Moves everything along
Gut transit
Also searched as Gut transit.
The balance here is between goals, and it is the sharpest trade on this blend. Faster clears a loaded, sluggish gut and is what a purgative is for. Faster is also what makes a diarrhea worse, and it shortens the window for absorbing nutrients and minerals. Read the micronutrient lane beside this one: a gut emptied faster is a gut with less time to take up what was in the meal.
In depth
Whole-gut transit speed — how fast food travels from the stomach to the far end. Too slow is the mechanism behind constipation and too fast behind its opposite, which is why it is a balance and not a dial.
What drives it
Gut-liver bile signaling increases it.
In a double-blind placebo-controlled trial, 4 days of delayed-release chenodeoxycholate significantly accelerated overall colonic transit and ascending colon emptying and increased stool frequency and looseness compared with placebo. PMID 20691689
Mood (serotonin) increases it.
Raising available serotonin in healthy volunteers with the reuptake inhibitor paroxetine shortened migrating motor complex periodicity from about 81 to 67 minutes, increased phase III propagation velocity and cut orocaecal transit time from about 70 to 48 minutes, so more serotonin signalling meant faster gut transit. doi 10.1136/gut.35.4.496 · PMID 8174987
Memory chemical increases it.
In a randomized placebo-controlled trial, raising synaptic acetylcholine with the cholinesterase inhibitor neostigmine produced prompt colonic decompression and passage of flatus or stool in 10 of 11 patients versus 0 of 10 on placebo, demonstrating that cholinergic drive accelerates colonic transit. doi 10.1056/NEJM199907153410301 · PMID 10403850
What it drives
It reduces Regular, complete movements.
In constipated patients, a 5-HT4 agonist that accelerated colonic and whole-gut transit simultaneously increased stool frequency and softened stool form, showing that faster gut transit relieves constipation. doi 10.1053/gast.2001.21166 · PMID 11159875
It reduces A settled stomach.
In constipation-predominant IBS patients studied with 24-hour inductance plethysmography, those with delayed orocecal or colonic transit showed significantly greater abdominal girth than those with normal transit, so slower gut transit produces more objective distension while faster transit relieves it (the subjective bloating score itself did not differ by transit). doi 10.1038/ajg.2009.251 · PMID 19491831
Blends that modulate it
Each blend page names this pathway and carries the study behind its claim.
See it on the map
Open the causal map to follow this pathway upstream and downstream, arrow by arrow, each with its study.