In moderation alcohol can be the elixir of life but like anything good in this world there can be too much of a good thing.
If you overdo it, your body will almost certainly hate you in the morning as bar the inevitable pounding headache, the aftermath of a heavy night out could leave you with a seriously dodgy stomach.
The dreaded alcohol poo leaves your body quickly as the shots you downed the night before entered it and makes that hangover just all the more… shitty.
But why do we find ourselves having some really dodgy bowel movements after a heavy sesh?
Well the guys at Thrillist, spoke to gastroenterologist Dr. Urvish Shah to find out why.
It turns out that booze can increase your gut motility, which essentially means everything you eat moves much quicker than usual.
And as it doesn’t get broken down before it reaches your colon, bacteria feast on these and make you fart and ultimately crap a lot more.
This increased speed means that your colon has less time to absorb any water and you end up with a watery poo and diarrhoea. Beautiful.
As well as this, it seems that your choice of poison can also seriously affect your bowel movements the morning after the night before.
“The more concentrated the alcohol, the worse the reaction will be,” Dr Shah explains- which basically means the higher the ABV, the more you’ll be stuck to the toilet the next day.
But just to throw a spanner in the works, apparently a night purely on beer isn’t exactly going to be a picnic either, as your body produces enzymes to help break down complex carbs as they move down to your small intestine.
So if you find yourself downing pint after pint, the ethanol will speed up the digestive process and mean in turn that some of these carbs will make it to the large intestine without being broken down.
Fermentation starts breaking down those carbs and then results in all the unpleasantness of stomach cramps, gas and diarrhoea. Ew.
But how can we avoid this pain? Well, first things first, you need to do a bit of trial and error when you go out drinking.
If you feel properly crap after a night on beer, trying switching to a different booze – as everyone is affected differently.
Second, having a fuller stomach can act as a protective mechanism and slow the process of your bowel emptying.
But his third and final bit of advice? Stop drinking so much.
Advice we all probably should, but almost certainly won’t take.
