:sigh Here’s what I mean- say you eat dinner, and fifteen minutes later it feels like you could use the restroom already. Obviously, one of these might be true:
1.) You ate too soon after your last meal, which you didn’t dispose of yet
2.) The dinner you ate is probably something you shouldn’t eat often; or even, you may want to change your whole diet
But my question is: should you find yourself in this situation, is it better to hold on for a little while until you actually need to go, so that your body can digest the food more? In the scenario, your bowels aren’t aching or anything- you just feel a slight gurgle and know that you can go now, or later, either way works.
I’m guessing no, going soon after eating doesn’t = undigested food, because feces is already digested by definition, and leaving it in your stomach longer does not = more digestion of anything. Anyone know?
If you’ve got feces in your stomach, you’re quite ill and are probably going to die soon. Feces exist in your large intestine, which is well past the point where any absorption of nutrients is done.
Additionally, if you have to go after eating, it’s probably just a coincidence. The human digestive system doesn’t work like that.
No cite, but I could swear I read somewhere…maybe one of Cecil’s columns that the stuff coming out is the stuff you ate yesterday. It takes about a day to go completely through your system. That’s also been my experience with using a lot of hot sauce and waiting for that unpleasant burning sensation.
This of course wouldn’t explain eating something that’s obviously bad and then it all comes out an hour later.
Not to mention that the longer you hold it, the more water gets absorbed out of it by the intestinal walls, and the more…er…difficult…it becomes to pass.
They might be true, but the odds are heavily against it. What you’re feeling is probably nothing more than the gastrocolic reflex:
IOW, the presence of food in the stomach sends out a signal that tells the colon that peristalsis is about to begin. This may or may not result in a feeling that defecation is imminent. Certain conditions, like irritable bowel syndrome, can give someone this feeling more often.
Yes, feces is already digested. No, the stomach has nothing to do with it: it’s all in the colon.
As others have said, the feces in the colon is from food eaten many hours earlier. The exact time varies considerably depending on what you eat, in what amounts, with how much liquid, etc. You won’t extract anything more out of it this way, and losing too much water can lead to constipation, stools so hard they will damage the lining of the rectum, or other problems.
To phrase it scientifically, once the poop is already pushing out on your butthole, the only thing you could possibly further extract from it, is water.
Do not spend hours on the toilet straining, you’ll get haemorrhoids, go in, do your business, leave.
Do not ignore an urge to defecate, you’ll just weaken your rectum and sigmoid colon by overstretching- your body is telling you to go for a reason, listen to it.
Eat more fibre.
That’s how you’ll help to prevent diverticulitis, constipation, piles, and probably colon cancer.
But, er, if you strain then doesn’t that make things happen quicker? So wouldn’t you be better to spend hours on the toilet not straining and just letting it come out at its own pace rather than dashing in, pushing out, and getting out?
Yes, my family MD when I was younger was a nut about this. He said “take a book, relax, let it come out without straining”. Don’t spend too long, sure.
Sometimes eatinmg a big meal can trigger your need to have a good shit- but that shit is food from yesterday- or maybe that morning.
Eat more fiber. Get more probiotics in your diet. Yes, that means all of you.
In fact, just getting more fiber in your diet can help most Americans lose some weight. Those “bulk forming laxatives” are really just fiber. If you follow the directions (take with plenty of water) then they are safe to use as a fiber supplement. Do NOT take stimulant laxatives to try and lose weight.
Gurgle? That happens if I have liquid diarrhea- which is usually a BAD thing. :eek:
If you have to spend a lot of time just sitting there waiting for it to come out, then it’s not time for you to go. Leave the bathroom and go back when you actually feel the urge. I can pop in just a couple minutse, because rather than always go everyday at exactly 11:37, I just go whenver I feel the urge. I don’t strain myself, I sit down, give the “all clear” signal to my body, and let it come out at its own pace, which, since I waited until I really had to go, is a couple of minutes.
Habitually “Holding it in” might actually cause **weight loss ** if you do it to the point that you cause distress/mild poisoning. In that case, your body will expel the waste (your body will defeat your will) BEFORE all the nutrients are absorbed and prior to the full breakdown and water absorbtion.
There are lots of studies that have shown that people who read on the toilet and spend a long time in there are much more likely to have haemorrhoids. It’s what we’re taught in Medical school and it’s in all the surgery textbooks.
You only go into the toilet when you need to go, and you leave afterwards. If you put off going until you get home/you have 30 mins to spare/it’s convenient and then force yourself to defecate, it’s much, much worse for you. If you don’t have a strong urge to open your bowels, you should not be sitting on the toilet. If you have a strong urge to open your bowels it shouldn’t take more than a minute or two.
Toilets too might be an issue- where people use a squatting position rather than sitting on a toilet, the incidence of anal fissures and haemorrhoids is much lower.
There’s the story of Denis Burkitt ( the Burkitt’s lymphoma guy), a missionary surgeon in Africa who once asked which animal caused the large piles of faeces he saw at the side of the road- the answer was, of course, people.
Someone with a low fibre western diet will produce 100-300g of firm stool per day, with an average transit time of 3 days. Someone with a high fibre diet common in the developing world will produce 300-800g of softer stool every day, with an average transit time of 36 hours…and they don’t spend hours reading the newspaper on the toilet!
It might sound to some dudes like the advice here is contradicting. Really, it’s not. What you want to do is go when you feel an urge, and once you get there, relax and not strain. If you need to read in order to relax, by all means do so. But- it’s not a reading room- don’t spend too much time in there. Like irishgirl said “don’t spend hours reading the newspaper on the toilet”. But reading for a *few minutes * to get relaxed is fine.
Oh, and a couple BM’s a day is fine.
Get more fiber, eat “live culture yogurt” several times a week.
Squatting is held to be a more natural position - i.e., it’s presumably the position that humans used up until the invention of toilets - and so allows for an easier path for evacuation with less straining needed. And as everybody has said, it’s the straining that causes hemorrhoids.