A new study shows that the anti-nausea medicine Domperidone significantly reduces how much people look away from disgusting images.
Disgust is a natural response to unpleasant sights. It has evolved to help us survive and avoid things that might spread disease, like rotting food, bodily waste, and insects. But for some, disgust becomes pathological, affecting mental health.
Electric signals in the stomach help it expand and contract, moving food through the digestive system. When we see something disgusting, rhythms become abnormal and may cause us to throw up.
Researchers showed that Domperidone stabilises the rhythm of electrical signals in stomach muscles, and reduces people's instinct to look away from disgusting images.
But only using the drug isn’t enough.
In the study, people had to be motivated or incentivized to overcome their instinct to look away.
The study could help people overcome clinically debilitating pathological disgust more efficiently.
Original article:
Rhythm and bleughs: how changes in our stomach’s rhythms steer us away from disgusting sights
Original study:
A causal role for gastric rhythm in human disgust avoidance.