Coffee-induced stomach trouble ("GI Joe")

[Timstuff]

I'm not a major coffee drinker, but I do have a cup or two about once a week. Usually I brew it myself at home, but occasionally I'll get it from Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, or McDonalds. Normally I don't have any kind of stomach troubles from coffee, even if I haven't eaten in a while. Today though, rather annoying happened. I was at church this morning and I decided I'd pour myself a cup from the coffee urn, and about 10 minutes before the service got out my GI started going into knots, but it wasn't anything serious. Then when I was driving home it got even worse, and I would have pulled over to a rest stop if I hadn't missed the exit for it. I don't think I need to go into detail about what happened when I got home.

Most people seem to say that "GI Joe" happens when either your body is too sensetive to caffine (in which case you should just stop drinking coffee), or if you drink it on an empty stomach. The last time it happened to me was when I had to be at a morning class and didn't have time for breakfast, so I drank a Starbucks Double Shot instead. I like Double Shots and hadn't had any trouble with them previously, but since I drank it on an empty stomach it caused me to have that bloated, knotted up feeling in my GI and it was so bad that I decided to just go home sick and take care of business.

Today though, I had breakfast and had a donut with the coffee, so I'm trying to figure out what might have been the trigger. Sometimes I get minor cramping from cheap coffee, but certainly nothing as bad as this. My best guess is that either the coffee was much lower quality than what I'm used to drinking, which urban myth would say causes stomach troubles, or because I barely ate anything yesterday so the coffee moved right through me with nothing to absorb it. So which is it? In your experiences, what have you associated as being the link between coffee and stomach issues?

 

[Hotwire]

Do you use any cream in your coffee? Could be a lactose issue or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I have this sometime when eating certain dairy, but not all of them.

 

[Majic Walrus]

Drink a lot more coffee, build up your immunity.

 

[bullets]

I have a similar problem but I don't have a problem with dairy and I drinks lots of soda. Coffee gives me the runs and i've been out out of commision by dunkin donuts on two seperate occasions . I haven't had cofee in two years.

 

[Timstuff]

I've never had an issue with lactose intolerance (I used to and still do drink a lot of milk) and I drink caffinated soda on a semi-weekly basis, so I think I can rule out the caffine and the creamer as culprits (especially since I normally drink my coffee with cream). I think the culprit may have been that I barely ate anything the day before (just one of those little pies and a few oz. of ice cream) because I didn't have much of an appetite yesterday. Today I didn't have much appetite either due to the coffee problem-- in fact, the last thing I ate was that doughnut at church. I think what happened was that since there was so little food in my small intestines to absorb the caffine, it went straight to my lower GI. That's probably also what happened during the incident at school, too.

 

[Drakon]

Could have just been bad coffee.

 

[Lantern Venom]

I'm not a major coffee drinker, but I do have a cup or two about once a week. Usually I brew it myself at home, but occasionally I'll get it from Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, or McDonalds. Normally I don't have any kind of stomach troubles from coffee, even if I haven't eaten in a while. Today though, rather annoying happened. I was at church this morning and I decided I'd pour myself a cup from the coffee urn, and about 10 minutes before the service got out my GI started going into knots, but it wasn't anything serious. Then when I was driving home it got even worse, and I would have pulled over to a rest stop if I hadn't missed the exit for it. I don't think I need to go into detail about what happened when I got home.

Most people seem to say that "GI Joe" happens when either your body is too sensetive to caffine (in which case you should just stop drinking coffee), or if you drink it on an empty stomach. The last time it happened to me was when I had to be at a morning class and didn't have time for breakfast, so I drank a Starbucks Double Shot instead. I like Double Shots and hadn't had any trouble with them previously, but since I drank it on an empty stomach it caused me to have that bloated, knotted up feeling in my GI and it was so bad that I decided to just go home sick and take care of business.

Today though, I had breakfast and had a donut with the coffee, so I'm trying to figure out what might have been the trigger. Sometimes I get minor cramping from cheap coffee, but certainly nothing as bad as this. My best guess is that either the coffee was much lower quality than what I'm used to drinking, which urban myth would say causes stomach troubles, or because I barely ate anything yesterday so the coffee moved right through me with nothing to absorb it. So which is it? In your experiences, what have you associated as being the link between coffee and stomach issues?

You may have CRD, caffeine related disorder. GI disturbance is one of the main symptoms. If you have 5 or more of these, you probably have CRD:

restlessnes
nervousness
excitement
insomnia
flushed face
diuresis
GI problems
muscle twitching
rambling thoughts
tachycardia
psychomotor agitation
periods of inexhaustibility


The condition usually isn't serious but if you do have it, you need to be very careful about how much and when you ingest caffeine.