Your poo shows the state of your digestive health!

A daily peek in the toilet bowl is probably not anyone's favorite thing. But one gastroenterologist says that your bowel movements can be an important clue to the state of your digestive health. Dr Anish Sheth, otherwise known as Dr Stool and Josh Richman outline all the things you can learn from examining your faeces in What's Your Poo Telling You?, a book that uses jokes and trivia as a way to get people comfortable with talking about gastrointestinal health.
"Of course there's a humorous side to the subject of poo," said Sheth, a gastroenterology fellow at Yale University. "But what isn't as well known is that you can learn about your health by looking in the bowl."
So what can your bowel movements reveal?
A Floater is usually the result of too many burritos, but if it comes accompanied by a particularly bad smell and the presence of grease - an indication of fat in the stool - that can be a sign of underlying GI problems, usually related to the liver or pancreas and the body's ability to digest fat.
Thin stools - The Snake - are probably just a sign that you're straining too hard and causing your sphincter to contract, but when seen progressively over a longer period of time they might indicate a colonic blockage due to rectal cancer.
Variations in stool colour are expected, but persistent changes can be an indication of a health problem: green stools can indicate a gastrointestinal infection, while white or grey stools may be the result of a bile duct blockage or liver disease.
Most serious of all is what Sheth and Richman term Rambo Poo. The appearance of blood in the stool is often an indication of gastrointestinal bleeding, Sheth said. Blood can be the result of something relatively minor, like hemorrhoids or diverticulosis. But it could also be the result of colon cancer, and the book advises anyone who sees blood in their stool to visit a doctor.
Sheth pointed out that many people may not realise that black stool can indicate blood as well. GI bleeding can develop gradually over time, he said, so paying attention to bowel movements can help to catch it - and its cause - early on.
There is no perfect bowel movement, Sheth said, and regularity can be defined as emptying your bowels anywhere from three times a day to three times a week. The average weight of a day's worth of stool is 450 g, but day-to-day variations are normal based on factors like diet and stress levels.
Serious issues aside, good bowel movements can affect how you feel each day, Sheth said.
The best way to prevent constipation - as well as more serious GI problems like colon cancer - is to include a lot of fiber in your diet, Sheth advised. "In some ways the book looks at fibre as a panacea for GI disease, and in some ways it's not too far from the truth." The recommended daily fibre intake is 25 to 35 g a day, he said, but the average American eats less than 10 grams. Populations with a high-fiber diet have been shown to have lower incidences of colon cancer and hemorrhoids, he said.
"The benefits of taking in enough fiber range from just feeling great to having healthy bowel habits to preventing more serious complications down the line."
Fruits and vegetables are a good source of fiber, but even if we ate the recommended daily intake we'd still only have consumed half the amount of fiber we should, Sheth said. "The main thing we need to do is increase our consumption of whole grains," he said. As with other aspects of nutrition, it's important to find ways to eat better that you can stick with because they're easy to incorporate into your daily diet - Sheth suggests eating bran or oatmeal in the morning.
While some foods - including dairy, red meat and processed foods - are more constipating than others, they can usually be part of a healthy diet with no bowel issues as long as you're meeting your fibre requirements, Sheth said. "The issue is usually a deficiency in high-fiber foods, not an excess of low-fiber foods."

Fiber fights cancer
Meeting the fibre requirements can help to prevent colon cancer, a cancer that is often deadly, but highly preventable, and which can often be cured when caught early, Sheth said.

Source: News24