What Your Poop Says About Your Health

We were sitting at a beautifully set round tables, outside with a sun setting over the Rocky Mountains of Arizona, clean warm air, happy people all around chattering away and eating while we got completely carried away in the conversation about a strange forbidden topic – human poop.

My fiancé lovingly calls me the ‘poop queen’ because I m obsessed with healthy digestion and helping women get rid of bloating and constipation. (Here is my fiance and me during the book launch)

My new friend was a woman who spoke about poop on multiple TV shows including dr OZ. She is the author of Gut Bliss and a gastroenterologist who works with women – Dr Robynne Chutkan.

So what do you think we chatted about? Poop of course!

I’ll save the details to avoid grossing you out but will share a couple of insights that you might find interesting and thought-provoking:

1. Most Americans have trouble pooping. They either don’t do it frequently enough, don’t evacuate fully, or evacuate poorly formed smelly poop. We are turning into a constipated nation and that leads to a lot of health and emotional wellbeing problems. Some main reasons that we are constipated include: less fiber that our ancestors, overabundance of processed foods, loads of sugar, antibiotics in meat and diary products that kill of good bacteria, less physical movement, and mental stress.
2. Not all poop stinks! I doubt anyone’s poop smells like roses but it does smell very differently if you compare a healthy and unhealthy person. Partially, it happens due to rotting and fermenting, the transition time, and the gut bacteria. The whole poo-pourri thing is not necessary if your gut is healthy. To check you gut transfer time, try eating a couple of small baked beets on an empty stomach and time how long it takes to come out. It should not be more than 24 hours. If your transit time is longer, then there is more time for food to putrefy and rot in your digestive tract. It might be time to eat more veggies and focus on feeding your healthy bacteria.
3. Healthy poop should be well formed, come out easily, and give you a clean wipe. As Dr Chutkan noticed a clean wipe is a sign of well-formed healthy poop. Sticky messy gooey poop that requires multiple wipes is a sign of poor digestion, unhealthy gut bacteria or/and a lack of fiber. Look down the toilet bowl. What do you see? Use this guide to help you determine how healthy is your poop.
4. If you are healthy, people can buy your poop. Poop transplants are becoming the next big thing. Healthy bacteria delivered through fecal transplants are clinically proven to reduce gut inflammation, help autoimmune disorders and even improve moods. But there are few people in our modern society that are healthy enough to be donors. Maybe soon we will be donating poop the same way as blood? Who knows!
5. You can compare your gut bacteria to other people. There are a couple of companies that are taking medicine to the next levels. They are helping us get to know our bodies better, including the gut bacteria that live inside us. Now you can check your gut bacteria and even compare it to gut bacteria profiles of ancient people, modern day average, Dean Karnazes (world’s most famous ultramarathon runner, 50 marathons in 50 days) and bestselling author Michael Pollan. (more about gut bacteria profiles from Ubiome and American Gut.
6. How you sit on your toilet can make or break your elimination efficiency. Your toilet sit may be fostering constipation. When the modern toilet was designed during the industrial revolution in the mid 1800’s it was designed to sit on like a throne rather than the way our ancestors did it. This design placed the body in an unnatural position and according to some doctors might be responsible for constipation, hemorrhoids, and some pelvic floor issues. Nature designed our elimination system in a way that for a comfortable defecation to occur anorectal angle has to be close to 180 degrees. Attempting to poo in the improper position is like trying to squeeze water through a kinked garden hose. The squatting posture straightens out the bend and elimination becomes much easier and complete. You can use a stack of books to raise your knees up to your chest and create the same effect.

Getting Americans to poop is a booming billion-dollar industry! Just take a look at all colon cleansers and fiber supplements. Constipation, while not life-threatening in most case, can be quite debilitating. Being constipated can lead to an array of problems: bad breath, weight gain, allergies, bloating, poor nutrient assimilation, fatigue, migraine, breakouts, heart burn, lower back pain and sadly, the list goes on. Unfortunately, many people even grew to believe that going to the bathroom 2-3 times a week is normal. It is a bad news since all the waste that is not eliminated is rotting inside and changes the blood chemistry in your body allowing the disease to set in.

Digestion builds blood and feeds all our organs. To create good blood and healthy new cells, we need good digestion. Take good care of your belly! You can start by eliminating these hard to digest food combinations.

If you need individual support, I would be happy to support you! You can apply to work with me here