Episode 167
The Down & Dirty (Part 2): What Your Poop Says about Your Health
The Salad With a Side of Fries podcast is hosted by Jenn Trepeck, discussing wellness and weight loss for real life, clearing up the myths, misinformation, and bad science & marketing surrounding our nutrition knowledge and the food industry. Let’s dive into wellness and weight loss for real life, including drinking, eating out, and skipping the grocery store.
In today’s episode, Jenn discusses the down and dirty of what our poop tells us about our health. She shares what frequency, consistency, size and shape, and color all tell us about how our intestines work and what the food quality is doing for our bodies. Changes in your bowel movements can be a sign of something going wrong in your body, so tracking what your stool looks like over time and the food you are eating is a great way to keep tabs on general health. Tune in today to learn how much elimination is in our control.
IN THIS EPISODE:
● [04:53] What can our poop tell us about our health?
● [07:59] What is our poop made of?
● [09:30] What does frequency tell us? How to find each person's “normal”.
● [17:25] What does consistency tell us?
● [24:55] The Bristol Stool Scale - What size and shape tell us?
● [32:24] What does the size tell us?
● [36:18] What do different colors tell us about our poop?
● [46:25] How do we put all of this together?
● [52:09] What about probiotics and prebiotics?
● [53:55] How does this come together with our lifestyle choices?
● [54:17] You can train yourself for elimination.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
● A person poops 5 tons in a lifetime!
● It's about knowing what your typical bowel movements are and looking for changes. Areas on each end of the spectrum (hard small poop, or diarrhea) could be causes for concern and something to look at with your doctor.
● You can have more than one type of poop in a day. It all depends on what was consumed. If issues are going on for a week or two, it’s time to seek help.
● Fiber is vital to our stool. We want our fiber to come from our vegetables and fruit. Fiber needs water to do what it needs to do; our stool is 75% water.
● Exercise is a big part of elimination. Quality fat helps move things through your body. The fiber guideline is a minimum of 25g per day. The water guideline is eight glasses of water.
QUOTES:
“Female colons are longer than men's colons because they have to navigate more around organs.” Jenn Trepeck
“Transit time is 18-72 hours. That's why keeping track of our food and activity and all these things is so important because mentally, we go to the most recent thing; that's not really how the body works. So it makes the argument for keeping track of all these things on paper instead of in your head, we certainly have the recency bias, and it requires tracking over a longer period of time so that we can say every time that happened, what happened three days before?” Jenn Trepeck
“What could cause us to have signs of constipation? Is it water? Is it fiber? Is it mainly that we need some better fat? The other piece is to think about some medical conditions or if you are taking medications. These could impact it; it might have nothing to do with your nutrition choices.” Jenn Trepeck
“If we don't get enough fiber, if we don't eliminate enough, we see higher rates of disease.” Jenn Trepeck
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