How can certain foods pass straight through you when your intestines already have digesting food in them from previous meals blocking the path?

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It takes ~36 hours from the moment you bite into your meal to when you’re pooping it out. Meaning, your digestive tract has 36 hours worth of meals it’s currently digesting at any given time.

When you eat something bad, it seems that you’re on the toilet pooping it out within the hour. How is that even possible if the pathway is blocked by 36 hours worth of meals?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You have some misconceptions and misunderstandings. How fast the food moves through varies from one person to another, and even differs in the same person. From bite to poop it can be 12-18 hours if your getting good roughage that keeps you regular. If you are one to get constipated, even a little that transit time could be longer, 48-72 hours or worse. When it is longer than that you can risk get some potential problems like impactions which is basically poo that has blocked your digestive track and needs medical help getting it out. That help might work with some medications, an enema, or worst case the Dr. going in and literally physically removing it. In contrast it can be even faster for those with IBS-D which is basically having diarrhea all the the time in worst cases so things can go through them even faster still.

Now you may have ingested a toxin in your food and your nervous system has sent a signal that is “danger detected, must get toxins or bacteria out of the body now!”. If the food is still in your stomach you might vomit instead. But if it is further along it will send a signal to the intestines to get the bad material out as fast as possible. So lets say your typcial gut motiliity takes 36 hours from bite to poop for it to exit your body. Now you have taken a bite of something bad and it has had time, couple hours for it to move into your gut without puking. The signal is sent and your poop that was way ahead will experience increased gut motility to get that out much faster than your used too, but a bit further back you gut is adding a lot of fluid to your poop making it more liquid which combined with increased gut contractions (which can be painful as the are more spasms than normal mobility), all in an effort to get it out asap. So increased muscular gut contractions have already got the earlier solid poop out faster cause it is moving everything through faster. So initially still solid poop but not that may have moved through your system in 18-24 hours, not 36 like you are used too. But following very close after that is the diarrhea. In fact the solid pooh maybe nearly immediately followed by the diarrhea. The first regular poop passed in say 18 hours, but the following diarrhea from your last toxic meal follows immediately and that may have been 8 hours after ingestion. All the water stool is created to flush out your gut and flush it our as fast as possible. After all you ingested a toxin of some sort and your body is working to get it out ASAP, and since it is passed far enough the immediate option of puking is no longer possible, diarrhea is the next best thing (or you could get both). If it just a toxin and not a bacteria that has infected your digestive track you may get one majore bout ( in a period of time) of diarrhea which is enough to flush it. If you get a bacterial infection that is being retained you may have diarrhea for days. Same purpose different reason, bacteria can take hold and grow despite the flushing, which requires more flushing and flushing along with some immune system attack to kill it off ultimately.

You sense of pooping out within an hour is likely you not being aware of when it was ingested. If there is nothing ahead of it, you eat something bad you can get diarrhea much faster within hours, but generally does not happen as quick as an hour typically. As I said if your body’s digestive track sensors picked it up immediately while in your stomach you will likely puke it out instead.

People are very different in gut motility, 12-16 hours is my mobility time unless I get constipated a little or a lot, if a lot it can be 48 hours later…or longer. Your longer transit time, if you are actually correct on that timing which I suspect you may not, is not overlay unusual and may indicate some light constipation but doesn’t have to be. But if the brain says get it out faster your gut contractions will move it faster and the liquid stool can follow through quite quick as opposed to the guy sort of “having to work” solid feces out of the system which is slwer.

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