Yes. It’s here. The poo post.

Don’t be embarrassed now – everyone does it. Along with food, spirituality, love and all that jazz… poo is one thing all people share. And it needs to be talked about! It’s really important to your health.

Digestion is a seriously important part of clearing your skin. If you aren’t digesting your food properly, it turns into allergies, constipation, and malnutrition-city. And your poo is a good indication of how your digestive system is doing – but since it’s a topic no one wants to talk about, people don’t tend to know what is “normal” when it comes to the ol bowel movement.

I secretly love poo. Not like… other people’s poo. Just my own. I’ve never told anyone this except now the entire internet. hahah. Oh dear.

No, but really, I’ve never been a consistent pooer and I’m still trying to solve the mystery. I always strive for perfect poo – checking every time and delighting when perfection presents itself but the consistency is just not there. I’ve come close to a solid track record in the past but the bad poo always seems to sneak in here and there. I don’t know if I’m too hard on myself (is anyone a perfect pooer all the time?), but to be honest – it irks me.

My bathroom habits seem to be like a very mild form of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, when your intestinal tract can’t seem to follow a pattern of consistent peristalsis and you end up ranging from loose, to normal, to hard stools – often with a lot of pain (but luckily I don’t have that part). Although that said, I honestly believe the supposedly incurable Irritable Bowel Syndrome is only a catch all diagnosis used by doctors when they don’t know what’s actually wrong with you. I believe the more likely cause is hidden allergies, stress, parasites, too much scratchy fiber, or bacteria imbalances in the gut.

I digress. So what is perfect poo? What makes great bathroom bounty?

The Perfect Poo

Well, let’s start with frequency. How often should you be a going? Well, it depends on what you eat… if you’re a vegan who eats abundant whole grains, you should be going at least a couple times a day. If you are a low carb paleo eater, you will just have less poop in general, so once a day or every other day is more normal. It all kind of depends on the diet, so this one is variable. But if you’re not pooing frequently enough for your diet, it does mean you are a bit constipated. And constipation is bad because it means that your body has more time to reabsorb toxins from the poo as it sits in your gut.

Next, lets talk about consistency. The poo should be soft, yet in a nice formed log with a decent width. It’s okay if the log breaks apart, but It shouldn’t be watery, loose, or unformed. If it is, it means that it went through your digestive system too fast before enough water could be absorbed from it to make it solid. That also means the body probably didn’t have enough time to absorb all the vitamins and minerals from your food either.

On the other end, if the poo is hard and has a lot of cracks in it (or it’s small, pellety, and hard to pass) it means that it moved too slow through your body and too much water was absorbed – and like I said before, slow poo means lots of toxins have been reabsorbed into the body.

Okay and what colour should it be? Well, they say it should be the colour of cardboard – that nice light brown colour. Very dark poo isn’t good and usually indicates a bad choice in food. If it’s really unusually dark and tarry, it could mean you have intestinal bleeding and should probably see a doctor. If it’s yellowy and pale or weirdly grey, that can also indicate serious medical problems. However it’s perfectly normal if you eat some beets and it turns red – or even better if you’ve eaten lots of greens and your poo turns green. In fact, I aim for green poo over light brown for this reason.

And what should the experience of pooing be? Should it be time consuming? Or worse, a battle?  Well, no, it shouldn’t. It should be easy. A delightful experience – in and out of there. The poo should slide out of you quickly within a minute or so of sitting on the toilet, and there really shouldn’t be any straining. The widespread practice of keeping magazines next to the can is an indication of how poor our society’s collective health really is!

Lastly, are there any other signs of a bad poo? Yes, if your poo is greasy, sticky and hard to flush away (ruling out a weak toilet), it can indicate a fat malabsorption issue. Pencil thin poo isn’t too great either. Nor if it’s really, really stinky. Healthy poo shouldn’t smell like rotten garbage.

So there you go. Now you know what to strive for.

But don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t live up to this lofty ideal all of the time. Clearly I don’t either and I’m doing alright. I think my purpose with this post was more to inform you of how things in the bathroom could and should be so that you know what’s healthy and what’s not (there’s too many people in this world who think that going every four days is actually okay). This way you can confidently feel great as you get healthier and so does your poo!

How’s your poo? Tell me. It’s okay… you’re on the internet.

photo by canhotagem