Not to mention the potential inconvenience ofpoopingright after eating if youre having that meal anywhere outside of your home.
But in your body, ingesting and excreting are intrinsically linkedopposite ends of a single GI tract.
And putting food in your mouth can be the very thing that prompts waste to shimmy its way out.
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He compares it to the patellar reflex.
How quickly and intensely that reflex happens, however, can vary.
Snaking through your colon alone can take more than 24 hours, he says.
(ICYWW: The full length of your small and large intestines is upwards of20 feet.)
Instead, pooping right after eating is more so the result of a chain reaction.
As you eat, your stomach fills up and expands to make room for more food to gain entry.
But ultimately, its natural (and necessary) for the colon to get active after you eat.
The factor linking this hypersensitivity and IBS?
Themind-gut linkcan also explain why your gastrocolic reflex mightreallyact up when yourestressed.
The latter option is more likely if youre emotionally on edge.
Heres how to tame an overactive gastrocolic reflex and calm the urge to poop right after eating.
Hence, the record speed of the coffee shits.
Studieshave also found that caffeinatedanddecaffeinated types can spark that movement, Dr. Staller says.
Researchers think that certain coffee compounds prompt the release of hormones like cholecystokinin that supercharge the gastrocolic reflex.
As Dr. Kunkel puts it, volume matters.
To be clear, thisisntto say eat less.
But itsalsotrue that eating a whole bunch of them in one meal can send your gastrocolic reflex into overdrive.
Again, thats not to say that you should avoid fats entirely, Dr. Kunkel emphasizes.
Instead, he suggests experimenting to figure out what amount seems to cause symptoms for you.
In some cases, changing what or how you eat might not have much of an effect.
After all, were talking about contractions in the muscle of your gut that you cant directly control.
Thats where antispasmodic medicine might come into play, Dr. Staller says.
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