Curling up into a fetal position during stomach ache to alleviate the pain has physiological and mental reasons, health expert states.
Dr Bob Adams, family practice and sports medicine specialist, describes fetal posture as a "natural defensive" against stomach pain.
"When we have bad news, pain, or something's really stressful, we hunch up. It probably goes back to when we were in the uterus," Dr Adams explained on Outside Online. This particular position makes people feel secure.
He further explains that physiological explanation to crawling into the foetus position is difficult to explain unless the root cause of the pain is clear. However, Dr Adams said that there are possible instances that might clarify the physiological reason of fetal position to relieve the pain. Consider this; bowels speed up when a person is suffering from a stomach flu or food poisoning. It is just because the body wants to flush out the toxin from the system, explained Dr Adams.
Human body is made up of three types of muscle: smooth, cardiac, and skeletal. And gastrointestinal tract is smooth muscle, which regulates its own movement. "You can't directly control your smooth muscles," Dr Adams said. "You can't actively slow down or speed up (smooth muscle contractions) by doing something."
However, fetal position can ease the pain of skeletal muscle and newly strained skeletal muscle. "By curling up, you're not moving the (skeletal) muscles around. It's just like if you have quad pain-you don't really want to stretch it," Dr Adams concluded.
