Does cycling constipate you?

[Globalti]

No matter how much water I drink during a ride, I'm always constipated the next day. The stools are hard and dry and difficult to pass.

I read somewhere that the first place the body goes looking for water when under stress is the large intestine, which acts as a sort of water buffer. I use a camelback when on the MTB and a bottle on the road bike and always drink enough to keep passing urine so it's a bit irritating.

The best remedy I've found is a pint of something with lots of pectin in it like Theakson's Old Peculier, which goes through me like a dose of salts but then it still takes a day or two to re-establish the bowel routine. Anybody else suffer from this?

 

[mr Mag00]

no

as regular as, well a very regular thing. if anything sometimes i find competely the other way.
do you drink enough when not on the bike?

 

[beancounter]

[cough] yes it does, somewhat. Especially if I do a long ride at the weekend (long for me is 4 to 5 hours).

bc

 

[Hont]

No - doesn't affect me one way or the other.

Make sure you get plenty of fruit and fibre in your diet and try and hydrate fully before and after your rides. Try drinking an isotonic drink an hour before going out - if you're slightly under-hydrated before the ride, drinking during it will be too late for your system.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

No effect, nature calls regular and calls loud, it normally feels like my insides are falling out!

 

[3-IN-One]

This does not affect me at all in fact I,m the other way when i get back from a long ride the first thing i do is have Tom-Tip

 

[bigjim]

Sound more like a diet problem. hard excersize should make you go more often but water intake is important. I very easily become costipated if I don't look after things. Try to go the same time every day. Loads of water and , apples, porridge and grapes [in the same bowl if you can], lots of them, oh and the best bit chocolate. Works for me. Usually take an apple on a ride and to the gym. They travel better than a banana and I find bananas don't help the bowel movement. But malt bread also seems to work well.

Jim

 

[Tharg2007]

a cheapo curry should help to rake you out!

 

[MacB]

few pints of guiness, followed by kebab with plenty of chilli sauce or a curry

 

[ASC1951]

No matter how much water I drink during a ride, I'm always constipated the next day. The stools are hard and dry and difficult to pass. .... Anybody else suffer from this?

That should only happen when you are severely dehydrated.

I suspect that there isn't enough fibre in your normal diet, so when your system is trying to find water it is comparatively easy for it to drain your gut contents. The body can only store water in the stomach and intestine, so even though you may be tipping water into your stomach as you ride along it doesn't have time to be absorbed by the food already in your intestine which gets sucked dry before you feel thirsty.

You need to be eating around 20g of fibre every day. Given that 7% is considered "high fibre" and many normal foods contain none at all, that's actually quite a lot. Cereal fibre and fruit fibre are best for preventing bowel cancer, apparently, but you need vegetable fibre too because vegetables are A Good Thing.

A change to wholemeal bread, plus a high fibre breakfast cereal and your five portions of fruit and veg a day and you should be fine.

 

[byegad]

Rather the opposite if anything.

 

[cheesyname]

http://rehydrate.org/rehydration/

See the link http://rehydrate.org/rehydration/

 

[dan_bo]

Sprout casserole and a bottle of tizer. Followed by a butter sandwich.


does me every time!

 

[peanut]

yes as ASC says its all down to fibre in your diet. drinking water is only part of the equation.

i used to suffer very badly with this problem but eventually after keeping a food diary I realised there was a simple remedy. Every day now i try to eat some sweet corn either with my main meal or a lunch time soup or salad.
Most mornings I eat a bowl of all-bran with special K and that is sufficient to keep things moving.

As a snack i try to eat some seeds currants and raisins occasionally and fruit can help too. Try a bowl of rasberries and grapes etc with some low fat strawberry yoghurt instead of a pudding or as a late night snack mmm

I mix up a 1lt bottle of fruit juice and spring water every day to take to work and usually take it to bed as well in case I wake in the night

Once you become constipated it can takes 3-4 days to get your bowels back in order because it takes that long for food to pass through your system.

Don't be tempted to use laxatives because they muck up your bodys natural rhythms and metabolism.

 

[buggi]

can't say i've noticed any difference.

but you are right about the water being taken back. i once had food poisoning and bled from my bowel, which worried me a bit. i had it checked out at hospital and i was fine, but the consultant told me, while discussing what my poo looked like, that when you are dehydrated the body will take back water out of your poo. Hmmm ... NICE!!

he said if you go for a poo and lots of little round ones are down the loo, rather than a big solid log, then you are dehydrated.