Why Coffee Causes a Compelling Urge to Defecate

James Hoffman, the 2007 World Barista Champion and renowned coffee expert, joined his animated buddy “Beanie” to explore how coffee affects the human body. The pair traveled into an animated human digestive system where they discovered that coffee constricts the muscarinic receptors in the enteric nervous system, thus causing the need to defecate.

Now, we have muscarinic receptors all over in our gut, but actually in our mouths too, so it may be that from the moment that you take a sip of coffee, the muscarinic system is sending a signal to your gut to begin to contract. – And before you know it, it’s giving you the compelling urge to defecate.