I know for alcohol, you throw up once you start to feel dizzy as the body thinks you’ve been poisoned, makes your head spin and you need to empty your stomach to reduce harm from the “poison” – so possibly linked to this?
Possibly that your body feels overwhelmed by the sheer amount of pain signals and pulls out multiple survival emergency methods like puking to deal with it. Same for going unconscious or going completely numb after extreme physical trauma.
The body is full of nerves that receive and send signals to the brain, and back to the nervous system. These signals, designed to be protective, can sometimes collect so much information that it creates sensory overload, leading to a bigger pain, and that can send so much information that the body tries to purge as a survival tactic. Big pain tends to mean life threatening, so the body preventatively throws up to balance out the inner tension/threat.
Basically it is your body hitting all the emergency buttons at once.
General stress triggers the fight-or-flight reflex, pain amplifies that while also shifting your hormones in other ways to help you deal with your ongoing crisis.
The fight-or-flight reflex draws blood away from your digestive system to your limbs (in order to better run away from the danger), which can irritate your stomach. The hormone shifts can also have knock-on effects on your stomach.
Your brain, in panic mode, senses that something is wrong with your stomach (even though the problem is of its own making). It can’t distinguish what is wrong beyond pain, so the safest assumption is “poison.” You throw up just to be safe.
your body doesn’t exactly “know” why you’re in pain, your brain gets massive amounts of pain signals and hormone releases which sort of kicks everything in your brain into overdrive, this includes a part of your brain that is responsible for, among other things, giving the stomach the signal it should vomit.
So basically, the reason some people vomit when they’re in intense pain is your brain throwing everything including the kitchen sink at reacting to the pain, and often accidentally it triggers adjacent systems in the body as the brain becomes so overwhelmed with what’s going on.
I felt nauseated when I broke a toe & my doctor said it was stress response similar to fight or flight, involving cytokines & adrenaline being dumped immediately into our blood.
The other comments go into more detail for specific cases, but kind of a lot of things lead to your body saying ‘something unusual is happening, maybe I’ve been poisoned’ and throwing up.
Wish I knew too. I’ve broken bones, but the first time I’ve never thrown up from pain was due to a kidney stone that caused a blockage & put me in severe hydronephrosis
The way I understood it is that your body diverts it’s energy to dealing with the pain and healing. When the digestive system doesn’t have the resources it needs, it purges everything.
This happened to me 3 times. Once was during childbirth, the second was when an ovarian cyst burst, and the third time I had a really bad case of strep that turned into scarlet fever. It was so painful, I couldn’t even sleep because when I tried I woke up choking on the pus and blood filling my throat. Thank God the strep hasn’t come back in a few months.
Doesn’t always happen. I worked in war zone ERs and have witnessed people in terrible situations with horrible, fatal burns and explosion injuries. None of them threw up. It probably is something that takes a specific set of circumstances.
There are a few things at work here. One is panic-induced hyperventilation. Breathing so rapidly and causing the neck and upper chest muscles to tense and release over and over again can cause a sensation similar to gagging which can lead to actually gagging and then vomiting. Another thing is related to injury / fight-or-flight response in the body, which is that suddenly all the blood in our bodies is redirected to the extremities, this causes the tissue around our stomachs to contract and if there is food in our stomachs we suddenly feel that food like a tight lump in our torso and that feeling can induce vomiting. This is a feeling similar to what people who take stimulants for ADHD feel if they have a big meal, because a side effect of stimulants is redirecting blood away from the stomach.
Comments
I know for alcohol, you throw up once you start to feel dizzy as the body thinks you’ve been poisoned, makes your head spin and you need to empty your stomach to reduce harm from the “poison” – so possibly linked to this?
Possibly that your body feels overwhelmed by the sheer amount of pain signals and pulls out multiple survival emergency methods like puking to deal with it. Same for going unconscious or going completely numb after extreme physical trauma.
Just like how you might shit your pants if a bear charges you. Nervous system goes whack and says everybody out
The body is full of nerves that receive and send signals to the brain, and back to the nervous system. These signals, designed to be protective, can sometimes collect so much information that it creates sensory overload, leading to a bigger pain, and that can send so much information that the body tries to purge as a survival tactic. Big pain tends to mean life threatening, so the body preventatively throws up to balance out the inner tension/threat.
Basically it is your body hitting all the emergency buttons at once.
your body doesn’t exactly “know” why you’re in pain, your brain gets massive amounts of pain signals and hormone releases which sort of kicks everything in your brain into overdrive, this includes a part of your brain that is responsible for, among other things, giving the stomach the signal it should vomit.
So basically, the reason some people vomit when they’re in intense pain is your brain throwing everything including the kitchen sink at reacting to the pain, and often accidentally it triggers adjacent systems in the body as the brain becomes so overwhelmed with what’s going on.
I felt nauseated when I broke a toe & my doctor said it was stress response similar to fight or flight, involving cytokines & adrenaline being dumped immediately into our blood.
The other comments go into more detail for specific cases, but kind of a lot of things lead to your body saying ‘something unusual is happening, maybe I’ve been poisoned’ and throwing up.
Wish I knew too. I’ve broken bones, but the first time I’ve never thrown up from pain was due to a kidney stone that caused a blockage & put me in severe hydronephrosis
I threw up several times when I was in labor, I just assume it’s an overload of hormones dumping right into the bloodstream all at once
The way I understood it is that your body diverts it’s energy to dealing with the pain and healing. When the digestive system doesn’t have the resources it needs, it purges everything.
I wondered that since I was a kid and was playing street hockey and threw up after taking a slapshot off the nuts. One of those hard orange balls lol
But then I wondered why I didn’t throw up when I had kidney stones 🤷♂️
I used to throw up when I got migraines, but when I had worse pain, like an abscessed tooth (worst pain ever), nothing.
Anxiety, my body is running in tilt. Digesting food takes energy that I simply do not have.
Also, reflex, I could have eaten something stupid. Our immune systems tend to overreact.
Interestingly, the only times I have thrown up from pain were during my period, and when I had a bad day with endometriosis.
Even my labor pain didn’t make me throw up. According to my husband I was just howling and groaning like a wounded animal, haha.
I’m sure it depends on every person individually, and their level of pain resistance.
When I got my kidney stone, the pain was so bad that I was throwing up.
This happened to me 3 times. Once was during childbirth, the second was when an ovarian cyst burst, and the third time I had a really bad case of strep that turned into scarlet fever. It was so painful, I couldn’t even sleep because when I tried I woke up choking on the pus and blood filling my throat. Thank God the strep hasn’t come back in a few months.
Doesn’t always happen. I worked in war zone ERs and have witnessed people in terrible situations with horrible, fatal burns and explosion injuries. None of them threw up. It probably is something that takes a specific set of circumstances.
The most insane amount of times I have ever thrown up is when I had a kidney stone. I just couldn’t stop. It was pain and throwing up, over and over.
There are a few things at work here. One is panic-induced hyperventilation. Breathing so rapidly and causing the neck and upper chest muscles to tense and release over and over again can cause a sensation similar to gagging which can lead to actually gagging and then vomiting. Another thing is related to injury / fight-or-flight response in the body, which is that suddenly all the blood in our bodies is redirected to the extremities, this causes the tissue around our stomachs to contract and if there is food in our stomachs we suddenly feel that food like a tight lump in our torso and that feeling can induce vomiting. This is a feeling similar to what people who take stimulants for ADHD feel if they have a big meal, because a side effect of stimulants is redirecting blood away from the stomach.
When I have acute pain (like stubbing my toe) the worst symptom is not the pain but the violent nausea.