Coffee Gets Your Colon Hopping, Study Finds

FRIDAY, Nov. 13, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Everyone knows that a morning cup of joe can help keep a person regular.

That side effect might come in part from java’s impact on gut physiology, a new study says.

Higher coffee consumption is associated with more contractions in a person’s colon, researchers report in the December issue of the journal Gut Microbiology.

In other words, coffee literally can get your colon hopping.

“Contractions in the gut can support healthy digestion, help prevent constipation and keep the intestinal muscles in good condition,” lead researcher Francesca Bucci, a doctoral student in nutrition, exercise and sports at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said in a news release.

Frequent coffee drinkers also had a greater diversity of microorganisms in their gut, which could further improve their gut health, researchers added.

“A great many people struggle with constipation and irregular bowel movements. If we can understand how coffee affects digestion and intestinal contractions, it may be possible to use that knowledge to stimulate gut motility in a natural way. That would be extremely valuable,” senior researcher Henrik Munch Roager, an associate professor and research group leader at the University of Copenhagen, said in a news release.

This study took a slightly different tack from normal coffee research, which compares self-reports of coffee drinking against blood, urine or stool samples.

Instead, a group of 50 people were asked to swallow a small electronic capsule that took various measurements as it made its way through their digestive tracts — such as transit time from mouth to toilet, temperatures, pH levels and intestinal contractions.

The research team compared people who chugged one to five cups of coffee a day against those who drank coffee less often.

Previous studies already had suggested that coffee can boost diversity of gut microorganisms, and the electronic capsules confirmed that.

“But perhaps more importantly, frequent coffee consumption appears to affect the physiology of the gut itself, in other words how the gut functions,” Bucci said.

Coffee drinkers had more contractions in their colon, but those contractions did not contribute to significantly faster transit times through the colon for the electronic capsule, researchers found.

Results also showed that frequent coffee drinkers had significantly lower pH in their small intestine.

Researchers said they can’t tell from the data they gathered whether this lower pH is good or bad for gut health. The pH level in the small intestine plays an important role in the activity of digestive enzymes and how food is broken down.

It’s already well-established that moderate coffee consumption is linked to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, depression and several types of cancer, researchers said in background notes.

But more needs to be learned about how coffee affects gut health, researchers added.

“For example, we already know from other studies that coffee can influence a range of processes in the digestive system, including acid secretion in the stomach, so there are good reasons to believe that what we are seeing is not merely coincidence. Anecdotally, many people also report that coffee affects their digestion,” Roager said.

More information

UCLA Health has more on coffee and gut health.

SOURCE: University of Copenhagen, news release, Nov. 10, 2026