Essential Information About Bowel Movements

The piece below contains all the Essential Information About Bowel Movements you ever wanted to know (and were afraid to ask).  What is normal?  What is not?  It’s not something we would normally discuss.  How would we know?

The point I hope you walk away with is that many maladies and conditions occur because of an improper diet.  Regardless of whether you think you eat well -if you suffer, your diet needs improvement.

The safest way (without prescription meds) for restoring your digestive health is through the use of probiotics supplements.

Whole Food Nation offers a sophisticated supplement (called Pop-a-Green & Pop-a-Purple) containing scores of natural whole foods (fruits & veggies), probiotics, metabolic boosters, digestive enzymes and much more. They are designed to get you healthy and keep you that way.  My family has been on them for 6 years and we have never been in better health, generally.  We also watch our diet and get regular exercise.

 What, exactly is in those Pops? 

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Essential Information About Bowel Movements

A normal line of questioning from a medical professional might start with, “How many BMs do you have each day? In it, do you notice any evidence of mucous, blood, or, do you have diarrhea or are you constipated?”

Feces is crap, shit, BM, stools, droppings, poop, #2, dung, manure, and bowel contents.  It’s all the same thing. All these terms are interchangeable.  it helps to speak the language, as sometimes patients don’t know what feces is. You need to be able to effectively communicate to your doctor about this stuff.

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Feces contains, or should contain a lot of water, indigestible fiber, undigested food, mostly.  A ‘normal’ stool is brown or lighter brown, formed, not too hard or too soft, cylindrical in shape, not flat on any one side, kind of bulky and full bodied -not compact.  it should pass easily, and shouldn’t be extremely foul to smell.  That last point, having spent a lot of time in public rest rooms, I have observed, is not achievable by many people.  What people eat to get that horrendous smell is beyond me.

To continue, each bowel movement should be in one piece, about the size of a banana.  it would also be tapered at the end (like a fine cigar). Sometimes this will not be noticed if it breaks up in the toilet bowl.  Some believe that if the body is absorbing all the minerals from your food that the stool should float like a log. Others think that the stool should sink like a rock. Some are of the opinion that it  should be somewhere in between.

An occasional deviation from this pattern is acceptable. Any chronic deviation from the above pattern is not healthy and should be dealt with.  

It’s amazing how many people don’t even look at their stools in the toilet (or, claim they don’t). It is important to do so, as stools can give clues about your health if you are aware of what you’re looking at.  Digestion is a natural bodily function -part of life. Always has been. We should be able to talk about them without embarrassment. For example:

• Air or bubbles in the stool might tip us off that we have a gut or flora imbalance and that gas producing bacteria are taking the lead and competing with the healthier flora.
• Alternately suffering from diarrhea and constipation can be caused by irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), food allergies, certain spices, alcohol, stress, red meat, lack of fiber, sugar, irregular bowel habits.
• Color: Stools are generally the color of the food we’ve eaten.
• Constipation can sometimes lead to impaction -which is the presence of a mass of feces too large to pass. This can be extremely painful constipation.
• Fecal impaction is most often the result of one or more of the following: poor bowel habits, too much protein, not enough water and fiber consumption,  and inadequate physical activity.
• Diarrhea, whether chronic or acute, can disrupt the bowel’s normal bio-rhythm and lead to irregularity. It can mean that your large intestine is not functioning properly. The large intestine is in charge of removing excess water from the feces. Other possibilities can include a whole host of things like: food poisoning, lactose intolerance, anxiety, stress, bacterial overgrowth, too many antacids, parasites, viruses, antibiotics, inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. A properly functioning, healthy bowel will condense about a 1-1/2 quarts down to about one cup of stool. 
• Painful bloody bowel movements are a sign of trouble and are not to be ignored.  To do so is to invite disaster.  Serious causes include colon cancer.  On the other hand it could be an injury caused by trying to pass too big a stool -perhaps caused by not drinking enough water.  Or, it could be a common hemorrhoid.  But it could also be colitis, irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn’s disease.  In any event, it warrants further scrutiny -unless you are secretly harboring some kind of death wish.  There are better ways to go.
• Horrible smelling stools could be boiled down to too much protein, or a shortage of beneficial bacteria or flora (which is an imbalance.  The bad bacteria are taking over).
• If the stools are black, tarry and sticky, this could be an indication of bleeding in the small intestine. These types of stools usually give off a bad (distinctive) odor. 
• Light green stools could mean there has been too much sugar, fruits and/or vegetables and perhaps not enough grains or salt. Mucous can indicate diverticulitis and/or an inflammatory condition due to allergies (or parasites).
• Oily or greasy looking stools that may float and are generally large could mean that the pancreas or small intestine are not working well enough and may not be providing enough digestive enzymes. Normal stools may be approx. 1% fat. As this percentage increases toward about 7%, the stool will look oily and greasy.  High fat meals can cause this but should be temporary, unless you habitually dine on a lot of fast foods. An occasional fish fry shouldn’t be a problem.
• Pale or clay colored stools may indicate that your gallbladder or liver is not up to speed.
• Pencil thin or ribbon-like stools are not normal.  It might mean you have a polyp or growth on the inside of the colon or rectum.
• Presence of food: If the stool breaks up easily and you can see bits and pieces of the food you ate, you are probably not chewing your food thoroughly enough. This causes problems like  GERD, acid reflux, abdominal bloating and diarrhea.
• Red or magenta stools– ingestion of beets.  Not to be confused with blood.
• Very dark stools: Too much red wine, too much salt in the diet, not enough vegetables. Other possible causes include: Blueberries, Pepto Bismol and iron pills.

Normal bowel habits are an integral part of a healthy lifestyle.  Maintenance of a healthy colon is instrumental in a strategy to avoid  serious maladies. Another way of saying that is: to know you have an unhealthy colon and to avoid correcting the situation (which usually is as simple as changing you’re diet), is to invite a disaster.  It has been said that life begins and ends with the colon.  The food you eat will either work for you or work against you.  Your stool is the report card of how you’re doing.

Painful cramping, back pain, before and/or after bowel movements is not normal. If you are experiencing any kind of pain with difficult bowel movements, see a doctor.  Change your diet if need be.

Number of Bowel Movements:

Healthy bowel activity is considered one or two movements of moderate size every day. Every other day or once or twice a week bowel movements can affect you negatively, as the colon contents release toxins back into the body through the mucous membranes. It is important to keep that waste moving on down the line.

Healthy Bowel Habits:

There is a usual time of day for every individual when BMs are more likely to occur. You probably anticipate this hour.  It is recommended that the individual participates in activities that may stimulate a bowel movement. It is also important that the individual listen to his or her body -recognize the urge and respond to it right away.  If you think you’re too busy you are shooting yourself in the foot.  The urge will disappear and you can count it as a lost opportunity. The longer stool remains in the rectum, the more water the rectum will absorb from it, making it harder and more painful and difficult to pass.  Drop what you’re doing and get your butt in the privy.

The urge to defecate is often stronger in the morning: getting out of bed and commencing your morning activities triggers the movement of the large intestine. Also, the stomach will send a signal when it expands during a meal.  The reflex gets weaker with age, which is one cause of constipation in older folks and why good bowel habits are helpful.

Laxatives:

It takes time for an improved diet to affect the bowels in a positive way and for the bowel to assume its normal rhythm. One needs to exercise some patience. Enemas are a better solution than laxitives.

Healthy bowel movements require ingestion of a large amount of liquids and bulk foods. The patient should drink two to three quarts of liquids every day. Bulk comes from unrefined foods. Oat bran, wheat bran, brown rice, green vegetables, apples, and pears are a few examples of high residue, high fiber foods.  Eat whole foods.  Stay away from highly processed food-like substances.  Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Some people benefit from psyllium as a fiber supplement.  Psyllium will cause varying amounts of gas.  The addition of WHOLE flax seeds and bran will help with the gas if they are eaten whole. A cup of coffee in the morning often helps people get a regular bowel movement.

Some Natural Laxatives Include:

Coffee

Glycerine suppositories

Oil enemas

Prune juice

Saline purges

 Here is the Scoop on the Good, Beneficial Bacteria -the Probiotics …

Some Notes on Intestinal Bacteria Replacement: Inside the healthy lower intestine are billions of beneficial bacteria or microflora. These bacteria are of the Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus bifidus strains and were originally transferred by breast-feeding into our intestines as newborns. Your body uses L. acidophilus and L. bifidus in some of the final stages of digestion multiplying as necessary to keep in total balance and harmony with the body.

When good bacteria can’t keep up, the bad bacteria overpopulate the colon to give an imbalance which may result in lower bowel diseases, diarrhea, IBS, gas or Crohn’s Disease. The effect caused by harmful bacteria in the gut is rarely diagnosed close to the beginning of this imbalance. Symptoms may include headaches, infections of the skin.  Weakness  and/or constipation can also be a symptom of depleted beneficial bacteria.

What Causes A Gut Flora Imbalance?

Toxins, especially drugs such as antibiotics and narcotics is a big factor.

Severe diarrhea also can damage or destroy beneficial bacteria, setting the stage for harmful bacteria to over-populate and causing over production of by-products like ammonia, purines and ethionine, which may eventually trigger colon cancer.

Fasting can also deplete the beneficial bacteria.   Large quantities of toxins find their way from the lymph glands into the colon during  the fast. Also, with certain diets and certain eating disorders, there would be an absence of certain foods that the beneficial bacteria thrive on.

Using enemas also depletes the beneficial bacteria, especially if chlorinated water is used.

All things considered, I think you may agree, if you can control what you eat -meaning eating more of the beneficial fruits and vegetables and less of (or eliminating, to whatever extent possible) all the junk (highly processed ‘food-like substances) will bring you pretty close to being a healthy specimen.  The other variables are mainly lifestyle choices for many of us (drinking, smoking, etc.).

As far as choosing your foods wisely, here are a couple of guidelines:

• Eat mostly plants -leafy ones.  Fresh fruits and vegetables, obviously, but the leafy plants are important.  We already get too much of the seeds (like corn and soy).
• If a food product has more than a half dozen ingredients and you need a degree in chemistry from MIT, it is not food. It is a food-like substance.
• Eat only things that your grandmother (or, great-grandmother, if you are under 40) would recognize as food.
• Visit Whole Food Nation and peruse the ingredients listed for the Pop-a-Green and Pop-a-Purple whole food supplements and the known benefits of each.  You couldn’t possible eat all those things.  That’s what makes the Pops so attractive.  

Here is a fair question that should provoke some thought: Are Your Vitamins Safe?

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Additional Information:

Johns Hopkins: Probiotics and hynosis for IBS