What your daily bowel movement can tell you about your gut health
Did you know your gut has a daily report card?
If you’re looking to understand the health of your gut, you can tell quite a lot from your body's daily report card…which is your bowel movement! The quality of your daily bowel movement can tell us so much about the current state of your gut.
And yes, that means we are going to talk in depth about your bowel movements in this month's newsletters, so buckle up!
We hear from so many of our clients who have chronically struggled with constipation, loose stools, daily bloating or urgency, that they aren’t even sure they know what a healthy bowel movement would feel or look like.
So that’s where we are going to start, with helping to outline what is the “perfect poop”.
Qualities of the Perfect Poop!:
Frequency and time: Ideally we should be having a bowel movement everyday! Anywhere from 1-3 times a day is ideal, more or less than that might suggest constipation or an overstimulated gut respectively. And the bathroom experience itself should ideally take no more than 5, max 10 minutes to get a fully voided bowel movement.
No drama! Leading up to a bowel movement and even during, there shouldn’t be any acute symptoms like urgency, gas, bloating, pain, cramping or straining necessary. It should be a drama free bathroom experience from start to finish.
Consistency and length: Lets really get TMI here…We are looking for a formed bowel movement that is solid, looks like a log shape and is ideally one or two cohesive pieces. It will typically sink, not have any visible pieces of food, no mucus or blood, and it should be about the length of your forearm.
Color/Smell: For color, we are aiming for the 💩colored crayon in the crayon box color, that light to medium brown color. It shouldn’t be pale brown, yellow or orange in color. That being said, bowel movements can vary based on what you’ve eaten - so if you’ve eaten beets, it can be red but the color should make sense based on what you’ve eaten 12-24 hours ago. The color should be uniform for the most part and not change everyday. It also should NOT have an overpowering or potent smell - certainly not roses - but the next bathroom user shouldn’t need a hazmat suit to survive. That is a sign something is up.
Fully evacuated: Having that feeling that you are fully relieved from the bowel movement is a daily must and we don’t need a second trip right away or within the next 1-2 hours to feel fully evacuated.
The cleanup: No extensive need for cleanup, yup ideally we are seeking ghost poops or as little cleanup as possible. Ideally you shouldn’t need a whole roll of toilet paper to get clean, that often means stool is overly soft.
If you’re more of a visual person, the Bristol stool chart photo will help too - the ideal type is type 4 or even type 3. If your stool looks like these and the experience matches the above characteristics then you are perfect poop material!
Take a moment, reflect on how close or far you might be from the perfect poop experience. If you feel you are already having the perfect poop experience, let's celebrate that! If this is not your experience, we love to bring in gentle curiosity around where there is opportunity for support.
Follow along in this month's newsletters as we dive deeper into what your gut symptoms mean and how to get to the root cause to eliminate your symptoms for good and establish perfect poops for all! And remember, inside of our Nourished Gut Guide you can learn all about the foundational tools that must be in place in order to fully heal your gut.
What does a healed gut feel like?
It is common for people to experience heartburn, bloating, loose stools, low appetite or feel nauseous after eating…but it is not normal!
This is not a statement to make anyone feel vulnerable or picked on. This is to encourage anyone who has been allowing themselves to just “feel fine” to realize there is a reality for you to feel vibrant, in both your gut and body if you so desire!
Picture the day when you wake up feeling energized from a night of restful sleep, with the motivation to start your day (a major non-GI symptom of IBS is poor quality sleep). You wake up with an appetite and are excited for breakfast knowing you have an array of food options to choose from that will make you feel great. You comfortably eat your breakfast and feel satisfied after having gotten an energy boost from the meal, not an energy slump. You pass a comfortable “perfect poop” without stress, worry or urgency and you feel lighter as a result. Your day is off to the races and every meal you enjoy doesn’t sit like a brick in your stomach, your pants continue to fit comfortably and you do not experience any post-meal symptoms like heartburn, gas, bloating or cramping for the entire day. You actually don’t even think about your digestive system at all!
You have food freedom, meaning you can eat a wide variety of foods that all feel good even in combination in your digestive system. You even are able to invite foods back in like dairy, or richer foods like cheeses or fiber rich foods that might have caused symptoms once upon a time and are now symptom free when enjoying them. You are able to be explorative with new recipes without googling “low fodmap foods” or “foods that will make me bloated” at every meal.
You even have the resilience to go out to eat or have the occasional drink - and be a little loose with your nutrition choices to enjoy a celebration, vacation, or special event without suffering the consequences. You are able to feel confident enjoying the present moment without fear or worry of how this will impact your digestive system later on. You don’t go to bed feeling 6 months pregnant, when you definitely are not, in fact you go to bed pretty much the same size and shape as you woke up! You find that enjoying yourself on the weekend doesn’t set you back at the start of every week or exacerbate your symptoms to the point that you need to curl up in bed… or the bathroom… until you feel like yourself again by Tuesday or Wednesday after only eating your safe foods.
For some of you reading, this might be your experience everyday - and that is amazing. But for others, we know this might sound like some far off fairytale that just isn’t in the cards for you in this lifetime. We want you to know that it is possible to have these experiences in your day to day life, in your body, and in your digestive system.
We know because we have helped hundreds of clients achieve this level of ease and comfort - heck we have done it in our own bodies. We are here to support you if you are ready to make this fairytale a reality.
First place to start, our Nourished Gut Guide focuses on the foundations.
If you feel like you are “doing everything right”, the next step is functional testing to learn more about your unique body and having our expert guidance to customize your healing protocol to get results that go beyond the foundations. If this sounds like you, book a strategy call to learn more about our 1:1 practice and lets heal your gut before Summer.
What might your gut symptoms mean if you don’t have a “perfect poop”?
If you struggle with symptoms outside of the perfect poop let’s talk about what some of the big ideas, foundational tools and deeper root causes that your symptoms might be communicating to you.
Hard, lumpy stool that resembles rabbit pellets
This could suggest dehydration or most likely a lack of minerals that help to balance hydration. This can also occur if someone is undereating fiber, carbohydrates or even undereating overall calories that can trigger smaller, less full bowel movements. Unintentional undereating is something we see often, this can be putting stress on your body impacting your hormones such as your stress hormone cortisol and even impacting your thyroid which can in turn slow down your metabolism and motility as a whole, driving more constipation and challenging bowel movements.
Constipation
Constipation is very specific to the person, but here are some general culprits we often see in practice that play a role. It could be lack of fiber or healthy fats in the diet that contribute to slowed motility from a lack of food stimulating the muscles of the colon or lack of healthy fat lubricating stool to move through the gut. Constipation can also be impacted by congestion in the detox and drainage pathways, gut infections, or dysbiosis such as low beneficial bacteria. One of the main culprits we see contributing to constipation is dehydration and lack of minerals which can stem from stress in the body and nervous system. If you think this sounds like you, we have a whole article that takes a closer look at the role of hydration and minerals on your gut health here or check out our storefront for some of our favorite mineral rich products!
Skinny and narrow stools
These can suggest there is inflammation in the gut that is putting stress on the digestive system and potentially leading to swelling in the gut organ. This could also be from lack of fiber and carbohydrates in the diet leading to not enough bulk for a formed bowel movement. We typically run a functional stool test that would show us these inflammatory markers and if there is an underlying infection that is leading to the inflammation response.
Watery stools or diarrhea
This could suggest a lack of fiber, especially soluble fiber which is our favorite gut loving form of fiber from food sources such as of starchy plants like sweet potatoes, carrots and squash as well as chia seeds and ground flax! We can often see this in practice from a lack of beneficial protective and calming bacteria in the gut. Loose stools can also be triggered from a stressed nervous system or eating in a stressed state, causing maldigestion which can move food too quickly through the GI system. It can also suggest inflammation, infection or dysbiosis in the gut, which are root causes we would explore through functional testing to understand in that unique individual.
Frothy, floating, greasy stool or pale, yellow or orange poop
This could suggest maldigested fat in the stool. This is often due to inflammation and congestion in the flow of bile from the liver and gallbladder, which results in maldigestion and congested drainage pathways. Here we like to support our nervous system, improve hydration and optimize bitter foods to get this pathway flowing! Often this is a symptom we are running deeper labs on to understand and support the whole system, so we can fully address it through nutrition, lifestyle and targeted supplements.
As you can see, our bowel movements can tell us a lot just by symptoms alone. We are here to help you listen to your body and respond based on those messages from your body. If you are more chronically struggling with any of these symptoms, the best support is to either start with the foundations which we guide you through in our Nourished Gut Guide self-paced program or explore functional testing and 1:1 support to customize your healing protocol to your unique body. We are here to help either way.
What would I do today to heal my gut?
The first level is the Nourished Gut Guide, it is the backbone to the work we do with our clients to help them build the
We believe that healing is not a linear process. It will not happen overnight by doing just one thing, and taking one supplement will not fix all of your problems. Our approach uses the tried and true process we know is successful and has supported so many of our clients to fully heal their gut and body.
Not fall into the trap of eliminating foods or FODMAPs as a solution - this will only be avoiding a trigger. The real solution is to address what is making these foods a trigger in the first place. When someone is experiencing food sensitivities or relief from symptoms after avoiding things like fodmaps, we know the imbalances involve the microbiome. Testing is how we understand exactly what is going on in the microbiome and the greater gut environment and how to support it as a whole to rebalance and eliminate any food triggers so we can enjoy all categories of foods again symptom free!
Not accept that “this is as good as it gets” and realize how connected my gut symptoms are to my whole experience in my body - I would realize that my chronic gut symptoms are certainly frustrating but that my gut is actually what is contributing to so many other of my frustrating health symptoms. Realizing my chronic gut symptoms are contributing to my low energy and need for 2-3 cups of coffee everyday even though it actually hurts my gut more and wrecks my sleep, which isn’t actually great either because of my gut! That my chronic gut symptoms are contributing to my eczema and acne, symptoms that are really irritating because no topical support seems to be addressing the root cause. That my chronic gut symptoms are playing a huge role in my period problems that leave me bloated, irritated and emotional for 1-2 weeks out of every month…legit half my life!
Realize that the foundations are not just about what I am eating. The foundations that are involved in healing my gut go beyond just food alone. Realizing that the amount I have been obsessing about food alone is actually only one part of healing my gut and that I have been way overly restrictive in my food choices. That actually learning and practicing the other foundational supports would allow me to be less restrictive with food and find more relief in all of my symptoms including my gut, skin and energy.
I would explore functional testing way earlier. Functional testing is a solution when you are working with an expert provider who knows how to interpret the testing and apply it with skill to your body and life as a whole. Functional testing can certainly lead to a targeted short term supplement protocol to address the specific dynamics to get results in a more efficient and effective way. But it should also lead to a deeper understanding of your unique body, how to deeply nourish focusing more on foods to incorporate versus eliminate. It should lead to insight into how to create resilience in the face of stress and how your body responds to stress. It should lead to understanding your body as a whole and how to be more successful in all areas of your health, not just your gut. Your results should leave you feeling empowered, supported and prepared, NOT deprived, fearful and overwhelmed.
If you are ready to heal your gut, we would love to support you. Book a complimentary 30 minute strategy call HERE or click the button below to talk more about your unique needs and learn more about how our practice can help to support you in achieving your goals.
