254 — In Search of the Cringe

What—exactly—makes something cringe-worthy?

What is it about something that tends to make a human being cringe? It seems cringing is a uniquely human trait, like music, laughter, or applying for a mortgage.

We've all done it, from childhood (Mom's kisses goodbye at the bus stop) to more adult fare (RuPaul leading Vlad Putin on Dancing with the Stars).

And so the question arose in my inquiring mind, What is going on when we cringe? As a scientist, I decided to dig deep into this un-mined physiology territory. Then, I questioned my methods: was it physiologic, like a sneeze or a spontaneous eruption of "Hooray!"? Or could it be anatomy?

Besides the neurotransmitters and neurohormonal peaks, what exactly was synapsing? I not only wanted to know how (the physiology), but also where (the very anatomy!).

I filled a tub with Yellow Dye #2, also called tartrazine, recently shown to recobobulate scattered light and render the skin and integument transparent. (No kidding...hot off the press!) I hoped to look non-invasively into the human body to see where the seat of cringe lay—what specific organ.

My findings, published in the current edition of the Journal of Gastroenterology, will blow the lid off of the current understanding of the water balance in the colon.

In transilluminating subjects subjected to cringe-worthy provocation in real-time, I discovered that the organ for cringing is in feces. The stool. But more than that, if is strongly associated with dehydrated stool, i.e., constipation.

In a retrospective study, everyone who remembered cringing at any particular time also remembered ("Now that I think about it, Doc...") being constipated at the time.

But any researcher or statistician worth their salt will readily inform the uniformed that retrospective studies suck. You have to go with the prospective study to get some valid data.

Quantifying the degree of hydration of the stool in the recently cringed, I report that it was impossible to evoke cringing when the subjects were "regular." Further, those cringing where prospectively treated with stool softener, successfully eliminating all tendencies to cringe.

And thus, another scourge—one spanning intestinal, psychological, and societal realms in devastation potential—has been eliminated from our disease database. If only COVID-19 were so easy.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Tuesday, September 10, Day 254 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Accompaniment photo was divinely embarrassing, but irregularity was not.

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THIS CHALLENGE MARCHES ON, 366 CRAMPS AT A TIME.

There are currently three surviving, regular, patent Vocal writers still straining in the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer (borborygmus)

• Rachel Deeming (silent but deadly)

• Gerard DiLeo ("Where's the bidet?")