MensHealth
  • News
  • Health
  • Fitness
  • Sex
  • Nutrition
  • Style
  • Weight Loss
  • Life
  • Podcasts
  • Motoring
  • Video
MensHealth
  • News
  • Health
  • Fitness
  • Sex
  • Nutrition
  • Style
  • Weight Loss
  • Life
  • Podcasts
  • Motoring
  • Video
Bjornsson Deadlifted 1,026 pounds On The Elephant Bar To Win 2020 Arnold Classic
Watch 0:10

Bjornsson Deadlifted 1,026 pounds On The Elephant Bar To Win 2020 Arnold Classic

{headline}

{headline}

How Spicy Foods Can Help You Burn An Extra 116 Calories A Day

How Spicy Foods Can Help You Burn An Extra 116 Calories A Day

Eating Chilli 4 Times Per Week Can Reduce Your Risk Of Death By Up to 40 Per Cent

Eating Chilli 4 Times Per Week Can Reduce Your Risk Of Death By Up to 40 Per Cent

How To Stop Spicy Food From Burning Your Mouth

How To Stop Spicy Food From Burning Your Mouth

Would You Put Chili In Your Protein Shake? You Should

Would You Put Chili In Your Protein Shake? You Should

{headline}

{headline}

The Secret to Ageing Like Fine Wine? Drink it

The Secret to Ageing Like Fine Wine? Drink it

Just One Energy Drink Can Increase Heart Attack Risk

Just One Energy Drink Can Increase Heart Attack Risk

Is It Healthy To Combine Intermittent Fasting With Keto?

Is It Healthy To Combine Intermittent Fasting With Keto?

{headline}

{headline}

Why 30/10 Is The Perfect Macro Ratio For Burning Fat

Why 30/10 Is The Perfect Macro Ratio For Burning Fat

8 Rules Of Muscle-Building, According To A Bodybuilder

8 Rules Of Muscle-Building, According To A Bodybuilder

Lewis Hamilton On The Physical and Mental Pressure To Stay Fit

Lewis Hamilton On The Physical and Mental Pressure To Stay Fit

What Happened When This Guy Followed Hugh Jackman's 'Wolverine' Diet

What Happened When This Guy Followed Hugh Jackman's 'Wolverine' Diet

7 Intermittent Fasting Benefits That Aren’t Weight Loss

7 Intermittent Fasting Benefits That Aren’t Weight Loss

Study Finds Eating Bread Can Help You Live Longer

Study Finds Eating Bread Can Help You Live Longer

11 Reasons You've Hit A Plateau With Your Training

11 Reasons You've Hit A Plateau With Your Training

  1. Home
  2. Nutrition

How to Stop Your Butt from Burning after Eating Spicy Foods

Enjoy your sriracha now, and don’t worry about pooping in pain later - by Julie Stewart and Marty Munson
  • 31 May 2019
How to Stop Your Butt from Burning after Eating Spicy Foods
Dumb and Dumber

Buffalo wings, Szechuan chicken, and sriracha taste amazing going in.

Not so amazing: feeling those spices come out the next day in the form of burning poop.

When you consume spicy foods, the compounds that give them heat move through your body relatively unchanged. Since they aren’t nutrients, your body doesn’t absorb them, says Luigi Basso, M.D., a specialist in coloproctology and laparoscopic surgery at Sapienza University of Rome in Italy.

That means your poop is laced with spicy particles. “And since the last part of your anal region—your rectum and anus—is lined by cells similar to those in your mouth, spicy foods can burn just as much on the way out as on the way in,” says Dr. Basso. Ouch.

Your biology might be making it worse

This burning poop sensation can happen to anyone, but it's often worse in people who have certain gastrointestinal issues to begin with. So "make sure you don't have other things going on that would predispose you to being more sensitive," says Bruno P. Chumpitazi, M.D., a spokesperson for the American Gastroenterological Association and director of the neurogastroenterology and motility program at Texas Children's Hospital.

"A lot of people with irritable bowel syndrome can be overly sensitive to foods," he says. And spicy foods can engender things like pain and discomfort. Hot foods can also be challenging for people with haemorrhoids or anal fissures, says Dr. Chumpitazi. Those fissures are just like they sound—little tears which tend to be caused by constipation and sometimes even by diarrhoea. Which means you can have burning diarrhoea, too.

How to poop in peace after eating spicy foods

The receptors that alert your brain to the burn are inside your digestive tract, so it's best to tackle the problem for good from the inside with strategies like these:

Tweak your menu.

Limit spicy foods that are both spicy and fatty, like chicken wings or quesadillas smothered in hot sauce. Excess fat can be a problem because the bile salts your body uses to digest them can irritate the skin around your anus, says Brooks D. Cash, M.D., a professor of medicine at the University of South Alabama.

If you’re not giving up wings any time soon, soak up some of the fatty acids in your gut by taking a fibre supplement before or right after you eat to avoid burning poop, Dr. Cash suggests.

Even better, have a diet that's consistently high in fibre, says Dr. Chumpitazi. Not only is it good for your health in so many ways, it may prevent constipation, anal fissures, and even haemorrhoids, which may be at the root of the burning poop or burning diarrhoea issue. And until the fibre works, some people find relief from fissures and haemorrhoids by sitting in a warm bath (no soap needed).

American Pie (10/12) Movie CLIP - Finch Has Diarrhea (1999) HD

Eat chili peppers for 3 weeks straight.

Yes, this strategy is over-the-top. But if you absolutely can’t live without spicy foods—no matter how much discomfort it causes—try eating a lot of them in a short period of time.

If you only eat spicy foods for a couple days, you induce “rectal hypersensitivity”—that burning pain, plus the frequent urge to go number two, says Sutep Gonlachanvit, M.D., chief of the division of gastroenterology at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.

RELATED: How To Stop Spicy Food From Burning Your Mouth

“But continuous [spicy food] ingestion for greater than 3 weeks can induce desensitisation—which in turn can reduce rectal sensation,” he says.

In his research, people who consumed 2.1 grams of hot pepper per day—a similar quantity to 1.25 teaspoons of cayenne pepper—experienced this benefit.

In other words, you’re putting your butt through hot pepper bootcamp by training pain receptors in your gut cells to cope with the spices better. It's a little bit like putting on your shirt in the morning, says Dr. Chumpitazi. "In the beginning, you sense that it's on. Very quickly, your brain knows the receptors are sending very similar signals. It knows how to process them and it can stop paying attention to those signals over time." 

The trade-off: Deal with a burning butthole forever, or for 3 weeks—and then never again.

Clean your butt.

The receptors are on the inside of your GI tract, so putting something on the outside is unlikely to help in the long run. But as a short-term fix, you could apply a soothing cream to a clean butt—use one such as Calmoseptine ointment, which contains calamine to reduce itching and burning.

RELATED: How Spicy Foods Can Help You Burn An Extra 116 Calories A Day

“Just apply a dab the size of a dime to the anal opening and create a thin smear,” advises Arnold Wald, M.D., a professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

One more thing: If discomfort lingers after you've taken a burning poop, see your doctor. Pain in your butt can be a symptom of more serious problems like an infection, abscess, or cancer, says Steven D. Wexner, M.D., director of the Digestive Disease Centre at Cleveland Clinic Florida.

This article originally appeared on Men's Health

  • Nutrition
  • Life

Subscribe Now-

Subscribe Now
Subscribe Now

Subscribe Now-

Subscribe Now
Subscribe Now

Recommended to you

Bjornsson Deadlifted 1,026 pounds On The Elephant Bar To Win 2020 Arnold Classic
Watch 0:10

Bjornsson Deadlifted 1,026 pounds On The Elephant Bar To Win 2020 Arnold Classic

{headline}

{headline}

How Spicy Foods Can Help You Burn An Extra 116 Calories A Day

How Spicy Foods Can Help You Burn An Extra 116 Calories A Day

Eating Chilli 4 Times Per Week Can Reduce Your Risk Of Death By Up to 40 Per Cent

Eating Chilli 4 Times Per Week Can Reduce Your Risk Of Death By Up to 40 Per Cent

How To Stop Spicy Food From Burning Your Mouth

How To Stop Spicy Food From Burning Your Mouth

Would You Put Chili In Your Protein Shake? You Should

Would You Put Chili In Your Protein Shake? You Should

{headline}

{headline}

The Secret to Ageing Like Fine Wine? Drink it

The Secret to Ageing Like Fine Wine? Drink it

Just One Energy Drink Can Increase Heart Attack Risk

Just One Energy Drink Can Increase Heart Attack Risk

Is It Healthy To Combine Intermittent Fasting With Keto?

Is It Healthy To Combine Intermittent Fasting With Keto?

{headline}

{headline}

Why 30/10 Is The Perfect Macro Ratio For Burning Fat

Why 30/10 Is The Perfect Macro Ratio For Burning Fat

8 Rules Of Muscle-Building, According To A Bodybuilder

8 Rules Of Muscle-Building, According To A Bodybuilder

Lewis Hamilton On The Physical and Mental Pressure To Stay Fit

Lewis Hamilton On The Physical and Mental Pressure To Stay Fit

What Happened When This Guy Followed Hugh Jackman's 'Wolverine' Diet

What Happened When This Guy Followed Hugh Jackman's 'Wolverine' Diet

7 Intermittent Fasting Benefits That Aren’t Weight Loss

7 Intermittent Fasting Benefits That Aren’t Weight Loss

Study Finds Eating Bread Can Help You Live Longer

Study Finds Eating Bread Can Help You Live Longer

11 Reasons You've Hit A Plateau With Your Training

11 Reasons You've Hit A Plateau With Your Training

MensHealth
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Terms
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Statement
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Terms
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Statement

Brands

  • Women's Health

Our Network

  • Paragon Media Pty Ltd
© 2021 Are Media PTY LTD
Get more from Men's Health

Magazine Subscription Offer

Subscribe Now-

Shop This Offer
Subscribe Now