Sleep, exercise and alcohol can all affect how food moves through your gut, as well as your gut microbiome and fluid levels. These factors, in turn, influence your bowel habits.
Getting enough sleep, limiting your alcohol intake and exercising regularly can all contribute to regular, healthy bowel movements.
On the flip side, regularly getting too little sleep, drinking alcohol, and getting too much or too little exercise can contribute to diarrhoea or constipation.
As you can see, your gut doesn’t just respond to the food you’re eating. Read on to learn more about the effects of your sleep cycles, drinking habits and physical activity on your bowel movements.
Does sleep affect your bowel movements?
Your sleep patterns can influence your bowel movements because sleep helps regulate stress. It also helps repair and regenerate damaged cells in your gut.
Not getting enough sleep can lead to an increase in cortisol, a stress hormone.
Your cortisol levels rise and fall over 24 hours, typically reaching their lowest point at around midnight and rising within 2–3 hours of going to sleep. If you don’t get as much sleep as you need, or your sleep is disturbed, this may disrupt your natural cortisol rhythms and result in higher overall levels of this stress hormone.
Over time, high cortisol levels can cause inflammation in your gut. In turn, this can negatively affect the balance of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ microbes living there. It can also make your gut’s lining less effective, increasing its ‘leakiness’.
A combination of these effects can impact digestion and how food moves through your gut. The result can be constipation in some people and diarrhoea in others.
For people with irritable bowel syndrome, stress is a common trigger of flare-ups, which bring changes in bowel habits.
Sleep also plays an important role in the repair of your gut’s lining and the creation of new cells to replace damaged ones.
It’s worth noting that the odd night of disrupted sleep is unlikely to affect your bowel movements. Stress levels need to build up and stay built up before you’ll see physical effects. So, if you notice a change in your poo after a single night’s disrupted sleep, there’s likely a different cause.
Learn more about the relationship between sleep and the gut.
Can a lack of sleep give you diarrhoea or constipation?
A lack of sleep can lead to gut symptoms, such as diarrhoea or constipation, as it limits your body’s ability to regulate levels of hormones like cortisol.
Over time, having high cortisol levels can cause inflammation in the gut, disrupt its lining and upset the balance of your gut microbiome.
Stress-induced changes in your gut can cause food to pass more quickly through your digestive system – or cause your stomach to empty more slowly. Because the effects vary, stress-induced changes may lead to diarrhoea, constipation or both.
A large study from 2022, including data from 11,785 people, found that not getting enough sleep was associated with a higher risk of constipation in males. But for females, getting too much sleep was associated with a higher risk of constipation.
The researchers looked at the average amount of sleep that participants got each night. In other words, your routine matters – the odd night of disrupted sleep here and there isn’t likely to change how you poo.
Discover 20 science-backed tips on how to sleep better.
How does alcohol affect digestion?
Alcohol can affect how quickly food travels through your digestive system, and it can hinder your body’s ability to absorb nutrients.
Here’s a more detailed look at the ways that alcohol affects digestion:
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Causing inflammation: The inflammation that occurs when you drink alcohol can speed up digestion.
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Relaxing the ring of muscle above your stomach: When the lower oesophageal sphincter relaxes, it can allow stomach acid to rise up into your food pipe.
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Altering muscle contractions that push food through the gut: Alcohol can either quicken or slow down the movement of food through your digestive system, depending on how much you’re drinking.
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Interfering with nutrient absorption: Regular drinking can limit how effectively your body absorbs important nutrients, including vitamins, minerals and glucose.
Alcohol’s effects on digestion can lead to the following symptoms:
Alcohol can impact other aspects of gut health, too. Drinking large amounts can lead to dysbiosis, an imbalance in the microbes that make up your gut microbiome.
Any amount of alcohol will have some impact on your health – research to date confirms that the safest amount to drink is zero.
If you do want to enjoy a drink now and then, be mindful of how much you’re having and how often. Current UK guidelines recommend drinking no more than 14 units a week.
Learn more about how alcohol affects gut health.
Why can alcohol cause diarrhoea and constipation?
Alcohol can cause diarrhoea and constipation because it can speed up and slow down the rate at which food passes through your gut.
Research suggests that drinks with a high alcohol percentage (15% and above) can slow the muscle contractions that move food through your digestive system. This could lead to constipation.
Heavy drinking can also leave you dehydrated, which can contribute to constipation.
Meanwhile, drinks with a lower alcohol percentage, like most wines and beers, can speed up the emptying of your stomach, which could result in diarrhoea.
Discover how to settle an upset stomach.
Can exercise help with regular bowel habits?
Low-intensity and moderate exercise, such as walking and doing yoga, can help keep your bowel movements regular by supporting your digestion and overall gut health.
Exercise can help your digestive system work more effectively and support the movement of food through your gut. It can also encourage a greater diversity of microbes in your gut microbiome, which is generally associated with good gut health.
These effects likely stem from the way that exercise increases the amount of blood that flows to your gut and reduces inflammation.
On the other hand, not getting enough exercise can lead to constipation for some people. So, if you’re experiencing constipation, going for a walk could help get your bowels moving.
Find out more about the link between exercise and your gut microbiome.
Does exercise make you poo?
Yes, exercise can help you poo. It can speed up the pace of food moving your system. The degree to which it does this depends on how intensely you exercise.
Low- and moderate-intensity exercise supports good digestion and can help keep you regular. If you have constipation, the NHS recommends going for a daily walk or run to help get your bowels moving.
High-intensity exercise or exercising for a long time (such as endurance running) can speed up your gut’s movements to the extent that it causes diarrhoea. This is sometimes known as runner’s diarrhoea.
These effects can occur due to reduced blood flow to your gut, as well as mechanical jolting and increased gut permeability, as your body diverts more blood to power your muscles.
So, to recap: low- and moderate-intensity exercise is good for keeping your bowel movements regular.
Discover some gut-friendly foods to fuel exercise.
Why does your gut respond to lifestyle changes?
Your gut is sensitive to changes in your lifestyle because it’s so deeply connected with other systems and networks in your body.
For instance, your gut and brain are constantly communicating, and when something affects one, the other will find out. This is known as the gut-brain connection.
The actions of your nervous and hormonal systems influence the gut and brain together. So, if your brain is registering an increase in stress, it will have a knock-on effect on your gut.
Lifestyle patterns, such as how much you sleep and exercise, can help regulate cortisol, which supports your brain and your gut.
On top of this, your lifestyle can also determine the makeup of your gut microbiome. Your diet and levels of stress and exercise all influence the types of microbes that live in your gut. So, any changes can shift the balance to favour either ‘good’ microbes or ‘bad’ ones.
Because the gut is so well-connected, we can read changes in our bowel habits as signs of something shifting in our day-to-day lives.
It’s also worth bearing in mind how lifestyle patterns can influence one another. Drinking alcohol can reduce the quality of your sleep, for instance, while exercise can improve it.
Learn more about the gut-brain connection.
What lifestyle patterns support regular bowel habits?
You can support regular bowel habits with healthy lifestyle routines, like keeping active and having a gut-friendly diet.
Here are some ways to make your lifestyle more gut-friendly and promote healthy pooing:
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Favour fibre: Aim to eat 30 grams of fibre per day. This nutrient aids digestion and feeds the ‘good’ microbes in your gut microbiome.
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‘Eat the rainbow’: Including a variety of different-coloured plant foods will provide you with many types of fibre and beneficial plant chemicals called polyphenols.
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Give fermented foods a go: Foods like sauerkraut, kimchi and kombucha can support your gut microbiome by supplying beneficial compounds, and sometimes live microbes.
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Limit ultra-processed foods: Some ultra-processed foods can disrupt the balance of microbes in your gut. Many are also low in fibre and other useful nutrients.
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Sleep well: Aim to get around 7–9 hours of sleep every night.
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Keep active: The NHS recommends that adults aim for 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise every week, as well as strength training at least twice a week.
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Do what you can to manage stress: Stress can affect your gut, so anything that helps reduce it will support your gut health.
Remember, a healthy gut tends to come with healthy bowel habits.
Read more about how to improve your gut health and why it matters.
When should you speak with someone about bowel changes?
If you notice any sudden changes in your bowel habits that you’re unable to explain, it may be worth speaking with your GP.
Here are some specific symptoms to seek medical advice about:
- bloody poo
- bleeding from your bottom
- diarrhoea that’s lasted longer than 7 days
- tummy pain and bowel changes
- constant bloating
- constipation and feeling tired all the time
- constipation that hasn’t gotten better with treatment
Summary
Sleep, alcohol and exercise can all influence your bowel habits by changing how quickly food passes through your digestive system.
Here’s a sum-up of the effects that exercise, alcohol and sleep can have:
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Good amounts of sleep help manage stress and support healthy bowel movements.
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A regular lack of sleep may increase stress and could lead to diarrhoea or constipation.
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Drinking alcohol can lead to diarrhoea or constipation.
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Regular exercise supports healthy bowel movements and may resolve constipation.
If you’re after healthy bowel movements, a number of lifestyle strategies can help. Having a gut-friendly diet, exercising regularly and getting a good amount of sleep every night all contribute to keeping you regular.
To learn more about other gut health topics, visit Symprove’s Gut Hub.
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