Living with a bowel disorder can be uncomfortable and require you to carefully monitor your diet so you do not aggravate the issue. Fruit juice may seem like an innocuous and refreshing source of vitamins and minerals, but if you have bowel problems the ingredients in your juice could be affecting them. Depending on the type of bowel issues you have, fruit juices can be a blessing or a curse.
Sugars
The primary component of fruit juice that can affect your bowels is the sugar, or carbohydrates. Fructose and sorbitol are both sugars present naturally in fruits that your body may not be able to digest well. When you consume these sugars, the bacteria in your intestines consume them as an energy source and excrete gas as a byproduct. This may result in stomach pains on top of existing bowel problems.
Constipation
Though sorbitol increases the amount of gas in your digestive tract, it can be useful for the treatment of constipation. Sorbitol pulls water into your intestines and helps move excrement through your body faster. Sorbitol also appears to have a synergistic effect with fructose in your bowels. By preventing fructose absorption, sorbitol may significantly increase your bowel movements to alleviate constipation.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
In his substantive 1996 review of fruit juice digestion for the “Journal of the American College of Nutrition,” Jay Perman states that humans have a threshold for the absorption of carbohydrates like fructose and sorbitol. If your body reaches its threshold for sugar absorption, the juice has the potential to aggravate irritable bowel syndrome. It can also aggravate chronic non-specific diarrhea in children, which is a condition similar to irritable bowel syndrome. Because each person is different, there is not a clear amount of fructose or sorbitol that will affect everyone. However, a 1990 examination of these sugars showed that 31 out of 70 subjects with irritable bowel syndrome reported symptoms after consuming 25 grams of fructose and 5 grams of sorbitol together.
Juice Type
Not all juices contain fructose and sorbitol in amounts that will affect your bowel problems. For example, the University of Maryland advises that you avoid apple juice and grape juice if you have irritable bowel syndrome, while nutrition experts with the Herbert Irving Cancer Center recommend prune, apple and pear juices as the best for treating constipation. Juices with fructose may affect you less if they are also high in glucose, because the glucose helps you better absorb fructose. Orange juice is one example of a drink with fructose and glucose together. If your favorite juice bothers your digestive tract, you may need to dilute it with water or eliminate it from your diet altogether.
References
- North Dakota State University; Fresh Squeezed Facts - A Parent's Guide to Juice; Julie Garden-Robinson, Ph.D., L.R.D. and Jocey Mathern; February 2000
- University of Maryland Medical Center; Irritable Bowel Syndrome; Steven D. Ehrlich, N.M.D.; December 2009
- Columbia University; Coping with Constipation; Elena Ladas, M.S., R.D., et al.
- Baylor College of Medicine; Too Much Juice Can Cause Intestinal Discomfort Usually Blamed on Milk; September 2004
- "Journal of the American College of Nutrition"; Digestion and Absorption of Fruit Juice Carbohydrates; Jay A. Perman, M.D.; 1996
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