seems like I always have to eat something else.

To others suffering from the same disease and finding this: it's recommended to avoid fruit juices high in sugar.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Because your appetite is largely controlled by your gut microbes, not your own body.
And those microbes are now dead.

[–] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

Not dead but fighting their own battle.

[–] 12newguy@mander.xyz 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm not the first to say this, but essentially your body (specifically your immune system) doesn't know the difference (as far as how dangerous a sickness is) between a cold and ebola. So it always reacts very strongly to any "invader" that isn't part of your body normally. This is super simplified and I'm not an expert by any means, but here is a playlist of videos by a channel called Kurzgesagt with much more information: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFs4vir_WsTyS2cy4vj4obl5igqCOV749

Or if you don't want to click on the link (or want to use a different device) you can search for Kurzgesagt and then look at their playlists; there is one with immune-related videos.

[–] Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

Yea, Kurzgesagt is excellent.