Eat immediately! Go out immediately! Is this healthy or risky?

Regular bowel movements are a sign that you are healthy, but if you just ate and haven’t digested well yet, and you already have to rush to the bathroom, it can be quite troublesome. Eating something to tide you over during travel means you have to constantly look for a bathroom, which can be stressful. Sometimes you might even wonder if your body is “super healthy” or “at risk of health problems”!

 

Post-meal bowel pain is not abnormal

You don’t have a shorter intestine than anyone else! Rest assured that this symptom is a normal body mechanism. When food enters the body, the stomach sends nerve signals to stimulate the large intestine to contract, like clearing out old contents to make room for new ones. This causes abdominal pain and the urge to defecate after meals, a body function known as the “Gastrocolic reflex”. Everyone can experience this, but the timing varies. People who don’t feel the urge to defecate after meals don’t necessarily have poor health; it’s just that the reaction in their large intestine is less intense, so they don’t feel the need to go to the bathroom.

 

Know this! Defecating after meals… doesn’t make you slim

“Eat freely, defecate easily, no matter how much you eat, you won’t gain weight” Stop justifying yourself with this wrong belief. Although bowel movements do expel “waste” from the digestive system after the body absorbs nutrients, they do not expel fat. Defecation can reduce weight, but only by a tiny fraction of what is expelled. The fat from delicious meals remains in your arms, thighs, abdomen, and blood vessels! To be clear, bowel movements do not make you slim. To lose weight, you need to control your diet along with exercise to see results.

 

What kind of bowel movements are “risky” for disease?

Having a bowel movement immediately after eating is not a concern unless you have these symptoms:

• Frequent and heavy bowel movements causing fatigue
• Cramping pain
• Blood in stool
• Feeling of incomplete evacuation, like something is blocking the anus
• Loss of appetite
• Bloating and abdominal fullness
• Unexplained weight loss

If you experience these symptoms together, you might be facing Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

 

If you don’t want to defecate after every meal, try changing your habits

#Adjust your diet Observe how different foods trigger your need to rush to the bathroom at different speeds. Gradually reduce foods that strongly stimulate the Gastrocolic reflex, especially on busy days or days packed with activities, so you don’t have to suffer from this discomfort after every meal.

 

#Adjust your lifestyle Increase your physical activity to stimulate your digestive and metabolic systems to work regularly. This helps you have regular bowel movements and shifts stress relief from eating to moving your body. It’s a win-win situation. Give it a try!