Digestive distress or Runners Gut affects many endurance runners.Inconsistent digestive health can be a major disruptor to run training and races. It can lead to anxiety, poor performance and impact on our enjoyment of running. You may be someone with no history of digestive problems, but something may have triggered change, which results in the disruptive digestive symptoms.Runners may be regularly experiencing constipation or diarrhoea and loose stools or perhaps having urgency to go. Symptoms may be due to underlying health issues, nutrition or aggravated and triggered by running.Often people make jokes about this topic, perhaps as a defence mechanism, but it’s really no joking matter, and there are ways you can resolve underlying digestive issues. If you’ve been putting up with digestive issues and managing symptoms around your run training, it’s worth considering how you may take action to help alleviate those symptoms and disruptions. Endurance running alone may contribute to digestive distress, however if you have poor gut health in general then it’s likely that endurance running will exacerbate symptoms so our aim today is to help you understand why you may have a problem and what you may do to get to the root of the problem and take action to resolve it. We’ll talk about:1. How and Why Endurance Running Affects Digestive Health2. Constipation and diarrhoea – what may be contributing to it and how you can alleviate these digestive issues3. Managing food triggers Download our FREE E book TOP Running Snacks and Nutrient Timing to Fuel Peak PerformanceSHOW NOTES(06:06)We are all aware the endurance running creates a physical stress on the body and that includes the digestive system. The areas to consider are physiological and mechanical:• Physiological – we must consider the impact of stress hormones and reduced blood flow to the Gastrointestinal tract• Mechanical – bouncing effect of running and how that affects the digestive system in particular the bowel(07:25)The impact of stress on the digestive system. Anxiety or excitement tends to be especially high before a race event and this anxiety or excitement is thought to affect gastric hormone secretion, which in turn may affect intestinal/gut motility. (10:13)Why some runners think that running activity helps them manage constipation.(12:32)How the colon works in relationship to having a bowel movement.(13:59)Chronic ConstipationIf you experience long transit times (optimal transit time is 12-24 hours) and less than one bowel movement per day this may lead to compromised absorption of nutrients and a buildup of toxic materials in the colon and potentially recirculation of toxins and hormones. From a female health perspective, having a regular daily bowel movement will help eliminate excess oestrogen. The liver converts hormones into a water-soluble form, and they are transported into the gut where they can be safely excreted via the stool. However, if your bowels aren't moving, oestrogen sticks around longer than it should and goes back into circulation in the body. That can lead to hormonal symptoms.(15:57)What are some of the potential reasons for constipation?There are many contributory reasons for chronic constipation - dehydration, a low fibre diet, medication, magnesium deficiency, sedentary lifestyle, alterations in gut microflora, muscular and neurological conditions, stress and toilet habits. Constipation is very common and often people with constipation say it’s something they have lived with for years.(17:55)Suggestions to help alleviate chronic...

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