Diarrhea is usually caused by the body dumping water into your intestines so I was wondering if holding it in would help with dehydration?

I currently have food poisoning so that’s why I thought of this.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    0·
    11 days ago

    Yes, but that would be a bad thing

    Your body is flushing all that water into your intestines because it detected something bad and decided to get rid of it fast. The longer the bad thing stays, the worse, so it just firehose blast it out.

    If you keep it in, first you’ll have to deal with the increased pressure, not good for your intestines. Then your body will have to deal with whatever it is that is bad for you.

    Better just go to a bathroom and a doctor if you’re still having it after 2 days

  • Mothra@mander.xyz
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    13 days ago

    In theory it would, in practice good luck holding it in if it’s really diarrhea.

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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    13 days ago

    Hopefully not. Diarrhea is used to flush bacteria and poisons out of the body. I guess if the body would regain the water it could also regain the bacteria.

    Just drink a lot of water and let your body do the work it needs to do.

    In case you question my credentials, I’m the developer of Diarrhea 4.

    • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      I thought diarrhea was (at least sometimes) caused by too many of your gut bacteria getting killed by fever so they can’t digest solids enough to extract the water.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      “Hopefully my bowels aren’t able to absorb water?”

      That’s literally their job. There are filters, you don’t absorb waste from your colon, but water and nutrients.

      The colon is the longest part of the large intestine. It receives almost completely digested food from the cecum, absorbs water and nutrients, and passes waste (stool or feces) to the rectum. The colon is divided into 4 parts: The ascending colon is the start of the colon.

      Diarrhoea is often a problem with the absorption of water in the colon instead of the body “flushing water” into your digestive tract.

      Like the main job of the colon is water absorption, so the digested mush turns into stool that can be deposited in the rectum for to be expelled through the anus.

      If that absorption doesn’t work then it’s just coming thorough and that’s diarrhoea

    • Walican132@lemmy.todayEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      Play the fartastically funny new game Diarrhea 4 (not to be confused with Disgaea 4).

      This fucking killed me thank you for it.

    • Toneswirly@lemmy.world
      0·
      12 days ago

      Games a fun Lunar Lander-like but its too easy. I got up to 15 Liters of poo and just held the button down. Could be an interesting challenge if the screen didnt scroll back down and you had to get the powerups before you pass them

      • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
        0·
        12 days ago

        Yeah, I have a ton of ideas for improvements but no energy to implement them. My initial concept included aliens you’d aim your poo stream at to shoot them down.

    • deranger@sh.itjust.works
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      13 days ago

      Diarrhea isn’t necessarily “used” by the body in all cases. With things like rotavirus and Vibrio (cholera) it’s caused by the infectious agent and aids in its spread. It can be so severe it kills the person via dehydration.

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
        0·
        13 days ago

        “The solution to pollution is dilution.”

        The body has evolved methods of protecting and ridding itself of bad things. It sucks at the time, but don’t try to go against what your body is trying to fix.

      • f43r05@lemmy.caEnglish
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        13 days ago

        Are you getting enough electrolytes? Dilute Gatorade/Powerade with equal amount of water (1:1 ratio). It will help your body absorb and hold onto the water.

        Best of luck to you.

  • SloppyPuppy@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Eventually the pressure will overcome your sphincter strength. And its fluid - it only needs a tiny tiny hole to Come out. And its going to happen much faster than you think.

  • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    13 days ago

    Your colon is very good at extracting water; if you can hold it in then yes in theory it could remove some of the water. However in reality when you have diarrhoea your colon is inflamed and irritated during and you can’t really stop it happening. You’d have to overcome the cramping and the body trying to push the contents outwards.

    The most likely outcome of trying to hold it in is it gets worse and you get an explosive and even less controlled expulsion.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    0·
    13 days ago

    Sure, part of the job of your intestines is to deal with the water in your food. Espectally the large intestine, if I remember correctly. However… I wonder what your plan is to hold it in. The whole point of diarrhea is to flush everything more quickly through your intestines, and then out. That’s why it’s still wet at the end. You’ll get kind of a traffic jam at the rear end. With more incoming. And I don’t think the intestines are designed to withstand pressure. And the sphincter isn’t really meant to hold back fluids…

    So no. You need to drink a lot to deal with the dehydration. In bad cases the doctor can connect you to a drip. Those will be things that have an effect.

  • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
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    13 days ago

    I have IBS and yeah, if I can successfully hold it in the urge goes away for a couple hours and a more normal BM is the result.

    The challenge is knowing when its worth trying to hold it in. It’s like a 10% of the time kind of thing.

  • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.orgEnglish
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    11 days ago

    This is stupid because you’d essentially be holding onto the toxins that your body is trying to expell. Please just shit and drink water.

      • filcuk@lemmy.zip
        0·
        11 days ago

        If you have diarrhoea, it may have been caused by bad food, something you may not want to be absorbing, which may be why the body is trying to purge it ASAP.

        • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
          0·
          11 days ago

          The body does not have diarrhea as a protective mechanism to purge the bacteria that caused the food poisoning. The bacteria is secreting a protein that inhibits water absorption which causes diarrhea.

          Preventing or reducing diarrhea would be a beneficial outcome for a bacteria infection such as ETEC whose cause of death is dehydration.

          This is by no means an endorsement of OP’s hold it in strategy.