Tummy growls are really just internal farts, according to Indiana Public Media's "A Moment of Science."
Basically, the involuntary muscle movements that push food through your digestive tract keep working even after most of that food has moved on down the line. Eventually, gas bubbles are all that's left to be squeezed, and you get a rumbling sound as they pop. It's part of how your intestine keeps itself cleansed—no expensive pills or powders required!
The same contractions that cause your stomach to growl also clean out the GI tract. To see how this cleaning movement works, picture a long hose made of a pliable material. If there were an object, say an egg, at one end of the hose, you could push it from that end to the other by squeezing all along the length of the hose. ... In order to push out bits of food particles left over from a meal, your gastrointestinal tract creates waves of contractions all along the length of the intestines at a rate of two or three per minute.
Image: Some rights reserved by Tambako the Jaguar
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Oh Science, always there to state the obvious.
And I always thought it was a little guy named Rorterrigmee.
I can only remember being truly stomach-growling hungry once in the past month. Using the reasoning brought forth here, we should allow our stomachs to grumble for our health. I love learning stuff like this. Thanks as always, Maggie.
You left out my favorite part, the noises are called borborygmi, which is a great onomatopoeia.
Thanks, Snig.
“Baby, let’s skip dinner. I just wanna listen to your borborygmi.”
Mmmm, this conjures one of my favorite words ever: Peristalsis
(A former co-worker of mine, every time the topic of internal tubes or pumps or fluids or stinks came up, would say “I prefer to think of myself as uniform inside…like a potato.” It still cracks me up every time I think of it.)
Your choice of photo for this post has made my day. :-)
Thanks to a burger from Sheetz, I’m a bit past the stomach-growling. There is still growling involved – very aggressive growling, I might add – but it’s well past the stomach stage of the GI tract.
I’m farting a lot, you get it now?
Okay.
George Carlin had a great bit about borborygmi:
“Belly noise. Gut rumblings, when your stomach is ‘talking to you.’ ‘Your stomach is talking to you!’ I think that’s called borborygmi. I always thought it was called borborygmi, which would be a good name for it. [In croaking voice] Borborygmi. [Various stomach noises.] Woy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy. That’s a familiar one, right? Woy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy. Did you ever notice that one bubble sounds a lot like the last one did? Goes the same way: past the corn, around the peas, under the beef, over the gravy. Woy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy.”
Off to work on my Tummy Growl iPhone/iPad internal fart apps.
Many years ago there was a really cool demonstration of this on Newton’s Apple, in which a woman (I *think* from the U of M) demonstrated stomach-talking to Ira using a clear acrylic tube. He was all, like, “wow, that sounds just like my stomach!”
Thanks for reminding me about Newton’s Apple.. Although this article states the obvious, it’s a fun and NON-confrontational post! or is it….
What about ghrelin?
Appropriate to the illustration…