Bulletproof Coffee & IBS?

Some Thoughts on a Possible Cause of my Spastic Colon

May 10, 2026

In the spring of 2020, I first became aware of the symptoms that would eventually lead to a diagnosis of spastic colon (a form of irritable bowel syndrome). I’ve been searching for a solution ever since.

At the time, I reflected back on what had changed in my diet. The only things that came to mind were changes to my morning coffee routine, which I adopted in lieu of breakfast:

I skipped breakfast in favor of a form of bulletproof coffee: coffee, heavy cream, coconut oil and collagen (no sugar); and
I’d get either a hot or blended latte with full fat milk or cream about four days per week, usually before consuming a meal.

Aside from those changes, my diet had not changed significantly in years. I had consumed the above items for years prior, but not on as regular a schedule. And rarely on an empty stomach (my wife and I had been traveling full time from 2015 to 2019, and most of the time we had something to eat with our coffee).

But when the IBS symptoms first became chronic, I could think of no reason that anything in my morning coffee routine would cause my bowel to be irritated, aside from the acidity of the coffee. And we live exactly one mile from the largest coffee roaster in the state of Idaho, and finding a coffee bean with low acidity was one of the perks of that proximity. I’ve always preferred low-acid coffees.

So back then, I quickly crossed my morning coffee off the list of possible IBS causes. After all, we’d been doing something similar for quite a while, without causing strange bowel symptoms.

When I asked my functional medicine doctor what might be causing my IBS, he offered two other possibilities (when asked the same question, my Medicare doc just gave me a blank stare):

Glyphosate being used as a dessicant for drying oats (I had increased my consumption of oats around that time, and I rarely ate any baked goods like bread, cookies, etc, so glyphosate-contaminated wheat wasn’t an issue), and
Possibly an effect of spike protein (I never vaccinated, so if that was an issue it would have been from an acquired infection).

For the past several years the glyphosate theory has been a big part of my focus. After all, you can’t see it on your food, and I don’t know of a good way to test for it (though I’m not a big fan of diagnostic tests anyway, for too many reasons to go into for this post).

If spike was the problem, I took it on faith that my body would eventually sort things out on its own (I would have been much more concerned if I’d had spike injected into my body, which could possibly have bypassed layers of my body’s defenses).

Then I happened upon this recent post by Stay Young, which was about things in your kitchen that are causing you to age prematurely. It summarized a recent interview by Dr. Rhonda Patrick on an episode of the Huberman Labs podcast.

The post detailed eight findings related to aging and longevity.

The one that caught my attention was Finding #3:
Saturated fat eaten alone damages the lining of your gut.

BINGO!

I’m doing daily coffee stuffed with heavy cream and coconut oil on an empty stomach, and THAT is likely what has caused my gut to go sideways!

Or at least that is now my current working theory. Time will tell if this new knowledge will result in changes that fully correct the problem.

But the fact that the problem was found to be large enough in the general population that it made Dr. Patrick’s list suggests that the problem has become pretty widespread. It’s probably not rare.

Dr. Patrick goes on to say that if you are going to eat saturated fat, it is best to add some fiber to the meal.

That immediately brought to mind memories of my early childhood in the 1960s, when I lived along the north bank of the Thames River in Maidenhead, England.

My godmother would have a cream tea first thing every morning, but she nearly always also had a McVitie’s Digestive Wheat Biscuit, or on special occasions something sweet from the local bakery. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone in England have cream tea without also having something else to nibble on.

I can’t help thinking that there is some forgotten innate wisdom there, where people knew instinctively not to consume fat on an empty stomach.

And certainly back then people weren’t really interested in fad diets, because morbid obesity affected a very small percentage of the population at that time (when diets were used, it was almost always based solely upon calorie restriction).

I also recall how we would let the empty pint carton of cream drain onto a plate, which we let our dog lick. It didn’t take long before she was having serious issues with pancreatitis, something I started experiencing a year before the IBS symptoms. That should have been my first clue about where to find the cause of my problems, but unfortunately I was clueless about that until now.

Too much fat is probably also why I developed pancreatitis, because I can remember the first time I had symptoms was after eating a very fatty ribeye steak and a full avocado, followed by some ice cream. It was rare that I’d ever come close to eating that much fat in one meal, but at the time I was trying to use those items because they were going to go bad if I didn’t eat them right away.

In hindsight, that was another clue that my bile metabolism was starting to wane. And I’m only now starting to adequately address that issue. [For an excellent post on that topic, see VarianaVolk’s The Fluid That Determines How You Age, Detox, and Make Hormones.]

From now on, I plan to make it a habit to have breakfast before having any fat-filled coffee. And if I do need a cup of bulletproof coffee to keep hunger at bay until lunchtime, I’ll plan on having it with a digestive biscuit or some fruit. Though at this point, I suspect my creamed coffee days are mostly behind me.

Time will tell if this solves the problem, as the gut has a tendency of responding slowly to new routines. And I’ve heard it can take up to a few months for a damaged colon to fully regenerate all of its cells.

If you have IBS issues and can’t find the culprit, you may want to ponder whether too much fat and too little fiber first thing in the morning might be a contributing factor.

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