Everybody Poops
When it comes to figuring out if you’re digesting things
properly and eating healthy, Dr. Mehmet Oz says that you should rely on your
senses in the bathroom. For starters, have you ever thought about the
importance of what your bowel movement sounds like when it hits the water?
Listen up!
"You want to hear what the stool, the poop, sounds like when it hits the
water. If it sounds like a bombardier, you know, ‘plop, plop, plop,’ that’s not
right because it means you’re constipated. It means the food is too hard by the
time it comes out. It should hit the water like a diver from
Acapulco
hits the water [swoosh]."
The next thing Dr. Oz recommends is looking at your stool—c’mon, you’ve done it
before! You should look twice—look at the shape and then, the color.
"It should be an S shape and you want to make sure the color’s normal
because the color of the poop tells you a lot about how you made it," Dr.
Oz says. "You don’t want [pieces]. Food is a medicine for you. It helps
you. [If the stool is in pieces] by the time you finished digesting your food,
you don’t have enough of it left to poop out in the right way and probably it’s
hurt the colon that has to process it. At the end of the day you can analyze
your body really effectively by looking at what comes out of your body."
Here’s a pop quiz. What part of your body is most similar to
your brain? The surprising answer is your small bowel, where most digestion
occurs.
"That’s the saying, you know, you’ve got blank for blank," Dr. Oz
jokes. "But the thing about the small bowel is it has primitive messenger
chemicals that tell the bowel how to work. If your bowel’s not happy, those
same chemicals influence your brain."
In this bowel the green stuff is bile, material in the process of being
digested. Dr. Oz says it’s important to listen to what your bowel tells you.
"A lot of times you don’t pick up on the subtle clues," he says.
"It will tell you that you feel washed out or tired or a little bit of
cramping. Or, you know, if you wake up in the morning and just don’t feel like
yourself, you probably had something allergic that you didn’t clue into."
Susan
(left), a busy, working mother of three children, says that she struggles with
constipation—sometimes only going to the bathroom once every five days. She
admits to not getting enough water, instead opting for eight cans of diet soda
a day. She also says she likes to eat a lot of cookies and chips, but doesn’t
get enough fruits and vegetables.
Maureen (right), a mother of four children, says that her health is the last
thing on her mind. She suffers from diarrhea, hemorrhoids and constipation.
"My hemorrhoids feel so bad that it’s like grapes hanging out of my
rear," she says. "Sometimes they hurt so bad, I can’t get out of bed
for two days." Maureen admits to eating too much fast food, and not
getting enough fiber and water in her diet.
"I
mean, their bodies are screaming to them," Dr. Oz says of Susan and
Maureen’s health. "’Help me. Help me.’ Their big colon is saying, ‘I need
something from you.’ And they’re not processing it. … We are the best health
educated society in the history of mankind but we don’t take information and
use it to motivate us to change our behavior."
On top of suggesting to Susan and Maureen to change their diets, Dr. Oz says
that Susan and Maureen need to pass gas more often and not be ashamed—we all
need to! Dr. Oz says that the average person passes gas 14 times a day—and less
than one percent of it actually smells. He says it’s so important that we start
creating a "no embarrassment zone"—we need to pass this much
gas!
If
more "number two" is a "number one" priority, add these
foods to your shopping list now!
http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/health/wellnessandprevention/slideshow1_ss_yourbody_digestion/4
