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dshookowsky t1_ja8798z wrote

It's called the gastrocolic reflex and it's your body's way of making room for more food

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JeffroDH t1_ja8bxwn wrote

This is the answer. For ELI5: When you put food into your stomach, the stomach stretches. The stretching causes signals to be sent to other parts of the body to prepare it for digestion. Among these signals is the gastrocolic reflex mentioned above.

This causes the movement (motility) of the large intestine and colon to increase, which tends to result in a bowel movement.

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secretactorian t1_ja93smu wrote

Yes, and it is unlikely that what you are 8 hrs prior is making it's way out of you. After the small intestine is the large intestine, and then you can poop it out. Gut motility varies from person to person, and "normal" can be anywhere from 16 hrs - 2 days to get through your system.

Curious how long yours is? Eat corn and see when it passes. Or eat a bunch of beets and wait till you see purpleish-red poop!

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mp9220 t1_ja8aso5 wrote

If you keep putting small pebbels into a straw, eventually the first pebbles will start to come out the other end.. it’s not the one you put in last that comes out first, but they are connected. The reason that the feces might be different if you, for example, eat a huge meal, is because your body will now try to make room for that new food, while the old food it now tries to get rid of, isn’t fully processed

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gandalf239 t1_ja83jrw wrote

Peristalsis is frankly an amazing process.

I believe the same phenomenon occurs after eating a large meal as well, e.g., as with the spicy foods you mentioned that feeling of fullness can stimulate the bowels to move.

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snorkleface t1_ja886c8 wrote

It's not the same food coming out. Eating a specific triggering thing (or just a large amount of something) makes the body empty whatevers sitting near the bottom of your tract. So the food you ate 8 hours ago is what shows up 10 minutes after eating ghost pepper hot sauce.

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SonicN t1_ja9awng wrote

When you eat, your body notices and hurries along the food you ate in the past to make room for it. With spicy food in particular, it hurries a lot, which means the large intestine doesn't get enough time to absorb enough water: that's why it's runny even though those particular feces don't contain the spicy food.

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