If you know the ingredients of potty then you can back calculate what our daily potty is made of. Improve on each ingredient- get a great potty in the morning. Simple!
A great number of patients I see in the clinic suffer from constipation.
🙌🏽 Many gynecological problems get aggravated by potty problems. Recovery after surgery slows down. Stitches get ripped. Some people even develop hernia years later.
Bowel and urine habits are health indicators. We humans have been roaming the earth for six million years. However, the concept of having great potty in the morning is not clear for many.
It’s not that complex, though.
Relying only on medicine is not smart.
If you know the ingredients of potty then you can back calculate what our daily potty is made of. Improve on each ingredient- get a great potty in the morning.
I have shared four practical tips after going through medical books, journals and new researches. On top of that will share 5 bonus extremely useful free steps-in-life which will improve your mornings – scientific but surprising facts.
🤔 What is the potty made up of?
- 3 things. Large amount of water. Fiber, mostly undigested vegetable and fruit fiber. Number three is shocking. Half of the weight of the potty is bacteria from our colon.
- Our body contains only 37 trillion human cells and whooping 82 trillion microbes. They are the tenants of our body. Most bacteria live in the intestinal tract.
Modern research knows that these friendly microbes not only protect our guts, but also provide our body with various beneficial chemicals and vitamins. Fights infection. Even prevents cancer. So, to achieve a great potty, you have to nourish these 3 things every day regularly.
The four home remedies, therefore are: Fiber, Enough water, Physical activity, and Timing of potty.
🥗 Fiber first
- Fiber or roughage is an important ingredient in food. Just like protein, fat, carbohydrates. If you’re of my age, fiber wasn’t taught when we went to school.
- But today’s boys and girls learn loud and clear that fiber is an essential ingredient in your diet. Which is actually a waste to humans. Your body cannot digest or fiber, and there lies the secret success key.
- The food items our body manages to digest isn’t great for potty. Eating a nice white rasgolla won’t make as much potty. But eating fiber will make potty healthy.
In modern countries, our diet lacks fiber.- Fibers are of two types. . One is insoluble and the other miscible in water. They work differently. Mix both types of fiber in diet. Easily found in vegetarian foods.
- Insoluble fiber does not dissolve in water, and remains virtually unbroken even when attacked by friendly bacteria. Retains water effectively, which helps increase the weight of your potty. If the amount of your potty is small – you probably need more of this type of fibre.
- Soluble fiber forms a gel-like substance that, together with other waste products in the bowel, smoothens the bowels. It glides out of our body.
- Not only that, fiber lowers cholesterol levels and avoids glucose rush into the blood. Fantastic for diabetes control.
- Constipation can be cured by consuming healthy fiber regularly over a long period. But you need to drink enough water with it. Only then fiber can will the work. Otherwise, no matter how much fiber you eat, you will stay unhappy.
💦 Water
👉🏾 Once food is digested in the stomach, it moves to the colon. This is the waiting area for potty. This is where potty sleeps through the night before coming out the next morning. Colon never sleeps.
👉🏾 If the body is deficient in water, the colon absorbs water from the potty in this waiting area. It makes potty harder. The more the body is dry, the colon steals more & more water from potty. The potty next day will be hard. We will face rough time to push the rocky hard potty out.
If the body has enough supply of water, the slippery mucus lining of colon will remain fresh. Colon will not need to pull out water from potty. Voila! Soft potty on the next day. Smile!
⁉️ The question next is how much water to drink?
The need for water intake varies from person to person. In the hot, humid climates like India, one needs to drink at least 3 liters of water. When we sweat, we need to drink more water.
How can you tell if you’ve had enough water? Here is a tip.
👉🏾 Every time you go to the washroom, look at the pan. If the color of the urine is completely colorless or just light yellow, then you are meeting your water needs. If it looks yellow enough, right at the first glance. You are probably dry. It means within the next 2 days you will have dry potty.
🫴🏽 How does this help your potty?
Nerves are not only inside our brain. We need nerves to digest food too. There are about 500 million nerves in our stomach
- Why? Take this simple example. We swallow an average of 2000 times a day. Each swallowing requires forty muscles in the throat. The food travels 8 metres, passing through the stomach and small intestine. Next morning out by a little hole – called anus. Each step needs a lot of nerves for their movement.
- Stomach and small intestine work hard to digest food. Like rowing on a boat, the small bowel moves back and forth for hours following a meal. Like Olympic rowing competitions. It alternates between pushing the food to one side and then the other.
- After the body absorbs vitamins and nutrients from food, an electrical wave from the stomach flushes out any remaining food into the large intestine. The small intestine then stays sparkling clean.
- The master of all movements inside the stomach is the enteric nervous system, or ENS. If we move regularly, nerve system of the stomach feels energized. If we move the body regularly through regular exercise, walking, then digestion and bowels feel happier. That’s why when we stay inactive, we develop constipation.
- In some diseases like diabetes, sugar accumulates in stomach nerves. The nerves become dull. Constipation worsens.
Insufficient exercise can blunt the function of this nerve as one gets older. For a happy morning, get up and walk all day.
🕰️ Time for potty
👉🏾 Timing is important. If you go to potty each day at different times, the large intestine gets very confused. In the first two decades of life, the intestine copes well with that confusion. Problem starts from mid thirties. After 40 – constipation is a genuine issue. It’s crucial to develop the habit of using the toilet from childhood, so we naturally go when we wake up.
- We need to form a habit. The intestine will then receive a daily signal. With that habit, auto-magically, you will have a potty urge in the morning even when you are 70 years of age.
Those who can’t use the toilet in the morning may opt for a different time later in the day. But the secret is : – it has to be roughly the same time.
🫰🏽 SO these were four home made tricks for potty.Next up – five scientific facts to be aware of so that you can use them for your benefit.
🤧 Drug side effects
Certain medications can also cause constipation as a side effect. Some examples are: long-term use of certain antacid medications, calcium channel blockers, and diuretic-type blood pressure medications. Diuretic drugs control blood pressure by removing more water from the body through urine. Body dries up. To supply the body, colon absorbs water from potty. Then, potty dries up. Also, some pain medications, some mood or depression medications, etc. can be responsible for constipation.
😱 Stress
- Stress causes constipation. There are two types of stress. An acute stress. Which starts suddenly. Occurs for a short period. But then it goes away. These types of stress is not that bad for long term health. Chronic stress on the other hand goes on for a long time. With no quick fix, we suffer from anxiety over weeks and months.
- A sudden panic attack during an exam is acute stress. At this time many people get diarrhoea. So when I say that stress can cause constipation, many don’t want to believe that.
- The real danger lies in chronic stress. This stress comes in many forms. Missing a return flight from Delhi and blaming yourself for that. Getting involved in politics with a toxic boss at work. Constant family strife, guilt or fear, being in the hospital, or news of a difficult diagnosis – these are all causes of chronic stress. Chronic stress secretes some chemicals in body. Nerve system of the stomach gets confused with that. Bowel becomes lethargic and does not moving well. Resulting in constipation.
🪑 Sitting in correct posture
👉🏾 Correct posture is important while taking a poop. The whole food pipe measures a lengthy 8 meters from the mouth to anus. The last few inches of this long road have a sudden twist. At the junction of the rectum and the last couple of inches of the food pipe, anal canal. If this fold can be straightened during moving bowel, it will be convenient to move bowel with less strain. You will be surprised to hear that the way we Indians used to move bowel with full squat is the best position to move bowel, as it unfolds that bend.
(Source: Normal-MR-defecogram-anorectal-angle-schematic-CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
👉🏾 Today, many of us use western toilets and defecate sitting on chairs. Piles, diverticulitis and constipation problems are increasing because of that twist or fold not opening properly in a sitting position.
(Source Walmart product picture)
👉🏾 In 2002, Israeli doctor Dov Sikirov did a strange study on this. He found that people who have no place to sit at home except on a western toilet can continue to sit on a western toilet with knees folded. They can use a small tool below feet. This brings the knee closer to the stomach. Even though it is not completely an Indian style but at least some help to unfold that twist without completely demolishing the toilet.
🚽 And yes, various researches suggest stomach gets upset if we keep on checking mobile in toilet. So avoid that.
📒 Food Diary
Whenever we develop constipation, we search for the cause in diet. If we find a ‘cause’, we stop eating that item. By doing that, we sometimes get rid of beneficial food from our diet. Maybe it wasn’t the culprit after all. We somehow came to the conjecture that it must have triggered constipation. Please use caution in such circumstances.
Keep a food diary. What foods you are eating, at what time of day, and the condition of potty next day – good- average or hard. Write them down. After a month, analyse. Then only it is possible to confirm whether that food item was really the guilty.
😮💨 Patience
👉🏾 Yes, one more thing before I finish. Any good practice for potty, or for that matter potty medicine, may take up to four days to work. Please do not get upset before that. Never say: taking fibre, doing exercise or drinking water are not working for me. After all, you have a human body. It will work – just have some patience. Giving up is not an option.
