Serious Question About Pooping

Factual Questions
1

Er, yes.

I have known two people in my life who claim to poop very infrequently. One listed a poop frequency of once every two weeks and the other listed a “poop wavelength” of a month or more(!). I have known these people well enough to observe their eating habits, and both were rather robust eaters, at least above average in terms of consumption. They were also fairly stable in body mass.

Here’s my question(s)- Is this possible? Where does the mass go? Wouldn’t they swell up like baloons? And if it isn’t possible, why would one claim such a thing?

Thanks in advance,

2

When I was three years old, I was admitted into the hospital for not pooping for 31 days. This was due to me purposely refusing to go and holding it in until my li’l tummy was distended and poochy.

Jarbaby Mom took me to the doctor on several occassions before the hospital admission and they kept saying “I’m sure she’s pooping and you just haven’t seen it.” :rolleyes: because you know, a lot of moms are unaware of their child’s bathroom habits at three years old.

Anyway it has permanently affected my ability to poop, to the point where I’ll sometimes go six or seven days without going.

The point of this story? I don’t know…just to say, it can happen.

jarbaby

3

Because they’re full of shit! :slight_smile:

4

(Officially TMI for me… enjoy!) :slight_smile:
I go regularly twice every day… at the minimum. My wife is lucky to go every 2 or 3 days. When I travel, it throws off my entire routine and sometimes I can’t go for 2 or 3 days.

5

I heard that the little girl from Poltergeist died because she had some kind of condition which made it impossible for her to poop. Could be a rumor.

6

If a “robust” eater told you he goes a month or more without defecating, he’s bullshitting you.

It’s like the complimentary lie to that of the Breatharians - the people who believe that they can get all their nutrients from the air. Except the founder was caught sneaking out in the middle of the night to go chow on twinkies and ho-hos.

Your friends are closet crappers - for some reason they prefer to deny the fact that they have bowel movements like everyone else. They could even be deluding themselves.

Now two weeks I could believe, if the person didn’t eat much. My mom, when she was into heavy dieting, would go 7 to 10 days between poops, but then she’d feel miserable and then binge on laxatives and fiber supplements. Watching her go through all that misery made me determined to be a “regular kinda guy.”

7

A very good friend of mine has chronic irritable bowel sydrome…she will sometimes go up to a week without pooping & says it is awful! I can’t imagine a month, yuck…I don’t even like to go a day without. I think it may be BS…so to speak. Now I’m curious…

If nobody medical answers this question I’ll check back later…my SO is a physician & I’ll get the straight poop. :slight_smile:

8

When I had school (it’s summer vacation now) I would eat two chocolate, chocolate chip muffins every morning and I would shi… I mean, poop at about 2:00 everyday. This was 4 hours after I had eaten. The muffins were very high in Fiber and protein, maybe people who have trouble pooping regularly aren’t getting enough protein and fiber in their diets.

9

She died from TSS (Toxic Shock Syndrome).

10

ya wanted TMI, ya get it…

The longest I’ve gone is 5 days – I was eating MRE’s while in the field at an air force sponsored SAR school…on the 5th night I had what is still to this day the most satafying bowel movement of my life.

I think that anything longer than 5-7 days and you’d begin to become septic…by that time I’d deffinatly be worred about a lower GI impaction.

11

It is quite possible for healthy people to only go once or twice a week, depending on diet. It is not true that you have to have a movement every day, though of course some people do.

A lot of folks believing that you do have to go every day turn to laxatives to help things along and this can be quite bad. Some laxatives artifically stimulate movement of the intestine and if this happens often enough the muscle “forgets” how to move on its own. These people can become laxative abusers and we actually do a blood test profile here at the lab to help doctors spot them.

It is possible to have a blocked bowel if stool becomes impacted in there but that usually happens over a period of time in people that have frequent trouble with constipation. They only become septic if there’s a bad enough impaction to cause an actual bowel rupture which is not a common event.

[sub]Standard disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, just a monkey in a lab coat.[/sub]

12

My friend’s baby didn’t poop for up to ten days at a time. Perhaps even longer. Long intervals between pooping are fairly common in infants, of course, but his were very long. They thought he might have something called Hirschsprung’s disease. However, when they ruled that (and everything else) out, they concluded that he simply was extremely efficient at processing his mom’s breastmilk. Which is plausible, since the food is perfectly tailored to his needs at any particular age.

My friend’s deepest concern was that if this trend was not reversed, her son would miss out on a lot of reading time as he got older.

I dated someone who ate a lot and seemed to poop little. Perhaps he was waking up at 4 am to sneak to the bathroom to defecate; otherwise, I’d say he could go at least 4 days, perhaps longer.

Still no real good medical information being provided, but hey, it’s a topic Dopers seem to have a lot to say about.

13

Oh dear, I feel called to this topic. (Brief, contemplative pause) OK, the feeling passed.

As a Doc, I generally don’t care how often you poop, as long as you’re not abusing laxatives, or needing enemas or manual disimpactions to get things going, and as long as your pooping ain’t painful. The nation is hung up on regularity.

Having said that, constipation is the most common cause of persistant abdominal pain. And this occurs when, over time, more goes in than comes out. If it stays in for 4 days, but generally all goes out, no problem.

It’s ok to poop 3 times a day, and in some cases, it’s ok once a week. If you only go once a week, I hope you have a large capacity, hi flow toilet, or that you flush frequently during the activity.

How can you have healthy poops? Americans don’t eat enough fiber! Fiber is like an exercise machine for the colon. I eat 2 cups of fiber every day, and my colon is my strongest organ! So if you’re otherwise healthy, eat more fiber! And no, salads, celery, and wheaties lack fiber. You need bran, fruits like apples and pears, green and orange vegetables, and other things I forget right now.

But if you start this hi fiber regimen, don’t eat that cup of fiber in the car on your way to work, while drinking a 16 oz. cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. About the time you get stuck in rush hour traffic, you will be a very unhappy camper.

Tomorrow: Persistant rectal itch! Watch for it!

Qadgop, MD
(this advice, while tongue in cheek, is actually factual. Except maybe for tomorrow’s topic)

14

I hope you work that into first-date conversations. I know it’d make me swoon.

15

Everyone listen to Qadgop and eat your fiber!

Every doctor I’ve ever been in the same room with in my entire life has nagged me to take Metamucil, even though I’ve never been constipated! But then, even though I wasn’t constipated, I started getting hemorrhoids the size of SUVs and all my doctor would tell me to do about it was to take Metamucil. So I started guzzling Metamucil and there’s been a huge change in the texture of my shit so that it’s easier to shit, I bleed a lot less when I shit, and this one hemorrhoid has shrunk to the size of a Geo Metro!

When I’m a doctor I’m also going to nag all my patients to take Metamucil, no matter what seems to be wrong with them.

16

I gotta say, I poop about once a week, and I am a very healthy eater; odd thing is, it all seems to disappear. When I do go, it takes about an hour to remove about a cup of gravel (shape and density, not color) from my colon. I have tried doing the fiber thing, but I have a thing about using a toilet other than my own. It has been speculated that perhaps this phobia is the cause of my condition. Maybe I’ll find how to fix it one day, but for now I always feel like I’m carrying some rocks around waistline.

17

Ok, Bob Scene that was way way TMI. In fact this whole thread is.

As for my pooping prowess, longest was 2 days, I have an extrodinary ability to plug any toilet with a single crap. so while I was at my uncles house I didnt go, when I got home, it was quite a nice poop.

My personal favorite is the poo that feels like its tree coming out of your ass, almost hurts, but you can feel the whole thing slide out of your insides, and when you go to wipe, NOTHING!! Its so nice to not have to waste paper on wiping my ass a hunderd times.

18

twice daily for me. When I wake up and right before bed. Sometimes a little extra action in the early evening on special occasions…like the day after chili night at my house.

19

Christ, can’t you people just say ‘shit’? To me that is a hell of alot less nasty than ‘poop’. I’m feeling all ‘poopy’ now just from reading this…

20

we could just say ‘hangin’ a monkey tail’, ‘drownin’ a rat’ or ‘launching a sea pickle’

how’s that :wink: