There’s a reason to pay attention to how often you poop: Regular bowel movements can be quite essential for good health.
Let’s go over why that’s so, as well as some tips to help you have better bowel movements, including how to pass hard stools.
There isn’t an exact number.
Bowel activity varies for each person.
However, medicine and science will often use the “basic rule of three” to describe a typical movement, meaning you have bowel activity anywhere between three times a day and three times a week.
You’ll poop more or less each day (or week) depending on a number of factors, such as your:
While the appearance and consistency of a person’s poop can vary from person to person, most people’s poop is formed, brown, and soft.
If yours is rarely like this (such as always hard or always liquid), you may want to speak with a doctor.
Pooping shouldn’t be painful.
If you frequently have bowel movements that are painful to pass or result in cramping after you make them, it’s time to speak with a doctor.
You could have a condition like (IBS), Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis.
Different factors can trigger either symptom, such as:
Regardless of the underlying cause, though, constipation and diarrhoea occur when intestinal contractions either speed up or slow down.
Gut contractions help move stool through the colon.
But sometimes, the muscles contract too much or too little.
Diarrhoea happens when these muscles contract more than usual, whereas constipation happens when they don’t contract enough.
Kind of obvious, but bowel movements (sometimes called BMs for short) are your body’s way of getting rid of waste that doesn’t have any use in the body.
While it may not look like it, poop is about three-fourths water.
The remainder is a collection of materials that includes bacteria, fats, fiber, food wastes, mucus, salts.
Another poop component is bilirubin, a brownish-red substance that’s the result of a breakdown of wastes from the liver and bone marrow.
Bilirubin is what gives poop its usual brown color.
A person has to poop to survive because the body doesn’t have a way of getting rid of these wastes otherwise.
If a person doesn’t poop for many days, the stool can back up in the intestines.
If this goes on for too long, it starts to pose a risk to your safety and can damage your organs.
This is why pooping and pooping regularly is so important for your health.
Pooping is part physical, part mental. If you aren’t pooping as easily or often as you’d like, addressing these aspects can help.
This adds bulk to your stool, which stimulates the bowels to move and propel your stool forward.
However:
Don’t incorporate too much fiber into your diet at a time — it can have an opposite, constipating effect.
Instead, try to add a serving every 5 days to allow your digestive tract time to acclimate itself to the increased fiber.
When it comes to hydration, make sure it is well balanced with electrolytes, especially sodium (many people nowadays actually UNDER- consume sodium!
Particularly if you are an active individual, you can very much benefit from adding salt to your food!).
Don’t forget about potassium and magnesium either!
Probiotics can aid digestion too. You can either take capsules, or get healthy bacteria from fermented food sources like kimchi, yogurt, or kefir. A diverse gut bacteria community or microbiome is essential for regular bowel movements.
In addition to constipation that makes stools harder to pass, some people experience stool that’s too loose.
When this is the case, cutting out foods that can irritate the stomach can help. Examples to cut from your diet include:
Try cutting out these foods to see if your bowel movements are less watery.
You can also keep a food and symptom diary to identify connections between the foods you eat and the symptoms you experience.
Your intestines have a natural motion that moves stool forward.
If your body isn’t moving stool through fast enough, then you can help it out with increased exercise.
Physical activity, such as walking, running, or swimming, can all promote motion that helps you poop better.
Even short amounts of activity — 10 to 15 minutes — can help.
It may be particularly helpful to go for a 10 minute walk after each one of your meals or when you first wake up in the morning.
If you are generally someone who eats at regular times you will know what I am talking about.
Eating at roughly the same times and similar quantities is amazing for ‘training’ your body to poop at similar times.
Play around with these meal timings until you have found a sweet spot and see if you can replicate it as often as possible.
Another tip you can try has to do with your posture on the toilet.
Changing the angle of your legs changes the angle of your colon.
Toilet footstools are one accessory that you can use in the bathroom to do this.
Some people find that it helps them have a more comfortable and effective bowel movement.
Even if you don’t have a footstool to raise your feet, you can still try adjusting your posture.
While you’re sitting on the toilet, try planting your feet on the ground so that your knees are higher than your seat or higher than usual.
Doctors have identified a mind-body connection to pooping.
For example, many people cringe at the idea of pooping in a public restroom.
Here are some ways to address the connection between your brain and intestines:
Stress and pooping are highly connected.
Try to create a calming environment in your bathroom where you have privacy.
Avoid rushing yourself — give yourself at least 10 minutes to go to the bathroom.
Bowel movements require food, fluids, and calm to create a more comfortable experience.
If you try these tips, and your symptoms aren’t getting better, speak with a doctor, but remember that feeling some irregularities is normal from time to time, specifically after travel, when introducing new foods, being more stressed etc.