digestion speed

before I got UC I rarely went to the bathroom to take a "slam" maybe 2-3 times a week max. Now 2-3 times can easily happen and usually does before lunch. It seems when I am flaring or about to flare my whole system cranks into overdrive. Whatever I eat passes in 4-8hrs usually theres no way for me to prove this 100% but sometimes you can just tell what you just dropped off was what you just put in. I've tried to tell my regular dr. and my GI that Im digesting too fast. Ive had much more whole food particles in my waste since I got UC the ammount has increased tenfold. The only time Ive been in remission in the past 5 years was when I was in a car accident. I spent a week in the hospital hooked up to a morphine pump and took pain killers for over a month after I was released. When I told my GI that while on pain killers, and for about a month afterward that I was fine, he just said pain killers were notorious for slowing the digestive system. Seems to me that maybe I'm just pushing everything through too fast, because nothing I've tried has helped meds, all kinds of supplements, fish oil, you name it I've prolly tried it. It just seems like my whole system has been sped up not just the part affected by UC. And if when slowed I can be fine that theres something more. My dr. and my GI have been very dismissive to everything I bring up. I'm really getting fed up with my GI about it. 4 yrs with him and he's got a very "I've seen it all before your no different from the 1000s of other patients" attitude when I bring things up to him.

Your system is probably faster because of UC but you are not dropping what you just ate. The colon holds 24-72 hours of waste. While it appears that what you are eating is going right through what you are probably experiencing is peristalsis; the emptying of the bowels after eating; it's a muscular contraction. If you were emptying out what you immediately ate you would not be absorbing calories and would be dangerously thin.

Yes, narcotics do slow the gut down and have constipating effects.

Sue

I'm not sure about 4 hours, but I can say things pass through me in 8 hours, or at least 11.... I ate at a friend's house last night and had (among other things) green peas and Irish soda bread with raisins. We sat down to dinner at about 7 pm. At 6:00 this morning, my poop had peas and raisins in it.
Now, I wouldn't say that my whole dinner passed through me, but..... those two recognizable things did.

the closest thing to proof I have of my speed of 4-8hrs is I ate some spinnach around 12:30 for lunch one day by 5:15 spinnach in the toilet. I noticed because it was so green so I checked the time on my cell phone to see how fast it had passed. so I did a semi-experiment I ate spinnach at lunch for the next two days. day 2 green slammage around 6, about 6hrs after I ate it. day 3 green poo after 5hr 10m. by day 4 the spinnach my grandmother had made was gone so my experiment ended. Another thing I've noticed is mushrooms no longer digest when going through me so anytime I eat them I track when I ate them and when I see them in my stool. It usually falls between 4-8hrs. Ive considered getting several different colors of food dyes and coloring my first meal each day a different color to prove my time theory but havent tried it yet. Its so strange before I got UC I never thought twice about my poo after it left my body now I always check and pray theres not a bloody nightmare in there.

And I am dangerously thin I'm 6'2 and I weigh 117lbs. before UC I weighed 175.

quincy said...
I don't buy it....food stays in the stomach for up to 4 hours. 12 hours, I can believe.

q

Food SHOULD Stay in the stomach that long but now that I have an ostomy, I can see food come out within minutes. I am not exaggerating. Some will stay in longer but some comes straight out. I don't understand how it's possible since it should stay in the stomach a lot longer than that, but it doesn't always.

I think the super fast transit time is your body doing what its supposed to do and trying to get rid of whatever you put in it as quickly as possible. During a flare our digestive system is obviously not operating properly and I don't think it wants or can even digest at the rate we are used to eating. If your body is not going to break food down and absorb it properly why should the bad bacteria get to have a feeding frenzy on the undigested food?? I personnaly know that food can pass through a person with UC within a couple hours, especially during a bad flare where your colon is forming stools. Why does the stomach, which supposedly has nothing to do with UC, cooperate in this action? I don't know but it does.

It's easy to test, just eat some corn and see what happens...

I have similar issues as the OP. My food goes through me in 4-8hrs too. Closer to the 4hrs right now cause this is the time of year I seem to go in to a flare. I asked my GI about it, but he just dismissed it as a non-issue. I don't know how it could not be an issue. He did say that everything is connected so if the bowels are getting rid of stuff quickly everything is going to go quickly.