How and why we experience constipation/diarrhea.
In: Biology
There are cells called enteroendocrine cells that hang out in the walls of your intestines. They do all kinds of things (I work on showing that some rare subgroups of them might even be able to synapse with neurons!) but one of their most important roles is telling the other intestinal cells whether to take water in or send water out, to maintain proper poop moisture levels.
They occasionally get confused (for all kinds of interesting reasons). One example: some bacteria intentionally make chemicals that resemble the ones that these guys use to signal “we need to send out more water” so that too much water gets sent out and you get diarrhea, which before toilets would potentially send the bacteria out to somebody else to infect more easily than solid poop.
Basically, if they mess up the signaling and tell the other intestine cells to take in too much water, you get constipated. If they do the opposite and send out too much water, you get diarrhea. It’s a tough job, especially when you have bacteria who evolved to confuse you! One potential cause of IBS is defects in these neurons which cause them to be very easily confused by different foods, and then wreak all kinds of havoc.
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