Everybody has had it…you eat something dicey-and 1-2 hours later, your innards are roiling and venting! How does such a small volume of gas cause such pain? Why is the human digestive system so sensitive-after all that evolution, we should have less sensitivity to this stuff.
I thought about this last night watching The Impatient Years on TCM. Poor Jean Arthur. Eats fried shrimp on her wedding night (both of them) and gets sick.
Unless there’s an underlying medical condition, I think a lot of food sensitivity is age-related. Until I reached about 40, I could eat anything. Now I have to be careful. Dammit. No more Thai food.
That’s what I’d like to know. I’m not thinking of just indigestion or heartburn, but the simple existence of a few bubbles of gas in the intestines. It can feel like someone is sliding a dagger into your innards, and then after nature takes its course and you poop it out after a couple of hours, all is well. Why should it hurt so bloody much?
Yeah, you have to wonder why rounded bubbles feel like they’re so very pointy…
It can happen when you’re young, too. When I was probably all of 8 years old, I made the foolish mistake of eating an entire box of Ritz crackers (which I still love). At some point in the night, I woke up with unbearable pain that I can still remember. I couldn’t even get out of bed properly and had to intentionally fall out (not very cool when sleeping in a 200-year old bed that was about 4 feet from the floor). I then crawled into my parents’ bedroom (which I remember taking at least three hours, but it was probably 3-4 minutes) wanting to scream, but it hurt to much. I just lay there crying. After several hours in the ER, during which doctors and parents were almost sure it was appendicitis, the X-Ray revealed. . . GAS PAINS!!! The X-Ray actually had cloudiness to it, which doesn’t really make sense to me now that I write it. But I remember that it did. Mom was a nurse, so I guess I should ask her unless a Doper can corroborate or clarify.