Can you puke your guts out? [changed title]

While searching the internet for an answer, I came upon this site. After not finding the answer I was looking for, I decided this would be a great place to ask. So here it is: Can you actually “Puke your guts Out”?

Only if you eat them first. Even then, it’s pretty hard to pull off.

The short answer is “no.”

A slightly longer answer is that vomiting only ejects the contents of the stomach.

A still longer (and somewhat more disgusting) answer be that, while the heaving part of vomiting only empties the stomach, part of the process leading up to the ejection is ‘reverse peristalsis’, which means that the direction stuff moves through your intestines changes and the goods end up back in your stomach, all the better to be rapidly ejected.

There have been no known instances of anyone’s digestive tract actually turning inside-out, detaching, and ending up splashing into the toilet bowl, although people who’ve consumed an inadvisable amount of root-beer schnapps while eating pizza, nachos, and buffalo wings all night have expressed genuine concern about such an eventuality.

would <— Whoops, that apparently slipped out of that awkward fourth paragraph, somewhere.

You can apparantly vomit your eyes out, as per the recent column.

Some sharks will regurgitate their stomachs when stressed.

It helps to have descriptive titles. I’ve changed the title for you.

DrMatrix - GQ Moderator

Some sea creature eats that way normally - yurks its stomach up, which eats whatever, and then sucks it back down again. Starfish, maybe?

The medical term for puking one’s guts out is esophagoptosis, but it’s incredibly rare, and generally due to either severe trauma, or anatomic anomalies or both.

You can definitely—at least if you’re not yet fully grown—whirlpool your guts out. Cite. (Warning: while not graphic, cite is gross and possibly traumatic.)

Qadgop– Esophagal prolapse? Ewwww. I didn’t think there anything nastier than a rectal prolapse.

But, uh, isn’t “guts” generally understood to refer to your stomach and bowel? Is your esophagus included in the category of “guts?” (My grasp of this technical jargon is limited.) :wink:

Been there sadly. While not exactly the mix you mentioned was what I had the idea is the same. I had the dry heaves so bad I actually got seriously concerned I would literally puke my guts out. Scary and painful. Thanksfully I only managed to do that once and learned my lesson (albeit the hard way).

Guts to me mean the tube that is the digestive system, so I’d put the esophagus down as a part of the gut. But that’s just me.

Huh! It’s not just you.

Down in my guts, though, something about the more inclusive definition seems wrong.

Puking your guts out after world war III:

How big a dose would it take?:

Well, I once got seasick while sailing on Lake Michigan, after eating a half box of Ritz crackers without liquid in the preceeding 15 minutes. I was throwing up these big solid chunks of Ritz, tapered at both ends just like turds. Essentially shitting backwards. The nausea was bad but the pain was much, much worse.

Also- not exactly puking your guts out, but I did have the pleasure of treating a woman who had shit her guts out. Mind you, this was not some simple rectal prolapse (although the ER doc thought that it was). She had altually perforated a large rectal ulcer and multiple loops of small bowel had slipped through the perforation, into the rectum, and thence out of her anus. And she was sitting, bolt upright on the gurney, right on top of them! Jesus, it still gives me a chill years later…

According to the non-fiction book, The Hot Zone, when suffering the end symptoms of Marburgh Virus and Ebola, one can literally vomit up one’s stomach lining and defecate out one’s lower intestines. Then again, one’s body is liquifying from within so pretty much everything goes.

Last week’s very serious Marburg Outbreak. :eek:

Cartooniverse

Oh am I ever glad I didn’t study medicine…
Um, according to a guy I know who is a vet student, cows who have just given birth can cause themselves to have a uterine prolapse, that is they keep pushing after the calf is born, and they push their uterus inside out and out of their vagina. :eek: :eek:

Last year, I managed to give myself a minor umbilical hernia by attempting to vomit. Thanks to a fundoplication, my stomach’s a one-way ride. The force of the muscle contractions had to go somewhere, and they found a weak spot. Fortunately, it was very minor and manifested as no more than a sore spot. So yes, in a way, I cam close to puking my guts out.

Humans can have vaginal and anal prolapses too.