Anyone else have bowel upset with intense workouts?

blessedtoes

Hi people. For about ten years now I've been irregular with my exercise, long periods of inertia with periods of programmed exercise, none more than like 2 months.

Four months ago I had an attitude shift around working out and have consistently exercised 5-6 days a week for 40-90 minutes, simplest days walking fastest pace on a treadmill, most intense days a moderate-intensity cross training routine I devised for therapy on a few joint injuries.

A few days ago I returned to P90X, which I am enjoying and have done before, but I've had an old problem return. P90X makes me sweat and elevates my heart rate far more than what I've been doing (yay!), and I am pretty reliable about knowing my limits.

After 20-45 minutes of sweat-inducing exercise, I start to get mildly lightheaded, often but not always mildly nauseous, and I start passing a lot of gas. The more intense days - like upper body + abs or plyometrics - my guts turn liquid and I feel like I'm going to squirt my brains out and die.

I know enough physiology here to understand that the symptoms indicate a massive change of circulation to my gut, but I can't understand why. It seems independent of when I ate, how much or what I ate, temperature in the room, etc.

Is this simply sympathetic overdrive, like gazelles-at-the-watering-hole style? Anyone else have this? Will this go away after a month or so?

Thanks very much for any shared experience or suggestions!

Stats: 180lbs., 5'7", male 47 y/o (low body fat %, visibly mildly overweight for my height) Haven't smoked in 20 years, don't drink/drug/marijuana.

Mickey_I

I have experienced this a time or two. I have also heard others who had to quit running due to it. Wish I had some advice for you. Perhaps run it by your GP. It could possibly be auto immune.

concordancia

I have that response to getting overheated in general, especially the first hot day of each year, but also if I overdo it at other times.

Drink electrolytes and don't push too hard, you will build up your fitness and get passed this.

blessedtoes

After I wrote this I realized my thoughts were actually only half correct. The lightheadedness would be due to vascular shunting away from my head, but the blood is undoubtedly shunting away from my gut, too, to my muscles - not to my gut.

I'll have to do a bit more reading to try and piece this one together. My GP had no clue, nor did a personal trainer friend.

Thanks.

shaumom

One possibility could be too much histamine, actually.

While histamine is known with allergies, the body utilizes histamine for all sorts of normal processes. For example, histamine elevates the heart rate and as such is typically released during exercise.

If there is too much histamine, however, it starts causing allergy like symptoms- the worse ones are rashe, hives, anaphylaxis and such. But lower level symptoms include headaches, hay fever like sumptoms, and gut or bowel issues pretty much like you describe.

Things that can cause too much histamine to build up during things like exercise can be if it is hay fever season for you so you already have higher levels. Or you can start not producing enough of the enzyme that breaks it down (DAO- you can actually buy this over the counter). Or if you have developed a low level allergy of some kind, or histamine intolerance, or least likely, you developed a mast cell activation disorder.

I have the disorder , so I have had to learn all the things thst can elevate histamine, to try and mitigate the problem. Anti-histamines 30-40 minutes before exercise sometimes help, but less often when it is the gut.