There’s a reason to pay attention to how often you poop: Regular bowel movements can be quite essential for good health.
Let’s go over why that’s so, as well as some tips to help you have better bowel movements, including how to pass hard stools.
How often should I have a bowel movement?
There isn’t an exact number.
Bowel activity varies for each person.
However, medicine and science will often use the “basic rule of three” to describe a typical movement, meaning you have bowel activity anywhere between three times a day and three times a week.
You’ll poop more or less each day (or week) depending on a number of factors, such as your:
- diet
- age
- physical activity level
While the appearance and consistency of a person’s poop can vary from person to person, most people’s poop is formed, brown, and soft.
If yours is rarely like this (such as always hard or always liquid), you may want to speak with a doctor.
Pooping shouldn’t be painful.
If you frequently have bowel movements that are painful to pass or result in cramping after you make them, it’s time to speak with a doctor.
You could have a condition like (IBS), Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis.
What causes constipation and diarrhoea?
Different factors can trigger either symptom, such as:
- diet, food intolerances
- stress, medications, inflammation
- conditions affecting the gastrointestinal tract
Regardless of the underlying cause, though, constipation and diarrhoea occur when intestinal contractions either speed up or slow down.
Gut contractions help move stool through the colon.
But sometimes, the muscles contract too much or too little.
Diarrhoea happens when these muscles contract more than usual, whereas constipation happens when they don’t contract enough.
Tips for incontinence or diarrhea
- Avoid foods known to irritate the stomach and cause loose stools (especially caffeine, dairy, and alcohol).
- Drink plenty of water or electrolyte-containing beverages to stay hydrated.
- Increase your fiber intake to add bulk to your stool.
Tips for constipation
- Try to get about 10-15g of fiber per 1000 cal you consume per day.
- Increase your physical activity level.
- Always use the bathroom when you get the urge to go — don’t try and hold it.
What are bowel movements actually for?
Kind of obvious, but bowel movements (sometimes called BMs for short) are your body’s way of getting rid of waste that doesn’t have any use in the body.
While it may not look like it, poop is about three-fourths water.
The remainder is a collection of materials that includes bacteria, fats, fiber, food wastes, mucus, salts.
Another poop component is bilirubin, a brownish-red substance that’s the result of a breakdown of wastes from the liver and bone marrow.
Bilirubin is what gives poop its usual brown color.
A person has to poop to survive because the body doesn’t have a way of getting rid of these wastes otherwise.
If a person doesn’t poop for many days, the stool can back up in the intestines.
If this goes on for too long, it starts to pose a risk to your safety and can damage your organs.
This is why pooping and pooping regularly is so important for your health.
Tips to have a more comfortable and regular bowel movement
Pooping is part physical, part mental. If you aren’t pooping as easily or often as you’d like, addressing these aspects can help.
1. Add a few things
- Water and fiber: These are two major components of poop that are part of your diet. Making efforts to drink more water daily can help make your bowel movements easier to pass. That means:
Eat vegetables, fruits, legumes, beans, nuts and grains.
This adds bulk to your stool, which stimulates the bowels to move and propel your stool forward.
However:
Add fiber foods slowly
Don’t incorporate too much fiber into your diet at a time — it can have an opposite, constipating effect.
Instead, try to add a serving every 5 days to allow your digestive tract time to acclimate itself to the increased fiber.
When it comes to hydration, make sure it is well balanced with electrolytes, especially sodium (many people nowadays actually UNDER- consume sodium!
Particularly if you are an active individual, you can very much benefit from adding salt to your food!).
Don't forget about potassium and magnesium either!
Probiotics
Probiotics can aid digestion too. You can either take capsules, or get healthy bacteria from fermented food sources like kimchi, yogurt, or kefir. A diverse gut bacteria community or microbiome is essential for regular bowel movements.
2. Cut out a few things
In addition to constipation that makes stools harder to pass, some people experience stool that’s too loose.
When this is the case, cutting out foods that can irritate the stomach can help. Examples to cut from your diet include:
- alcoholic beverages
- caffeinated drinks, like tea, coffee, and sodas
- fatty foods
- foods that contain sugar alcohols that end in the letters -ol (such as sorbitol, mannitol, and xylitol)
- spicy foods
Try cutting out these foods to see if your bowel movements are less watery.
You can also keep a food and symptom diary to identify connections between the foods you eat and the symptoms you experience.
3. Move more - especially in the morning and after meals!
Your intestines have a natural motion that moves stool forward.
If your body isn’t moving stool through fast enough, then you can help it out with increased exercise.
Physical activity, such as walking, running, or swimming, can all promote motion that helps you poop better.
Even short amounts of activity — 10 to 15 minutes — can help.
It may be particularly helpful to go for a 10 minute walk after each one of your meals or when you first wake up in the morning.
4. Stick to specific meal timing
If you are generally someone who eats at regular times you will know what I am talking about.
Eating at roughly the same times and similar quantities is amazing for 'training' your body to poop at similar times.
Play around with these meal timings until you have found a sweet spot and see if you can replicate it as often as possible.
Additional tips:
Change your bathroom posture
Another tip you can try has to do with your posture on the toilet.
Changing the angle of your legs changes the angle of your colon.
Toilet footstools are one accessory that you can use in the bathroom to do this.
Some people find that it helps them have a more comfortable and effective bowel movement.
Even if you don’t have a footstool to raise your feet, you can still try adjusting your posture.
While you’re sitting on the toilet, try planting your feet on the ground so that your knees are higher than your seat or higher than usual.
Keep your bowel movements in mind
Doctors have identified a mind-body connection to pooping.
For example, many people cringe at the idea of pooping in a public restroom.
Here are some ways to address the connection between your brain and intestines:
- Remember that pooping is a natural part of every person’s physical needs. Everyone poops. You have nothing to be ashamed of if you have to go.
- Go to the bathroom when you feel the need. Try to not hold it in or put off a bowel movement. If you feel the need to go, take advantage of your body’s readiness.
- Try engaging in stress-relieving activities if your anxiety levels are creeping up and your stomach starts to cramp. Examples include taking deep breaths, doing seated stretches like rolling your shoulders backward and forward, listening to calming music, or repeating a positive mantra.
Stress and pooping are highly connected.
Try to create a calming environment in your bathroom where you have privacy.
Avoid rushing yourself — give yourself at least 10 minutes to go to the bathroom.
The Takeaway
Bowel movements require food, fluids, and calm to create a more comfortable experience.
If you try these tips, and your symptoms aren’t getting better, speak with a doctor, but remember that feeling some irregularities is normal from time to time, specifically after travel, when introducing new foods, being more stressed etc.
