Monday 26 April 2004

Pic of the day: Quick! Hide the sausages, Itland is coming! Or not. Actually, quite the opposite.

Blame the sausage!

I have an irrational distrust in sausages, and above all hot dogs. Oh, there may be good reasons as well: There is a saying that with laws and sausages, you are better off not knowing how they are made. But that's not why I avoid them. I avoid them for entirely rat-like reasons.

When a rat survives poisoning, it learns to avoid the poison, even if there is a delay of several hours between the eating and the illness. With rat brains being the size they are, this is rather impressive. Evidently the brain keeps a list of what the animal has eaten lately, and anything unusual is flagged as dangerous if it gets sick later on.

The same happened to me and sausages, most notably hot dogs. But I may have done a worse job of it than the rats. As I've said before, by now the connection between hot dogs and indigestion is such that I'd probably get ill by reflex even if the sausages were perfectly fine. Too often I have experienced queasiness and diarrhea after eating hot dogs.

It has lately occurred to me that I don't usually eat hot dogs at all unless I am acutely hungry. Normally I either eat a solid lunch or I eat when I get home. If I eat junk food like hot dogs, it is usually because I am hungry at an unexpected time. This again is rare enough that it could easily be the first symptom of an oncoming "stomach flu". (Which is not a flu at all, incidentally.)

So the sequence is: Bacterial agent enters body and starts to multiply. Toxins begin to act locally, changing behavior of digestive tract. Increased digestive activity is interpreted as hunger. Snack is bought and ingested. Disease continues to develop. Body responds by general malaise and flushing digestive tract. Brain connects symptoms to snack. Brain blacklists snack. Body heals, brain remains in its erroneous state.

I guess this kind of thing could happen in many other of life's situations as well. Feel free to make your own examples.