What's the straight dope on bowel moments (let's try to restrain ourselves :-) )

Factual Questions
1

I want to keep this thread as simple and clean as possible and I think it would be great if everyone did their utmost to avoid TMI.

This is the issue: All my life, I have heard people giving all kinds of opinions about the “correct” toilet habits and “good” bowel movements. Ask certain people and they say you must move your bowels at X frequency only (usually once a day) and the result must have a certain timing/shape/texture/colour/size/odour. Any deviation of this is labeled as “unhealthy” (including my routine urge to go as soon as I get home from work). I know that in India, one of the routine questions asked when you consult a physician is about your “metabolism,” i.e., how often, what time of the day, etc. Failure to have a movement first thing in the morning on just one day is labeled as “constipation.”

Is there any truth to the general idea that if your bowel movements don’t fall within certain parameters then it is a sign of unhealthiness? I’m not talking about obvious signs of illness, such as diarrhoea, abdominal pain, etc.

2

(There was a thread on this one a while back, believe it or not.) If you feel OK, it really doesn’t matter what kind of schedule you’re on, or the characteristics of what comes out. You shouldn’t have pain or extraordinary difficulty or discomfort, but things can vary widely depending on your metabolism and what you ate that day.

Attempts to prescribe specific bowel behavior are a throwback to the 19th century. (When I’d visit my grandmother, she made me sit in the bathroom every morning until I satisfied her expectations. She felt that if you weren’t going every morning that toxic waste was building up in your body.)

3

Could this have something to do with John Harvey Kellogg?

It’s interesting that this prescription seems to be embedded in traditional cultures as well, such as in India. I have a vague idea that such ideas exist all over Asia.

4

Denis Burkitt may have had more to do with the promotion of large soft frequent stools (at least in modern times). Plus he wasn’t fixated on a crusade against onanism, as far as I know–it’s a little easier to take a guy seriously if he’s not trying to fry a clitoris with carbolic acid. When I was in Med School I once heard him give a lecture in which he promoted the idea that our diet should be such that “stool breaks” (sic) would be a common and accepted practice associated with any long meetings.

Generally, Burkitt-type stools probably help avoid hemorrhoids, perhaps help avoid diverticular disease and not much else. Certainly small hard stools and chronic constipation are significant annoyances. Other dietary and risk factors such as family history and smoking probably have more influence on really terrible diseases like bowel cancer, though, than the quality of stools themselves.

The exact timing of your stools is more related to your own dietary and internal rhythms than any objective “health” standard, and fixating upon those times more a reflection of culture, upbringing and OCD than it is productive.

5

Utter crap. :slight_smile:

I’ve researched the subject fairly extensively. When you find out that “normal” movement is defined as from anywhere from three a day to three a week, and that “chronic” diarrhea starts after three weeks[!], you realize pretty quickly that individual habits, foods, and physiology are as diverse in this regard as they are in every other aspect of humanity.

If you don’t feel well, go to a doctor. If your bowels are working to your satisfaction, don’t listen to people who know nothing about digestion. Which is apparently just about everybody in American society. And from what I’ve read in dozens of articles from the UK over the past year, we’re a paragon of understanding and knowledge compared to the nutcases who get their idiocy published in major newspapers over there.

6

So what kinds of idiocy did you see in British newspapers?

7

Why the “(sic)”?

8

I’m guessing because it seems like a bit of an idiosyncratic use; that is, it’s not commonly heard. Most people would say “bathroom breaks” or something else similarly less specific.

9

Well I was told in the UK not to call them “bathroom breaks” because you were not bathing in there. And you weren’t resting in there either, so don’t call it a “restroom break”.

10

His mother must be so proud!

11

It was his phrase, exactly, and caused a bit of a twitter.

Generally, we’d expect a non-specific break, and leave it as a polite fiction if it happened to be used for the Big Dump. His point was that passing stools should be encouraged to the extent that the actual purpose fo the break was assigned to it.

12

In the circles I move in we usually say that "We’re off for a shit I may be some time " and its not because we sit there reading the paper,its because afterwards we spend a lot of time checking the colour against a colour chart,the weight,density,aroma etc.just to keep tabs on our health.

As to frequency I personally like to stay flexible,adapting the timings to the conditions on the ground.

When me and my mates all got dysentry in the far east it was a pretty much decided on a democratic basis that when we were on our nature ramble that we would mostly take it in turns to have a crap quite often,infact very often,very very often.

It was also pretty much universally agreed that we would scrub round doing our dumps in freezer bags and carrying it as we would have ended up carrying half of ton of liquid shit with us,also we decided after a while not to bury it because we had neglected to take heavy earth moving equipment with us as it would have been too heavy to put in our Bergens and that would have been the only thing that could have coped with so much excavation.

By the way the fucking tablets DID NOT block us up.
The British Army operating in the jungle is incredibly devious,no washing,deoderants or even tooth brushing for several days before you set out because the bad guys can smell you.
Pity we couldn’t do fuck all about the smell of shit that must have followed us mile after mile.

All that stopping to listen every so often,listen!they must have been able to smell us from miles away.

In actual fact thats probably what saved our “arses”.
The bad guys probably caught up with us and then started gagging on the stench and then thought "Ah Well,fuckit no need to jump these people right now lets have a day off,we can always get them some other time "

And no lets not stop to eat I dont feel very hungry just right now.

And dont you believe all that bollocks about the highly trained indigenous trackers noticing that a moths wing had traces of dew on it so that obviously"Eight men one of them with a moustache,two of them Man.Utd. supporters etc. passed this way.

Even the Captain of the England cricket team could have seen our trail.
Yep you cant beat "Hearts and Minds "dish out some medical treatment to the locals and then let them poison you with a feast in your honour.
It must have totally perplexed them that we sort out their illnesses but then cant sort our own out,maybe they thought that it was some sort of ritual atonement or something.

And now I’m off to have a lie down as I’m obviously distraught.

13

You and I obviously travel in very different circles. I’m in my early forties and I have yet to have such a conversation with anyone.
Lust4Life I haven’t laughed so hard in weeks, thanks.

14

Mild recreational rant about the unintended consequences of the poopie break euphemism treadmill.

15

When my mom was in summer camp (1950s), they actually had a “BM Chart!” :eek: They had to report on their BMs to the counselor, and if they missed a day, they got sent to the nurse!

I’ve never heard of a concern for what time of day you’re supposed to go, however. Though come to think of it, I have heard it said that you’re supposed to go at the same time every day…

I’m wondering whether all this concern with bowel movements may stem from the fact that we really had very little idea of what was going on in the human body until fairly recently. The germ theory of disease only came around in 1860 or so. In most cases, surgery was was more dangerous than whatever the ailment was until recently, too. And doctors had much less opportunity to even study cadavers back then.

But poop was something that people could easily examine and analyze. It probably seemed to be a concrete (pardon the pun) example of…something. So it’s not surprising that a lot of attention was paid to it. And it’s not surprising that misguided ideas about regularity and such were perpetuated from parent to child.

Of course, we’re still analyzing poop for medical reasons, albeit in different ways. But fortunately, doctors have determined that there is a pretty wide range of “normal” as far as frequency and consistency of bowel movements.

16

What would you call them then?

In any case, I think your point is really that “restroom” and “bathroom” are not commonly used terms in the United Kingdom. I would still be surprised that it would be as specific as “toilet.” I mean, who really wants to know?

In the U.S., general terms are preferred, even if they’re not precise, because, well, nobody really wants to know that much what you’re doing on your break. Everybody needs them, so why not let everyone have them and let them do what they want?

Actually, at formal meetings and conferences, I believe “coffee break” and just plain “break” are more common. If the term “coffee break” is used, nobody understands it to mean that you are being instructed to drink coffee and not do something else.

17

Well, in Britain, if it doesn’t have a bath in it it’s called a toilet or (much less commonly) a WC or lavatory. The question seems to really be; why are Americans so squeamish about using the right term for a place we all go to several times a day?

18

Five years after I had my frst colonoscopy, I went back for another.

After we were underway, the doctor asked why I had come back for seconds.

I answered, “I’ve been having two BMs a day, and was a little worried this might be a sign of something bad.”

He told me I was full of shit.

19

That’s just the “family-safe” name. I seem to hear the word “shitter” thrown around pretty frequently in reference to the room and the actual appliance.

20

I don’t think it’s really a matter of squeamishness. I for one am just not interested whether someone wants to use the couch to recover from P.M.S., use the basin to wash one’s hands, face, or mouth or deal with a stain on clothing, use the urinal to urinate, or use the toilet to defecate. There are at least a half a dozen common things one can do in that room; why should one’s colleagues be burdened with this bit of irrelevant knowledge?