food poisoning?

Question

hey i was just wondering Why does food poisoning symptoms appear within a few hours of eating the food?
any help would be great thanks.

Answer 1

Most food poisonings do NOT trigger symptoms within hours of eating. It's just that people get gastrointestinal symptoms, and like to blame it on the last thing they ate.

Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter and E. coli O157:H7 all have incubations of 1 to 3 days (only shorter in either extremely severe cases, or in the weak).

A few food poisonings are quick. Scombroid fish poisoning takes less than an hour for onset because it's more of an allergic reaction caused by spoiled fish (and in a few reported cases, Swiss cheese).

A few bacterial toxins (C. perfringens, Staph., and B. cereus) can start within 5 hours, but the illnesses with short onsets tend to trigger vomiting. Diarrhea takes longer because the toxins have to reach the lower GI tract (intestines et al).

Answer 2

While no expert, other than having had food poisioning several times, I would say that your body does its best to deal with the problem for as long as it can. But food poisioning is caused by contaminated food. In other words, food that is teaming with some sort of bacteria that is not good for you. Once the body realizes that it is not going to be able to handle the threat it does what it can to rid the body of all those nasty germs by making you void all bodily fluids and maybe expectoring your intestines. At least it feels that way. You vomit and generally also get a bad case of diarrhea.
Anyway, its just the way the body handles foreign invaders. It trys to handle but finally realizes it can't, and there you go, and go, and go.