Well? If so why? If not, I guess I would understand.
Why wouldn’t they be able to? They’ve lost their hands and legs, not their process to feel!
Tark, a quadriplegic is someone who has lost feeling in their arms and legs, not someone who doesn’t have arms and legs. I’m not sure if there is a name for that.
Some components to the hunger stimulus are hormonal in nature, but I think nerve signals may play the major role. Don’t know for sure, anyone else?
I believe they are simply called quadruple amputees.
I don’t think the stomache actully tells the brain its hungry. I think the brain can tell from things like blood sugar, and lactic acid what the energy condition of the body is. but in either case involuntary nerve stimulus still ocurs, or else the heart would stop pupming and death would occur long before starving could happen.
Quadraplegics would die if not hooked up to their heart-lung-kidney machines. The nerves to the organs don’t work.
Um, looks like I should maybe clear up some misconceptions?
My brother-in-law is a quadriplegic as a result of an accident when he was a teenager. He is not hooked up to any machines. All of his involuntary bodily functions, including his heart, lungs, kidneys, etc are still working. The nerves that control these functions are separate from the nerves that control the voluntary functions, and only the ones that control voluntary functions were damaged.
The popular image of a quad right now is Christopher Reeve, of course, and he is dependent on a respirator to stay alive. But his injury was extremely high up, higher than is the case for most quads.
To answer the original question, I’ve never seen any sign that my b-i-l has trouble noticing that he’s hungry! Of course he can’t feel his stomach rumbling, but that’s only part of the sensation of hunger anyway; changes in blood chemistry tell your brain that you’re hungry even if your stomach hasn’t gotten into the act. What I find more interesting is that he can also tell if he’s too cold or too hot (since he can’t move around, if the rest of us are comfortable, he’s usually cold). I had always assumed that we felt our body temps only through skin sensation, but I see now that there must be more to it.
I knew a quadraplegic, and he was dependent on his machines. Caught a bullet in his throat, pretty high up. Not a nice story, but he lived a good life with the aid of his wife.
I think hunger works at a fairly low level, mainly in the peripheral nervous system, and is hormonally controlled. As such, I’d guess that if blood still circulates and the immune system still functions, which would appear to be the case for (the amjority of) quadriplegics, then I can’t see why hunger wouldn’t still be sensed/felt.
Derleth, flodnak is right - it all depends on how high the injury is. Also, they often use machines when the accident has just happened - one of my friends broke his neck in a motorcycle accident & he stopped breathing for a while, but it’s a sort of system shock thing, and if the body gets past that stage, the autonomic system takes over. I think they probably prefer to have them on machines at that point too in case the swelling around the injury does further damage and impedes the heart/lung control system (vagus nerve). I’m not a doctor, but mom is a nurse, who has worked with para & quadriplegics & also, as I say from experience with my friend.