Why Does My Stomach Rumble When I’m Hungry?
Why Does My Stomach Rumble When I’m Hungry? When we are hungry, our stomach sometimes rumbles, almost as if it were saying, “When do we eat?” The rumbling of our stomach when it is empty is caused by the churning movements of muscles in the walls of the stomach.
When we eat, these strong muscles churn the food and thoroughly mix it with digestive juices in the stomach. If we do not eat at our usual mealtimes, the churning action may begin anyway.
With nothing in the stomach to digest, the churning motion can sometimes get noisy, and we say our stomach is “rumbling” or “growling.” It’s just a friendly reminder that our body is always working to keep us in tip-top shape.
Although it might sound like growling coming from a throat, that rumbling and grumbling we hear comes from the stomach and the small intestine. And it happens at all sorts of times — not just when we’re hungry!
There’s actually a scientific word for the noises our stomach makes. It’s called borborygmi after a Greek word (borborygmus) that’s onomatopoeia: a word that imitates the sound of what it describes!