Our country is the largest coffee producer in the world and this ingredient contributes with more than 2% of Brazil's total exports. In light of this, it is no surprise that Brazilians are heavy drinkers of coffee and drink an average of 3 cups a day.
Furthermore, because it is widely consumed, many people report that they feel an extreme urge to defecate when drinking coffee, so scientists decided to research the reason. If you want to know why coffee causes gastrointestinal problems, then keep reading!
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Know your components
Coffee has caffeine as its main ingredient, but it is also rich in other beneficial components. for our body, such as fibers, mineral salts, lipids, vitamins, sugars and acids chlorogenic.
These acids prevent depression and help prevent mental disorders and heart disease. They also help control addiction to alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.
The American regulatory agency FDA encourages that it is safe to drink only 400mL of caffeine a day, this is equivalent to 4 or 5 cups of coffee. And to be aware, just one cup is enough to keep an adult in a state of alert for 3 – 6 hours.
How he encourages going to the bathroom
Regarding the presence of this effect in the population, general physician and professor at the University of Oregon Robert Martindale estimates that 60% of his patients suffer from it, without distinction between genders.
He explains that coffee stimulates the gastrocolic reflex, that is, the communication between the stomach, colon and brain. Thus, the arrival of the drink to the stomach sends a signal to the brain which responds by ordering the colon to evacuate.
However, because coffee contains many compounds, it is difficult to determine exactly what causes the urge to defecate when ingesting it. This has been a challenge for scientists, who have conducted some research focusing on specific substances in coffee.
Thus, it was formerly believed that caffeine was responsible for this desire, by quickly activating intestinal activity, which caused the urge to go to the bathroom. But research done in 1998 proved that decaffeinated coffee stimulated the colon just like caffeine.
Therefore, what is known is that coffee stimulates the evacuation of fecal cakes from the colon, but there is no consensus on which component of this drink is responsible for this.
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