Most people eat three meals each day. Why, then, do we only need to take a dump once a day and, usually, in the morning. How does all of the food end up being evacuated at the same time?
Also, will drinking hot (as hot as coffee or tea) water aid in digestion?
Thanks!
What’s your basis for the “we” in these two statements? Did you mean “I”?
Dr. W. K. Kellog believed that humans ought to defecate several times a day, as monkeys do. Reading about his treatments - reading what his clients endured - is an eye-opener, and no mistake. :eek:
I guess I would guess that we only empty our bowels when there is no room for anything more - and doesn’t peristalsis play some role in this?
Caffeine speeds up peristalsis, the rhythmic contractions of the GI Tract. Also, the warmth may speed up the process as well. When I was in an animal phys class, we dissected out intestine and applied different temps to it and caffeine, epi, etc and all affected the speed.
Missed the edit window. The Pony Express would be faster than the internet this evening . . .
Anyway. Not W. K. Kellog, but his brother, J. H. Kellog. The Battle Creek Sanitarium.
Well first, much of your food is incorporated into your cells so it never makes it to the large intestine. Finding out the exact percentage would be helpful. I know that feces are at least 33% by dry weight bacteria, so that leaves the rest for waste. I’m also willing to bet if you took all the food you eat at one meal and compressed it into a cylinder, it would not take up as much space as you think.
The bottom line is that the law of conservation of matter says that it will not be created nor destroyed, so that food has to go somewhere. It’s just a matter of tracking it all over your body.
Doctors define normal defection as between three times a day and three times a week. There is huge variation even among “normal.”
Food moves slowly through the intestines. Various estimates place it anywhere from 10 to 24 hours. The slowness of the movement allowed the food to be thoroughly digested - meaning broken down into component amino acids, fatty acids and simple sugars - and absorbed into the body as fully as possible.
Waste materials do reach the large intestine. They are further worked over by the bacteria that live in the gut. Not much is left to be taken out, although some vitamin B12 may be extracted, but water continues to be absorbed. Since most foods contain a high water percentage, this reduces volume even more.
Waste slowly accumulates in the rectum, the last 6-8 inches of the colon. People have different capacities and even more importantly different sensitivities to the stretching signals that indicate how full the rectum is. Adults are not merely potty trained but have some control over training their bodies to relieve on a schedule.
Why do many people routinely defecate in the morning? Your intestines never stop while you sleep. The rectum is filling up over a period of eight hours. And eating breakfast sends a signal known as the gastrocolic reflex (sometimes called gastrocolonic response) that alerts the colon that food is being ingested. The combination of the two is likely to start the pressure building, especially for people who find the timing convenient and get into a daily or semi-daily routine.
This is all hedged with maybes, usuallys, sometimes, in some peoples, etc. etc. etc.
The colon also absorbs short chain fatty acids. These are produced by bacterial breakdown of otherwise-indigestible carbohydrate. Short chain fatty acids are an important fuel source for the colon. The nutrient-absorptive properties of the colon can be exploited in patients who have lost a large amount of small intestine.
Digestion and Defecation
Now I’ve got an altered version of the Frank Sinatra hit going through my head:
*Try, try, try to separate them
It’s an illusion
Try, try, try, and you will only come
To this conclusion
Digestion and defecation, digestion and defecation
Go together like work and vacation
Dad was told by mother
You can’t have one without the other*
The soundtrack will also feature the baked bean-eating campfire scene from Blazing Saddles in the background.
Uh, yes…sorry to be so completely unclear.
I didn’t address the hot water bit.
The body can be thought of as a giant heat sink with several thousand ounces at an internal temperature of about 100 degrees.
What happens if you add to that 8 ounces of liquid at, say, 170 degrees?
Right. The small amount of liquid quickly comes into equilibrium with the surrounding temperature.
The water that moves through the intestines will be at the same temperature as everything else.
This is a good thing, if you think about sluicing quantities of hot or cold liquid through your extremely delicate insides.
Exapno Mapcase: “…Food moves slowly through the intestines. Various estimates place it anywhere from 10 to 24 hours.”
The first meal I ate after my last pre-cleaned-out colonoscopy took 36 hours to exit.
“What happens if you add to that 8 ounces of liquid at, say, 170 degrees?”
I suffer second degree burns of the tongue and roof of my mouth.
Am I misunderstanding, or was this intestine from a live animal? :eek: Maybe I’m glad I never took that animal physiology class…
The times I gave are for food to move through the intestines. Normally there is a continuous stream of material already in the intestines from previous meals that will reach and start to fill the rectum before you take the first bite of that next meal. If you remove this continuous stream, naturally there will be an extra-long gap until the next complete filling.
Why do you only take the trash out when the bin is full?
I am regular (3 or more times a day), and after my last colonoscopy, my dinner eaten at 7 pm left me at 7 am the next day.
Anecdotally, a big mug of hot, strong tea is very effective in my experience.
I have a question.
Over the past couple of weeks I have experienced nightly BMs. Big BMs too. Like, I feel proud after I have them. I attribute this to the extra fruits (dates and prunes) and vegetables that I have been eating.
Prior to this change in diet, however, I would go once every other day. Or maybe every other other day. And the poops would often be small and unsatisfactory.
I know that fruits and vegetables have a lot of indigestible material, but it just seems to me that my BMs are too frequent and too big to be simply the product of a little extra roughage. It seems like extra stuff is coming out. If this is the case, then are people who don’t eat fruits and vegetables literally full of crap?
It’s not just the weight/volume of the fiber itself; the fiber swells and hangs on to a lot of water that would otherwise be pulled out of the stool by the colon. The extra indigestible (to you) material also is a bonus food supply for colonic bacteria, which increase in bulk too. They get swept out along with the stool, too.
A healthy person who eats a diet poor in fiber may have smaller, drier stools, but that doesn’t mean that they are retaining stool; just that they have denser stools.
Do zombies defecate?