Online Reporter
LONDON. — The ideal poo is a ‘type 3’ or ‘type 4’ — cracked or smooth sausage — delivered once per day.
Are you a three-times a day kind of person, or is a trip to the lavatory a more rare and special occasion?
And crucially, what does your poo frequency reveal about your health?
Sit down, relax, and learn about the science of poop.
How often we go for a number two can vary from person to person.
Every time we eat, the large intestine contracts and pushes food along the digestive tract.
This automatic “gastro-colic reflex” results in a the release of hormones that create the urge to poo, otherwise known as a “call to stool”.
Most of us have learnt to suppress this urge, however, meaning that once a day or less has become the new norm.
Conventionally, it has often been claimed that one poo a day is a sign of good gut health.
But in the past it wasn’t known what constitutes ‘normal’ when it comes to bowel movements.
One study even implied that anything from one bowel action every few weeks or months to 24 poos a day could be regarded as normal.
However, thanks to the pioneering work of scientists like Ken Heaton, a consultant physician at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in the UK, we now known better.
In the late 1980s, Keaton and colleagues surveyed residents of East Bristol, asking them the rather impertinent question – how often do you poo?
The results revealed a huge variety in bowel movements.
Although the most common bowel habit was one poo per day, only 40% of men and 33% of women adhered to this practice.
Some defecated less than once a week, others three times a day.
Overall, the study concluded that “conventionally normal bowel function is enjoyed by less than half the population and that, in this aspect of human physiology, younger women are especially disadvantaged”.
People who pooed four soft stools a week were 1.78 times more likely to die within five years than those who pooed normal stools seven times a week
Incidentally this wasn’t the only contribution Heaton made to the science of stools.
He later helped devise The Bristol Stool Form Scale, which, with its accompanying illustrations, has become a widely used practical guide to help doctors diagnose digestive problems.
The scale features handy descriptions of stools varying from “separate hard lumps, like nuts” to “fluffy pieces with ragged edges”.
How much is a good amount to poop is also a question occupying Sean Gibbons, a microbiologist at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, US.
Gibbons found that frequent pooers who squeezed out one to three stools a day had a higher proportion of ‘good’ bacteria residing in their guts than those who visited the lavatory less often.
On the flip side of the coin, Gibbons found that people who pooed less than three times a week were more likely to have toxins in their blood that have previously been implicated in conditions such as chronic kidney disease and Alzheimer’s. — BBC.
Mathew Masinge