For anyone that's ever been food poisoned

[mooki]

How long after you ate the questionable food did you start feeling symptoms? There are only two times in my life that I think I was genuinely food poisoned. The first time it was about an hour before I started feeling intense nausea, and my stomach couldn't take any food for a couple days. Then the second time my stomach was feeling "off" within minutes of leaving the restaurant and it was about a 40 minute drive home. The nausea got excruciating to the point that I was laying on my bathroom floor doubled over. My body was desperately trying to expel the contents of my stomach but I somehow still managed to keep it down. Then after suffering from this intense nausea for a few hours, it all came out the other end with explosive diarrhea. By the time the diarrhea stopped it was almost clear like water.

I don't know if this was food poisoning or not but I was in Mexico and had a breakfast at a nice and quite clean looking restaurant. Bacon, eggs, french toast and orange juice. Nothing that would raise any flags. I was almost at the end of the meal when my stomach felt off again and I couldn't finish my last few bites of food. I decided to take a walk down to a nearby beach. It got worse. I took pepto tablets but that wasn't even helping much. Unfortunately I had a plane to catch within a few hours. I had to take a bouncy cab ride over cobble stone streets and somehow managed to keep it down without having the cabbie pull over. Then I had to wait in lines at the airport and then another few hours of waiting before the flight. By the time I got on the plane the nausea was feeling managable, but that was after like 4 pepto tablets. For the next couple days my stomach didn't feel right.

In none of the cases above did I actual vomit even though I easily could have if I wasn't fighting to the death against it. I hear though that some people might take a whole day to show food poisoning symptoms, but in any case where I thought I had it, I knew something was right pretty soon.

[meh]

Food poisoning is a loose term for food-borne bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins and other harmful pathogenic agents. So I'd say yes, it does sound like a form of food poisoning.

[lilwng]

When I've had food poisoning the nausea always hit me about 12-24 hours later. My dad, being the geek he is, tested my vomit once for whatever it was that was making me ill. Turns out it was a cream based salad dressing that I'd eaten at a restaurant about 12 hours prior. The restaurant left it sitting out all day... Yuck. Anyway, food poisoning doesn't generally strike immediately following the meal in question, it's much more likely it was something you ate earlier but then started feeling sick directly after those meals. If that makes sense.

[gumdropper1]

It was about 14 hours. I ate at 6 PM and woke up ill at 7 or 8 AM the next morning and then threw up about 11 AM.

[mooki]

Oh, and another incident I forgot about. I ate some bad dressing at dinner time that I left out for too long. I had totally forgot that the dressing had dairy in it. I woke up in the middle of the night with severe stomach pains and diarrhea but no nausea or vomiting.

[out_of_order]

About 12 hours. We (it wasn't just me who got sick) had dinner and then the next morning I woke up with watery diarrhea, no vomiting.

[Reebes]

About 10 hours the time I had true food poisoning. Ate bad chicken at probably 6:00 p.m; was feeling icky by about 10:00 p.m. Woke up at 4 a.m. and vomited and then did it again at about 11 a.m.

Other times I've eaten food that has upset my stomach, it's happened from anywhere within 10 minutes to a few hours - but in those cases I didn't vomit.

[hairyfairy]

I had food poisoning from a bad curry in 1973, & I can remember feeling slightly ill on the way home about half an hour after I`d finished eating. When I got home I had several bouts of bad d*, & then one severe bout of vting. after that I was OK.

[ewilkins]

I had a doctor tell me that it generally takes at least 4 hours to get sick after food poisoning. If it happened while you were still eating a meal, it wasn't that specific meal that did it.