Coffee and Regularity (TMI, IMHO)

Factual Questions
1

Even though this is the SDMB, I still sorta can’t believe I am asking about this on a public message board, but here goes:

Do any of you know how coffee consumption - either occasional or long term - is supposed to affect regularity?

My experience (the TMI part):

  • As an adult, I previously rarely drank coffee.
  • When I did occasionally drank coffee, I might as well have been drinking Ex-lax – a very big laxative effect.
  • Over the past six months, my coffee intake increased (basically I developed the habit and enjoyed the caffeine buzz). After consuming 4 - 5 cups 3 - 4 times a week, I now find the opposite effect - I appear to be more constipated, a problem I have rarely encountered in the past.

Obviously, I am backing off the java consumption, but what is the medical basis for this “first one extreme, then the other” effect?

2

Every morning I have coffee and a cigarette, and that bathroom had better be free within 30 seconds of me finishing the cup. Don’t know whether or not it’s the coffee that causes this effect, but I do have Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

The “first one extreme, then the other” actually sounds like classic IBS - maybe coffee is your trigger?

3

Well, if that is true - that coffee and daily stress combine to give me IBS - I guess I won’t be drinking coffee ever again…

4

Good luck trying to quit. That stuff’s worse than heroin.

5

Coffee contains caffeine, which has laxative properties. Consider decaf if you’re not a fan of regularity.

6

It’s pretty simple and happpens with any caffeinated drink. Caffeine dehydrates you. If you drink a cup of water with each cup of coffee, you should have no further problems. What I try to do is put a cup in the bathroom and take a swig whenever I pee.

7

See? This is my source of confusion:

Dogzilla - caffeine has laxative properties (I knew that) - hence the rush to the toilet - at least when I used coffee occasionally…

HennaDancer (cool name, btw - does it mean something?) - Coffee dehydrates; hence it contributes to constipation - therefore drink water…

So it sounds like caffeine has an *immediate * laxative effect, but, over time, if I let coffee offset my water consumption, then that leads to constipation.

Does this sound correct - Qadcop or any other medically-trained Dopers who can comment?

8

Try a cup of plain hot water instead of coffee. I know a nurse that told me drinking hot water for laxative purposes is very popular with older folks. It may be that any hot liquid will work for you.