A normal pooper is neither defined as one that visits the restroom once every three days nor as one who has daily sessions. He is rather one that doesn’t have to pay attention to his schedule. Because, let’s face it, you don’t make appointments with your poop. Your poo does. And when your poo goes about its routine and happily plops into its rightful place at the bottom of the toilet, there’s little care required from your behalf. On the flip side, when too many rainchecks pile up (or unusually frequent appointments) and your poo makes a real deal out of goodbye, you will inevitably spring into alert mode. It’s then that you become aware that something’s wrong. So, it’s not the normal frequency of your fecal urges that should disrupt you, but the sudden change of it.
Typically, the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse cites that the upper limit to bowel movement is once in three days. On the fourth day, you’re considered constipated. According to Rome III, a panel of international experts, for the diagnosis of constipation, irregular frequency should be also accompanied by straining during defecation and feeling unfinished. After three days, your body has absorbed most of the stool moisture and it grows dry and hard to pass. However, this might not be true. Konstantin Monastyrsky, author of the book ‘Fiber Menace’, argues that high-fiber diets might have caused what’s called latent constipation, a condition of irregular bowel movement we consider normal. According to him, we should poop right after every meal. I don’t believe it, but everyone should feel free to judge for themselves.
That said, the average individual has one bowel movement every day with a range between once a day and three times weekly, excreting one ounce for every 12 pounds of body weight. So, a 160-pound person will extract almost a pound of fecal matter a day. However, the average is not also the norm.
“There is no normal when it comes to frequency of bowel movements, only averages” says Bernard Aserkoff, MD, a doctor in the GI Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Some people go more, and some less. As long as you feel comfortable, you don’t need to give your bowel movements much thought.
As mentioned, the real cause of worry should be an alteration in bathroom habits.
Causes of irregular pooping habits
Consider the following questions:
Did you recently eat something out of your ordinary diet? Did you buy groceries from a store that isn’t your usual market place?
Are you on vacation? Or, have you recently been travelling?
Do you have your period? Are you pregnant? Has your menstrual cycle recently ceased?
Is there a situation currently in your life that produces stress?
Did you recently change jobs? Are you working on a night shift?
Did you ignore a fecal urge for days?
All of the above are valid reasons to make your digestive system go nuts.
It is reported that as many as 40% of people experience constipation while they travel, due partially to their gut bacteria’s reaction to the environmental change.
“Any time you leave your general habitat, it’s throwing your gut microflora off balance,” says Brooke Alpert, a New York-based registered dietician. Furthermore, jetlag can mess with your biological clock and sitting on a plane or in a car for hours can make your intestines inactive. Unfamiliar, new places make it difficult for our muscles to relax enough to excrete and if you’re a victim of toilet anxiety, the stress of having to use an “unsafe toilet” might cause your colon to clog. On the other hand, foreign bacteria might also induce the opposite problem: diarrhea.
It’s generally recommended that high fiber and fluid intake can prevent constipation, as they accelerate gut and intestinal motility. However, recent studies have found that fiber can actually worsen poop-making. Science is so controversial about its findings nowadays, it is difficult to keep tract with what’s true and what isn’t. Not to mention how unique each individual is. For instance, probiotics are hymned as products that ease your gut, but if you’re lactose intolerant, yoghurt is certainly not the answer for you. If the foods you’ve been consuming have had no impact on your poop until now, it’s probably something you ate rather than your whole diet that should be blamed.
Work schedules that include altering shifts weekly can mess with your bowel movements. Your body is usually programmed to poop during the day. Taking a night shift, like jetlag, can mess with your inner tick-tock. That’s because you grow exhausted during the night, so once you return home, you just collapse into the bed, completely ignoring any urge to go number two.
Exciting events might puff fuzzy feelings in our stomach, but stressful situations wreak havoc in our gut. ““There’s a lot of coordination in your brain communicating with your anal sphincter and rectum to have a bowel movement,” says Gina Sam, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Mount Sinai Gastrointestinal Motility Center. In fact, your brain and gut are part of a cyclical system. Mental anxiety disrupts the normal operation of our stomach and vice versa.
Why do women poop more during periods and pregnancy?
Apparently, the pains of having a uterus never cease. During their menstrual period girls experience cramps, abdominal pain, nausea, headaches and yes, diarrhea.
The main perpetrator to blame for this monstrosity is prostaglandins. They are a type of hormones that your body squirts inside your uterus during your period days. Some of their numerous roles is to signal the beginning of the shedding of the uterus lining and trigger contraction of the muscles. The problem begins when these hormones leave their birth place and escape to your colon. Poo, if you think about it (well, I’m sure you’d rather not), is also a muscle. And prostaglandins love contracting muscles.
Another hormone that contributes to loose stools is progesterone. Progesterone is constipating. Right before your period the levels of progesterone in your body fall, which stimulates bowel movement.
Diarrhea can also be an issue in women during the first trimester of pregnancy and, sometimes, toward the end of it. This can be either hormonal or caused by anxiety. However, it is generally preferred to excrete liquid rather than hard lumps of fecal matter, as the straining might trigger an early labor or conditions like hemorrhoids.
Is fast or slow metabolism related to the frequency of bowel movements?
Shortly answered: No. Our bowel movements are directly linked to the digestive process, which regards how our body accepts and wastes food. Metabolism refers to how our cells utilize the calories we have absorbed from food during digestion.
So if you see the corn seeds you ate at lunch in your evening poo, it does not mean you have a fast metabolism.
Sometimes, we get a fecal urge right after we eat. People misinterpret this sensation, thinking that their body fast-metabolized what they just ate. In reality, there’s a science behind this phenomenon. Because your stomach stretches when you eat, it stimulates a process called ‘peristalsis’: the contraction and relaxation of intestinal muscles in order to propel food waste forward. This is our body’s instant reflex to make room for whatever’s about to come down the pipeline. It is known as the “gastro-colic reflex,” and it can particularly occur in the mornings or after eating. That’s why people have to run to the bathroom soon after a meal. In the morning, the feeling is stronger due to external factors such as morning hormone levels and coffee intake. The resulting bowel movement can be loose or urgent, and this often leads people to think that what they just ate “ran right through” them. In other words, people assume that the food they just consumed was processed and metabolized within minutes—and expelled immediately. No one’s digestive process is that fast!
Latent constipation and hemorrhoids
From the book “Colon Hygiene”, by J.H. Kellogg, M.D., LL.D.:
“In this form of constipation the stools are regular, the bowels move every day, and there is no accumulation of feces in the rectum. The patient is generally unaware of the fact that he is suffering from constipation, although not infrequently an observing patient becomes notified that there is something wrong, often because of too frequent bowel movements, which are not uncommon, together with pain, the passage of mucus, perhaps, and other symptoms.”
In a London clinic a Scotch laborer once complained of having too frequent bowel movement. The examining doctor said to him, “Then you are suffering from diarrhea”.
“No, Doctor,” replied the patient, “I think I am suffering from constipation in diarrhea form.”
Yes, this can happen.
This patient was found to have a very extensive accumulation of feces due to cancer of the rectum.
This can also become the case with pregnant women. Though bowel movements are frequent, they require a lot of straining to be expelled. For this reason, most pregnant women don’t recognize the condition as constipation. This diagnostic failure can lead, in many cases, to an even worse outcome: Hemorrhoids
Hemorrhoids are unusually swollen blood veins in the rectal territory. They range from the size of a pea to the size of a grape and can be inside the rectum or protrude through the anus (I know, disgusting!) Usually they are itchy or painful and in many occasions they can cause rectal bleeding.
How to become regular again
I’m not gonna suggest that old, over-used advice – “Talk to your doctor”. Because you obviously didn’t search “normal bowel movement frequency” to hear that you should seek medical advice (I really have no idea why every other health site throws it in as the ultimate solution – Like, “Don’t ask me, ask them.”)
Let’s be honest, unless you have or suspect a serious GI illness, most of you will opt to cure yourselves on your own (because talking about bowel issues always comes with slight embarrassment). There’s a variety of recommended ways to become regular again.
As far as dietary plans are concerned, fiber and fluids are an effective way to treat constipation, though only in cases of sporadic constipation. Probiotics and BRAT diet, on the other hand, are recommended for diarrhea. BRAT stands for banana, rice, applesauce and toast. From my experience, soda crackers work miracles.
If stress is involved in the illness, you should consider healing not only your gut, but your brain as well. Include some form of exercise into your daily schedule, or if your routine cannot allow time for that, choose to wake up earlier and jog or walk to your work. Manage your sleep schedule and try some meditation and breathing control. Positive thoughts stimulate the brain into making biochemical and neurological alterations to set your system back in order.
One home practice I would like to introduce is hydrotherapy. This type of therapy utilizes the properties of water, such as temperature and pressure, to alleviate pain and stimulate blood flow. It can be performed at home with the help of a friend or relative. Two of its methods are the successive application of hot and cold baths and the wet girdle.
J.H. Kellogg elaborates:
“A hot bath at the temperature of 102° to 103° should be applied for one to three minutes. Then the outlet should be opened and cold water should be poured on the abdomen while the water is running out.” The cold water temperature should be in a range between 60° and ice cold. Ask your friend or relative to gradually lower the temperature, while you adjust to the cold.
The wet girdle is a simple method that has been used for centuries by the peasants in Europe. It is basically a lengthy coarse towel that is applied as an abdominal girdle. Half of it must be wet, with the rest of it remaining dry. The towel should be changed before it becomes dry. It For more details on its exact application, see this page.