Taken from the article I just finished in the Huffington post-So THAT’S Why Alcohol Makes You Poop Weird. It’s a good article that you should give a read…here is what it sparked in my mind.
I recently finished up a month’s long exercise of being Gluten/Dairy/Alcohol-free. It actually ended February 10th but I still haven’t had gluten yet. The verdict- NOT GOOD- I actually feel BETTER! That SUCKS! That means life without these 3 makes me feel better. After doing many elimination/reintroduction experiments over the last 25 years I am pretty sure it’s more about the alcohol than the other two. That is for me. You should always experiment with your own food to learn what foods nourish you and which do not.
Maybe Google knew I was doing this “dry” 30 days so it was nice enough to put this article into my news feed. So what are the bullets?
- Alcohol is a poison, there is no question of that. “The dose makes the poison” is an expression that fits well here though. You know that everyone has a different tolerance for alcohol when it comes to its buzz potential. There are also ever varying degrees of “how much toxin” it will take YOU to experience the negative side effects of alcohol.
- This article focuses on the very common side effect of alcohol being an irritant to your digestive tract. For some it will bother your stomach, others the small intestine, and some others the large intestine. Although you may not FEEL the effects until you consume a certain dose, your intestines don’t enjoy alcohol. If you haven’t learned this from me yet, your organs (intestines being one) can only sense stretching or cutting sensations, not irritation. So if you drink some your intestine will be irritated, if you drink a lot your intestines will feel disturbed from the contractions of muscles causing the “stretching” reflex. If you shrink way too much your body will fully reject the alcohol out of your mouth.
- The most common thing alcohol does to your intestines is to increase motility. This will cause anything in your intestines to move through much more quickly than usual, making your stool loose.
- Alcohol also can cause you to be more dehydrated so for some, it can cause constipation, despite the increased motility, because of the dehydrating effect on your stool.
Why should you care at all? Isn’t it OK to deal with some bowel movement changes here and there? Well, that depends on your health goals. If your goal is simply to exist until the power that be takes you, just do whatever you want. If your goal is to be the oldest Olympic athlete that ever won gold, then it matters a lot.
My health goals/expectations make me think about everything I put into my body. Periodically I challenge myself to experiment with how I feel eating in different ways. My hope is that you do your own biofeedback experiments at least once a year to check in and see how you feel when you change from your norm. As you age things change. Generally, you tolerate less crap in your body but you can get so used to feeling OK or even feeling bad that you believe that is the norm. If you spend some time doing things differently and it makes you feel better though. That should teach you something. Then you just have to decide whether or not you want to continue to feel better and get used to that or go back to getting used to just getting by.
Want help designing a plan? Want help coaching you through therapeutic lifestyle changes? I hope to see you this week so we can get started.
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Yours in health,
