It’s the physical response that can save your life or kill you. So here’s all you need to know about puking, by paramedic Mike Perry

IT’S THE ONLY POWER IN THE UNIVERSE THAT CAN BRING A GROWN MAN TO HIS KNEES.

Apart from orgasm, no other natural human function overtakes our mental and physical faculties as thoroughly as a good puke. Case in point: I recently spewed with such vigor that both my nasal passages became impenetrably jammed with chicken nuggets.

When not puking myself, I have studied the puking of others. For 15 years now, I’ve worked as an emergency medical technician, and while I’d love to project a more heroic image, I must say that in the field of medical rescue, puke is the great constant.

Ill people puke, dying people puke, excited people puke; people puke while they’re having heart attacks and they puke because they get carsick lying in my ambulance listening to the wailing of the sirens. I’ve even seen entire families puke out of solidarity. Mum loses her lunch across the bathroom, and Dad and the kids promptly lean over and hurl in unison. The sympathy puke, we call it.

And that’s the complicated beauty of puking. It’s so much more than a symptom of illness or a sign that one needs a new meat thermometer. Puking is a form of self-expression. It comes from the gut, yes, but also from the soul. And, sometimes, the heels.

Puking by the book Pursuant to my vomit contemplations, I resolved to consult experts on the subject. But because I so rarely attend birthing classes or breakfast with waif supermodels, I settled for a web search. Unsurprisingly, vomit is a subject tailor-made for the web. In no time at all I turned up a slew of revolting jpegs, a handful of a dropping mpegs, and reams of imaginative harfisms’ from the US.

Still, it was all so superficial, so thumbnail. I needed depth. Science. I turned to the bowfins who wrote the book on vomiting. Or, more specifically, the “technical review” on vomiting published in the January 2001 issue of Gastroenterology.

The Merck Manual – the world’s best­selling medical dictionary and bible of hypochondriacs everywhere, breaks down throwing up into two distinct types: physiologic and psychogenic.

Physiologic vomiting occurs as the result of identifiable forces acting on the body, from tumors of the inner ear to bad fish to bad fishing-boat rides. After you eat that dodgy prawn sandwich, it produces toxins that enter the bloodstream and travel to the brain, where they trigger any of the five or so chemoreceptors capable of provoking vomiting. Then it’s up and out with the offending crustacean. Vomiting is also a side effect of overuse or hypersensitivity of a certain product such as raspberry ketones supplements. So before going on a diet, make sure you read all raspberry ketones reviews.

Psychogenic vomiting, on the other hand, is precipitated by abstract elements such as intense fear or repulsion. Which is why your Inland Revenue inspector is a little twitchy and wears cheap, disposable suits.

HOW TO PLAN YOUR WORKOUT

Is your exercise regime getting you the results you expected? If not the chances are that you haven’t found the correct balance between cardiovascular exercise and weight training. MF has devised three goal-specific plans for the body you want.

Sometimes, the easiest questions to ask are the most difficult to answer. The questions that we get asked most at MF are ‘How do I lose weight?’, ‘How do I gain muscle?’ and ‘How do I lose weight and gain muscle at the same time?’. Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula, but an understanding of how aerobic and resistance workouts shape your body will help you to achieve your goals.

The easiest mistake to make when coming up with a workout plan is to mismatch your body goals with the exercises you do. If you want a lean frame with as little body fat as possible, you’re not going to get there by lifting weights for an hour a day. Likewise, a five-mile run every morning will do nothing to help you get that muscle-bound torso you’ve been hankering after. Just because you’re good at a certain activity and are drawn to it doesn’t necessarily mean that it provides an ideal route to your goals. Another ‘schoolboy’ error is to chase one body goal to the exclusion of all others — this will create an imbalance and leave you at risk of injury or ill-health. The most popular goal of building muscle and burning off fat is also the most difficult to achieve. It requires an intelligent balance of aerobic workout and weight training.

Fortunately, Men’s Fitness has devised three body-specific workout plans. One will build your muscles, one will make you lean and another, highly balanced plan will get you results in both areas. Remember that pursuing one of these aims doesn’t lock you into a permanent path. You can change your routine at any time to fulfill new ambitions.

The workout: This is the most difficult of all exercise aims to achieve as you are asking your body to perform two contradictory feats. Too much cardio will burn off any modest muscle gains, and too much weight training will demand extra calories, which means more weight. You have to follow a strictly balanced regime of equal time spent on cardio and weight workouts each week. Try to vary the kinds of cardio work you do to avoid overworking any single muscle group. Aim for a mix of medium and high-intensity interval workouts, with your heart rate at 60 per cent of your maximum, rising to 75-80 per cent for short periods. As for weight training, try to work out three days a week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday, for example.

Key strategy: Aim to maintain your body weight. Remember that muscle mass is denser than fat so a volume of muscle will weigh more than the same volume of fat.

Exercise caution: Don’t lower your calorie intake. Aim to consume as many as possible in the form of carbohydrates and protein rather than fats. If you want to burn extra fat fast, try the green coffee bean extract. The average man needs at least 2,500 calories a day. This will enable you to preserve the precious muscle mass you’ve sweated so hard for.