What is the secret to a good bowel movement?
When we are unpredictable with our diet, stress levels, sleeping habits, activity levels, one place that we can commonly see this inconsistency is in our bowel movements.
It's not a topic that is in a lot of peoples day to day conversations. If it is brought up in conversation, it is usually done so in the way of a joke (they say it's all shits and giggles til someone giggles and shits). Most of the time, it can be uncomfortable to talk about, there can be feelings of embarrassment, shame or secrecy attached to it as well.
However, it's something that happens and should be happening every day and you can tell so much about your health from what you see in the toilet. Hopefully this post can help you appreciate what “number two” does for our health.
When you poop better, you feel better. It's as simple as that. If you have experienced constipation or diarrhea you can agree.
So, let's start with what healthy poops should be:
Ideally, you want to be having 2-3 bowel movements a day, or as frequent as you eat. So if you are eating 3 meals a day (not to mention snacks in between) you want to be having a bowel movement 3 times a day. At minimum, you want to be having a bowel once a day.
A transit time of 18 - 24 hours.
When it's a lot faster than this, nutrients are not properly absorbed, you lose water and this is called diarrhea.
If it stays in the colon longer than this and becomes hard and difficult to pass, this is called constipation.
Easy to pass without straining.
Brown in colour.
Snake like forms that make little or no splash and taper off at the end. This usually means your external sphincter has opened and closed in a relaxed and less forced manner.
Floaters that hangout midway through the bowl.
You might be thinking “wow, that's a lot” or maybe you are thinking “my poops need some help… but where do I start?”
Here are a few things that you can focus on to improve your poops:
Chew, Chew Chew your food.
Chewing and slow meals are becoming a lost art in North American culture. Society and meals have become fast paced and it shows in our bowel movements. People are busy, meals are rushed and often eaten on the run or while being distracted. Taking time to slow down and enjoy your food not only allows you to savour your meals a bit more but allows your body to work its wisdom. Chewing is the only conscious part of our digestive system that we have control over. Through the act of chewing we allow our saliva to become rich in digestive enzymes,and to properly mix with our food. This starts breaking down our food mechanically and chemically before swallowing. Chewing more thoroughly helps reduce large amounts of poorly digested food reaching the colon, and thus better bowel movements.
Photo by Larissa Ide, @larissaidephotography
Eat foods that your bowels will thank you for!
Fibre friendly foods - this means a combination of soluble and insoluble fibre which are also prebiotic in nature (prebiotics are the foods that feed the good gut bacteria/ probiotics)
Fermented foods that have that probiotic benefits, make them yourself or get them in the cool section at the grocery store.
Eat the rainbow - make sure you are getting an assortment of colours in your diet from fruits and veggies - red, green, yellow, purple, blue
Reducing processed foods where the fibre and other nutrients have been removed and the artificially added back in. Look for words like enriched and fortified on food labels.
Blended soups, smoothies and other foods are a great way to have an easy meal to digest.
Relax at meal times
Stress will freeze digestion. When we are trying to eat on the go, in a rush or stressed, it is detrimental to our digestive health. This is because our energy is moved away from our digestive tract, towards our extremities and skeleton muscles involved in our fight or flight response. If your body has to choose between running / fighting stress or digesting your meal, it's going to pick the one that keeps you safe, and not the one that's digesting your lunch. This often results in potentially undigested food in the colon, feeding the bad gut bacteria and affecting our transit time and thus our poops.
Listen to your body when you hear the call of nature.
How many times have you had to poop and hold it in? When our body is speaking to us and we consistently ignore what it is saying, it will stop speaking. When you have the urge, go and try.
If you read this and realize that your poops could be saying better things about your health and you want to figure out the root cause as to why they might be off, let's chat. click here to book a free consultation.
