Because of the rousing success of the post on everything you ever wanted to know about pooping, I’m coming right back at you with serious facts about the expulsion of gross matter from the body’s other major cavity: the mouth. In other words, this post about vomiting is your fault.
Before I get down to the bizarre (some people get sexually aroused by vomiting) and entertaining (there’s human spew on the moon) facts about vomiting, I want to touch briefly on its physiology, symptoms and causes. If you’re not interested in the science, skip on down to the rest.
Like other bodily processes, vomiting is the result of a complex bodily response to stimuli in which the central nervous system relays signals that lead to coordinated respiratory, gastrointestinal and abdominal muscle expulsive actions. The great upchuck process is often divided into three stages: nausea, retching and then the main event – vomiting, aka “emesis.” We all know what nausea feels like. Sweaty hell. “Retching” refers to involuntary efforts to vomit – contractions of the abdominal muscles, chest wall and diaphragm, and possibly dry heaving.
There’s a myriad of causes of vomiting – including excessive alcohol consumption, bowel obstructions, food poisoning, motion sickness, severe pain and psychogenic stimuli, e.g. nauseating sights and odors. Eventually, the body forces gastric and often small intestinal contents up and out, leaving a smelly puddle of … stuff on the ground or in a bag or in the toilet of some bar.
Speaking of smell, here we go:
1. Parmesan Cheese, or Vomit?
In a study conducted by Dr. Rachel Herz of Brown University, many people couldn’t distinguish the smell between vomit and parmesan cheese. (Both contain butyric acid, the main smell of vomit.) “I gave them a smell that was just a chemical combination and I said this is parmesan cheese,” Herz said. “And people said, oh, I love this. I would eat it and it’s great and so forth. And then, I gave them the exact same chemical combination and I told them this time that it was vomit, and they were completely horrified. They wouldn’t go near it. They wouldn’t even believe that it was the same smell.” Something to keep in mind next time you’re thinking about spicing up a plate of pasta.
2. Projectile vomiting
The good news with projectile vomiting is that it occurs abruptly, often before a person experiences nausea. The bad news is that it’s often the result of a gastric outlet obstruction, which can result from the ingestion of a foreign body, but it may also be a sign of a serious underlying condition such as increased intracranial pressure.
Nevertheless, projectile vomiting can be quite humorous! Watch.
3. “Emetophilia” is a vomit fetish
Emetophilia is a paraphilia (intense sexual arousal) in which a person is turned on by vomiting or by watching others upchuck. Recall the famous video “2 Girls 1 Cup”! I’m not allowed to embed that but here’s another visual for you:
Does that do anything for you? The woman on the left seems to be enjoying herself. People with emetophilia may get off on vomiting alone, with a friend, on a friend, maybe by seeing or hearing someone vomit.
4. The time a Phillies fan assaulted a young girl with vomit
At Citizens Bank Park in 2010, a 21-year-old man pulled the trigger and threw up all over an 11-year-old girl, the daughter of an off-duty cop who was with her. “He leaned over and put two fingers down his throat,” the officer said, and “started vomiting on us.”
The offender, dubbed “Pukémon,” pleaded guilty to charges including harassment and was sentenced to up to three months in jail and community service. As far as horrible things at the ballpark go, there’s (1) excessive heckling at about a seven, (2) an adult stealing the baseball caught by a kid then celebrating at a 10, and in a different undefinable stratosphere, there’s (3) intentionally puking on a young girl. Unreal.
5. There’s human vomit on the moon
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left more than 100 items on the moon, including a bag of vomit! Often unmanned lunar missions end with a crash landing on the moon – with lots of trash in tow. By the Atlantic’s recent count, that junk over the years includes 96 bags of urine, feces and vomit. Put another way, we’ve shit all over the moon.
6. People will pay a lot of money for rare whale vomit
Certainly vomit on a beach is not rare but last year Madge the dog found some whale vomit – a rare beach find – and valuable, ironically, because the substance produced by sperm whales is used in perfume. “It’s worth so much because of its particular properties,” Andrew Kitchner of the National Museum of Scotland told BBC. “It’s a very important base for perfumes and it’s hard to find any artificial substitute for it. Over time it becomes a much sweeter smell as it oxidises, but initially it doesn’t smell very nice.”
Madge’s 7-pound score managed to fetch her owner and offer of – wait for it – $70,000. Who needs a metal detector at the beach when you can have a whale vomit-smelling dog?
7. The color of puke
If someone throws up due to overeating or drinking too much booze or a related cause, the hue of the spew (a soul-crushing rhyme, I’m sorry) will be dictated by whatever food or beverage the person recently consumed. But when other colors enter the fold, or colors different from what someone had eaten, there may be something dangerous lurking. Bright red color may indicate bleeding in the esophagus; darker red may result from gastrointestinal bleeding, maybe from an ulcer. Meanwhile yellow or green vomit suggests bile, a fluid produced in the liver. This post just got a little dark (pun was not intended, I swear), so let’s bring it back to the goofy …
8. The time President George H.W. Bush vomited at a Japanese banquet
The year was 1992 at a banquet hosted by the then-Prime Minister of Japan, Kiichi Miyazawa. The culprit was a gastrointestinal illness that caused Bush to turn white, slump over and vomit into a napkin held by the first lady. Some of the vomit may have even landed on Miyazawa. All in all, it was a pretty messy, embarrassing event. But shit happens, and that includes vomiting at a table in front of 135 diplomats at a Japanese banquet. Nevertheless, it became a moment that defined Bush to the Japanese, who coined the term “Bushu-suru,” which means, “to do the Bush thing.” Use it in a sentence please, Urban Dictionary: “I’m gonna bushusuru all over your pretty new shoes.” Saturday Night Live had a field day with it, too, and you can catch that in the video here that follows footage of the actual incident.
9. It happens to the best of them: Matt Ryan edition
After leading Boston College to a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback against No. 8 seeded Virginia Tech in 2007, Ryan lost his lunch on the sideline. “I guess I was a little excited,” Ryan said. “I wasn’t feeling good and I just lost it for a second there.” The takeaway is, vomiting is only cool if you’re the winning quarterback (see: Donovan McNabb)
10. The truth about Roman vomitoriums
You’ve probably heard the urban legend that during ancient Roman feasts, revelers would enter vomitoriums where they threw up in vomitoriums in order to make room for more gorging. Well, vomitoriums did exist, but the term actually refers to large passageways in amphitheaters or stadiums allowing big crowds to enter and exit en masse.
The Straight Dope’s Cecil Adams explains that Romans were not shy of vomiting and may have pulled the trigger intentionally during feasts. But – they did not congregate for puking in vomitoriums. Which isn’t to say that a room dedicated to festive puking is a fine idea – particularly if you like to dabble in emetophilia – it’s just that the Romans didn’t have those rooms.
