When’s the last time you pooped? Earlier today? Earlier this week? Earlier this decade? If you find yourself pooping no more than once a week and do not happen to be a sloth, you may want to see a doctor. That’s because such infrequent pooping may be setting yourself up for some medical problems down the road, according to a study published in Cell Reports Medicine. On the other hand, pooping too often—like every 10 minutes—is not good either. The study suggested that the best potty line, so to speak, is pooping once to twice a day because that frequency was associated with lab test results that in turn are associated with better long-term health outcomes.
The Study Looked At Poop Habits And Lab Test Results
Here’s the poop on the study. It was an analysis of various types of clinical and laboratory data and questionnaire responses from over 1,400 seemingly healthy adults. The study was conducted by research team from the Institute of System Biology in Seattle, Washington (Johannes P. Johnson-Martínez, Christian Diener, Anne E. Levine, Tomasz Wilmanski, Alexandra Ralevski, Jennifer Hadlock, Andrew T. Magis, Leroy Hood, Noa Rappaport and Sean M. Gibbons) and Seattle Children’s Hospital (David L. Suskind). It included measuring the bloodstream levels of various metabolites and toxins with long names like 3-indoxyl sulfate, p-cresol sulfate, p-cresol glucuronide and phenylacetylglutamine. They also checked the stool of volunteers for different things such as measures of microbiome activity.
The research team then looked at how these measurements correlated with answers that the study participants provided on the questionnaires. This included a question on how often they pooped with the answers falling into one of the following four categories:
- Constipation: This corresponded to pooping no more than once or twice in a a week, which is considered lower than normal for a human but not for a sloth.
- Low-normal: This was less than a daily bowel movement, ranging from three to six times per week.
- High-normal: This was pooping once to three times per day.
- Diarrhea: Anyone who has ever had diarrhea should at least loosely know what this means. If you’ve never had diarrhea in the past, you are in for a treat when it happens.
When You Poop Too Infrequently, Toxins Can Build Up
The research team found that volunteers who had lower frequencies of pooping also tended to have higher levels of different toxins in their bloodstreams. Elevated levels of such toxins is associated with higher levels of inflammation and damage to the heart, liver and kidneys. In fact, the study found an association between less frequent bowel movements and lower kidney function with elevated levels of 3-indoxyl sulfate potentially playing a role.
All of this is a reminder of why we all poop. It’s not simply to “get away from it all” or to provide extra alone time to doomscroll or text on your smartphone. Pooping is one form of excretion, a way your body can get rid of waste from your body. Not pooping frequently enough can be akin to not taking out the trash nearly often enough. Bad stuff can accumulate and potentially cause problems. When you are constipated, you are basically turning your body into something like your freshman year in college dorm room.
Stool in your gut can be a bit like those houseguests that you don’t really want hanging around too long. At the first, the interactions between that stuff and your microbiome— the city of microbes in your intestines— can be positive. Those microbes ferment the available fiber into short-chain fatty acids, which are good for your body. But when the poop keeps hanging around, things turn city, so to speak. The microbes start breaking down the available proteins into toxins. This can happen even in healthy people.
When You Poop Too Frequently, You Can Lose Nutrients And Fluid
The number two thing to look out for, though, is pooping too often, as in diarrhea often. With diarrhea, you aren’t absorbing enough of the nutrients from the food that you consumed and losing fluid and electrolytes through the loose stools. In the short term, this can lead to fluid and electrolyte imbalances that when severe enough can even lead to life-threatening situations. Over the longer-term, such losses can result in significant nutritional deficiencies.
It’s not surprising then that the study found not-so-great lab values among those experiencing diarrhea. There were perturbations in levels of omega-6 fatty acid, homocysteine, total protein, bilirubin and a host of other things. This is why you shouldn’t ever say, “It’s the end of solid stools as I know it, and I feel fine.” A balance in between too few and too often is needed. And according to this study, that balance may be in the one to two times a day range.
The Concept Of Precision Poop Analysis
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should freak out if you go a day or two without pooping every now and then. Or if you happen to a have four-or-five-trips-to-the-porcelain-throne day. The study asked about average pooping frequencies and relied on self-report. It’s difficult to tell how accurate people may have been in recalling their poops. The research team did not follow each of the study participants around all day, making note of when they pooped. That could have been a bit weird and prohibitively expensive to do.
Remember, too, that one size rarely fits all, even when it comes to poop. Let’s rephrase that. While this study’s results can provide general ballparks to aim for, they may not be specifically applicable to everyone. Your body size, age, metabolism, diet, physical activity level and other things may contribute to what’s the best specific pooping schedule for you. Therefore, just like how precision nutrition aims to better tailor diets and nutrition recommendations to different people’s characteristics and circumstances, one should be more tailored and precise about what to expect in pooping, whether you are talking about the content or frequency of poop.
Nevertheless, in the end, it is a good idea to pay attention to your poop and how often you see it. Your poop and pooping are important measures of your health. So, if you are finding yourself pooping no more than once or twice a week or multiple times each day, you may want to see your doctor to get to the bottom of what’s happening.
