Why won’t your body allow you to do things like hold your breath too long, but you can ingest enough alcohol to poison yourself or overeat?
In: Biology
You can hold your breath as long as you want. Eventually you’ll pass out and your autonomic system will kick in to take in breaths. Breathing is performed by this system all day. You can hold your breath if you like but the system is designed to run on its own without the conscious mind interfering. You can drink a ton of alcohol but eventually your body will begin to reject the poison and vomit. The body has a way of regulating itself in both of your examples. Your body will eventually reject food if you were to overeat. Eventually you’ll vomit.
Overeating is a very new concept. Until recently, there was not a constant surplus of food for most people. Your body wants you to overeat, because it expects there to be a famine or food shortage at any moment.
Your body will stop you from drinking too much alcohol if it can – that is why you start to vomit. The problem is that when you drink, it has to go down your throat and into your stomach, then into your small intestine and be absorbed into your blood. By the time your body knows there is a problem, you might have done a dozen more shots. This lag is what lets a person poison themselves if they’re quick on the draw.
Because breathing is an automatic process and you do not have conscious control of it. Eating and drinking are not.
if alcohol was as immediately deathly as holding your breath and it was in our presence throughout a significant amount of our evolution then we would of evolved a natural defence against it, maybe a intense rash, a extremely unpleasant smell or asphyxia. As it is not a potent poison in small doses our body acclimated and in some cases benefits from it.
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