Feeling Nauseous*

My family had a very long, animated, interesting conversation around the dinner table tonight. We talked about vomit. That's right, good old barf. My parents have six children, so they have seen quite a bit of barf in their day, and they are champs at cleaning it up.
And come on, we have ALL vomited. Whether from viruses, or sympathy barfing, or too much alcohol. I don't know, maybe there was even a cowboy.
SO, let's talk vomit!


In the most basic sense, vomiting (or emesis) is expelling something unwanted from the body, specifically the stomach. Contents are propelled up and out.

Various Stimuli:

• Viral infections
• Medications
• Seasickness or motion sickness
• Nervousness
  
• Migraines
• Food poisoning
• Food allergies
• Chemotherapy
• Bulimia
  
• Alcoholism (very prevalent in teenagers & party pants)
• Peptic ulcer in the stomach
  
• Brain tumor (Cue hypochondriac)
  

Home treatment:

This is dependent on the cause of the vomiting. If it's something as simple as food poisoning or too much booze, a simple expulsion of the vagrant will make you feel so much better! Peptic ulcer, brain tumor, or migraines, however, must be treated at the source. In the meantime, stay hydrated. It sucks when your stomach is empty but you continue to hurl, so keep the creative stomach juices flowing. Something like ginger ale or tea is also soothing for a sore tummy.

Medical treatment:

An OTC (over the counter) med like pepto bismol is good for general nausea, vomiting, and upset stomach. Anything more heavy duty will need a prescription, such as an antiemetic.

When to worry:

You should worry if you have

• Been vomiting for longer than 24 hours
• Blood or bile in the vomit (very important)
  
• Severe abdominal pain (think appendicitis?)
  
• Headache and stiff neck
• Signs of dehydration

Aaand, just some interesting facts about good ol' vomit:

• Bunnies can't vomit. Neither can rats or horses. (That's why rat poison works)
  
• If you try to stop yourself from throwing up by closing your mouth, the vomit will just come out your nose.
• Whales vomit regularly (every 7 to 10 days) as a means of the ordinary digestive process, to expel inedible things they have swallowed.
• If your vomit looks like what you ate, you just ate. If it's soupy, it's been in your stomach for a while
• When in danger, the sea cucumber may eject its entire digestive tract. The animal is able to re-grow another one.

So, today's lesson boys and girls.
More often than not, barf is just the body fixing itself. So let the damage be done, and once you stop getting 'er done, you should feel much, much better.