Cohawk Blog

So a good friend of mine, Paul Darby, celebrated his 50th birthday at the end of February.  Paul is one of the top affiliate marketers on the freakin’ planet… but that’s besides the point.  We celebrated his birthday at our business office in Carrollton, TX.  As a surprise to Paul, his wife “Texas Tammy” invited close friends, and brought out the foods, party favors, and birthday cake.  Little did we know… the REAL surprise was yet to happen.

Paul and Tammy are at the point in their lives where they are very health conscious.  All of the birthday food was very healthy, and really good… especially to a guy like me that eats fast food every night.  From the cold cuts, to the vegetables with ranch dip… I was pleasantly surprised.  Then came the birthday cake…

This cake was awesome!  It was chocolate with a cream cheese frosting, and if I didn’t know better I would have NEVER guessed this was a sugarless cake.  Tammy had mentioned that the bakery had used an artificial sweetener called Sorbitol… which I had never heard of.  Plus, it didn’t really matter to me because I was too busy stuffing my face and chatting it up with this guy:

Later that day, I headed home from the office with a smile on my face.  I couldn’t help but wonder what I would be doing at the age of 50.  Would I be…  WAIT A MINUTE… (gurgling sound)… What was THAT?!? 

As I felt my stomach churning and crying out like Charleton Heston from “Soylent Green”, I stepped on the gas, and drove home in record time.  Once I got home, I immediately went in to Harry Dunn mode as in the classic clip below…

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what had come over me.  It would be a painful night of coming and going… I finally reached the point where I had to eat Taco Bueno to calm my stomach down… yes, you read that correctly.

When I got to the office the next day, I was talking with my friend Jonathan at lunch.  I didn’t really want to bring up what I went through the night before… I mean, how do you start THAT conversation?!?  …Really.

Then he asked “Hey dude… did you have, like, MAJOR gas last night?”  I couldn’t help but reply, “Are you kidding me?!?  I WISH I just had gas…”  The more we talked, we decided that the cake HAD to be the factor.  We then decided that one of us would need to test this theory by eating another piece.  I bit the bullet, and ate another piece of this delicious cake.

Then I get home, and once again… I was right.  Part 2 of the “green apple quick-step”. 

After I “took the Browns to the Superbowl”, I was compelled to do a Google search for Sorbitol (the sweetener used as a sugar-substitute in the birthday cake.)  I found an article at Wikipedia.org that explained everything:

“Sorbitol can be used as a non-stimulant laxative as either an oral suspension or suppository. The drug works by drawing water into the large intestine, thereby stimulating bowel movements.^[2] Sorbitol has been determined safe to use in the elderly although it is by no means recommended. ^[3]

Ingesting large amounts of sorbitol can lead to some abdominal pain, gas, and mild to severe diarrhea. Sorbitol ingestion of 20g/d as sugar-free gum has led to severe diarrhea leading to unintended weight loss of 24 lbs in an 114 lb woman; another patient required hospitalization after habitually consuming 30g/d.^[4] Sorbitol can also aggravate irritable bowel syndrome and fructose malabsorption. ^[5]“

So here’s what I learned from all of this… 

1) Eating ANYTHING will always be an adventure.
2) Laxative cakes are a great way to apologize to someone.
3) People 50+ are not affected by laxatives.
4) This is all kind of funny… in a really sick way.

 

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 12:54 am and is filed under Latest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.