Stuff You Should Know - What's the Deal With Poop?

Episode Date: February 11, 2016

We are going to get down and dirty with all things poop in this episode: What a healthy poop looks like, how to poop your best, the history of using poop to survive in the Canadian wild and lots more interesting stuff. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from house.works.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

Jerry's over there not paying attention, which means it's time for Stuff You Should Know. He does something that you like, you jerk. I heard you, Josh. I've totally paid attention. I've killed you in my dreams before, Josh. I've choked the life out of you. You know what song I've been seeing in my head all day and researching this?

What? Stool Boom from Waiting for Guffman. What's here? Stool Boom. That's all I'll say. But there's more lyrics to it. Yeah, I mean, the whole joke, remember? No, I've never seen that one.

Boy. I know, I can't believe I haven't. Guffman is, that and best in show to me are tied for first. Yeah. I could watch those just about any time. Even though you haven't seen one of them? If it's anything like Best in Show,

I'm sure I can watch it. And I assume it's virtually the same movie. Yeah, the joke in Guffman is it's the anniversary of the town of this very small town. And they were, so they do a stage musical about the history of the town. And the town was sort of founded on this one guy who invented the stool.

So the town had a stool boom, and they have this big number called Stool Boom. That's great. And, you know, of course it's a play on poop. Well, dude, stool is a word that sticks out to you when you're researching poop. Yeah. It is a weird word to use,

and it's got this definite like quasi-medico smack to it. Sure. But at the same time, it's also got a droopy dangly quality to it. That makes it like super appropriate stool. Yeah, just the way it sounds. Yeah, it sounds like the sound that poop makes coming out of your rectum.

Stool. You know? And everyone who has just turned off by that, you better skip this episode, because we're talking about poop, buddy. And if you can't handle it, go hide your head under your bed, and pretend you don't do it.

You can't handle the poop. Yeah. Do you like that? Famous line. Movie reference. Yeah, I mean, we'll go ahead and give the warning. Surely you're not gonna sit down with your lunch and click on whatever you title this one.

It's gonna be, poop is gonna be in the title. What's the deal with poop? Yeah, so just, you know, we're gonna talk about poop and what it looks like and smells like and what it should look and smell like, and qualities and properties of its consistency. It's gonna be medically disgusting. We're gonna be drowning in poop in this episode.

Yeah. Well, but it's important because you can learn a lot from your poop. Yeah. And you should not ignore your poop. You should, maybe not every time, but you should check in on your poop and look at it. Okay, so there's a couple of things regarding that,

because that definitely is recommended. We use the, in part, Merkola article. Yeah, very helpful. And like, there was a lot of encouragement to stop and turn around and look at your poop before you flush. You know, smell the roses, stop and take the time to smell the roses.

Right? This is sort of like that, but it's poop. But hold your breath. No, you should smell it. I guess you should a little bit. I think it's more if you hold your breath and can still smell it, then there's a problem. Yeah, good point.

But there's also such a thing, I think, is paying too much attention to your poop. Like, after researching this, I was like, oh man, am I just letting it go? Is this too hard? Is this straining? Like, what's the problem here? Like, I feel like I'm freaking out a little bit.

So I think there's a certain something to be said about just chilling out about your poop. But yeah, keeping an eye on it once in a while, because if I learned one thing from researching this, it's that if suddenly your poop starts falling out of its normal patterns, whatever that may be. I thought you were gonna say starts like falling out of your ear.

All right, that's a big problem. Or like South Park, remember they pooped out of their mouths? Yeah, by the way, there is such a thing as fecal vomiting. Okay, well, let's just get to that right now. What is how? It's when you're so impacted, compacted, which you would be impacted as well. Okay.

Your poop is so backed up in your colon that you actually regurgitate back up. But it does not come up looking like a stool. It doesn't matter. It's not like you're, I mean, it's so gross. I'm so sorry. It's still poop, right? It's just coming out the other end.

Yeah, I mean, it's digestive fluids that are behind the poop, mainly. So it's not like, can I say chard? If you want, I find that an unpleasant word, but some people are fine with it. Stool, it's not like a stool comes out of your mouth. Hey buddy, you can say the T word if you want. So really, how is it just not vomiting then?

Because it's directly related to the backup of feces. I got you. Yeah. Well, those ones that were hanging on just to see, they're gone now. It's just you and me, Chuck and Jerry. Yep. So anyway, if your poop suddenly takes a strange turn

and it stays that way for a little while, then it's time to really start paying attention to your poop. Maybe call a doctor. Maybe look into the whole thing, but don't overthink your poop too much. Just keep an eye on it. Yeah. And it's like you said, there is a tremendous amount

to be learned from your poop. As a matter of fact, in 2014, some archeologists in Denmark, in Odense Denmark, which is where Hans Christian Andersen's from, discovered a latrine, a buried latrine, of barrels and barrels and barrels of 700-year-old Danish poop from the town. It's just dried up and it's still smelled.

Wow. Yeah, and as a matter of fact, because of that, they're able to really start to dig into this, quite literally, and find a lot out about their diet, about the evolution of human gut microbial. Yeah, which we're gonna get into. And there's a lot you can tell from it, too. Interesting.

You don't have to go digging around Denmark to learn about your own poop. You just have to look through the toilet. So to know what to look for, it's best to understand, well, just what a healthy poop is, you know? Yeah, well, let's get a couple of stats out of the way. The average Joe and Jane produces about 10,000 pounds

of poop in a lifetime. It's like five tons, right? Yeah. Where did you find that? The only place I could find it was UberFax and then this article. This article that you sent, I thought, was pretty reputable.

Okay, I did, too, but I couldn't find it anywhere else except UberFax. All right. Well, how about this? We'll just caveat that with two people say that you produce 10,000 pounds in a lifetime. Five tons. Five tons and poop is made of,

well, it's made of about 70 to 75% water. Right. Fiber, undigested foods, water. Already said water. Fats, cholesterol, salt, phosphates. Cellular waste. Dead and live bacteria. Yeah.

About 30% is dead bacteria. Right. So that's, you know, it's nasty. That's a lot of bacteria. The nasty stuff is the live stuff that you're shedding because it's not supposed to be in there, you know? Poop comes in many sizes and shapes and colors and we're gonna get into those in more detail.

So there's this awesome, awesome thing called the Bristol stool scale. And it is an illustrative guide to what healthy poop looks like. And it's type one through seven. Type one looks like little deer poops. They're characterized as separate hard lumps like nuts and then imprints these hard to pass.

And then imprints these again. You know what I mean? Type two, sausage shaped but lumpy. That looks sort of like a- Baby Ruth. A baby Ruth, which is why I think they use that in the movie Caddy Shack. Sure.

Type three and type three, four and five is- Yeah, now we're in the sweet spot. Yeah, that's the good range of where you want to be. And apparently four is the best poop of all. Dr. Mercola calls it the holy grail of poops. Type four. So type three is like a sausage as well,

but with cracks on the surface. So I guess the sausage is not very well made. All right, it's a rustic sausage. Type four is just a smooth, consistent surface. It's like a snake between one and two inches in diameter, up to 18 inches long. I hear that in my head spins. Yeah, that's a big poop.

Yeah, and I also read that literally the perfect stool is an- The perfect stool. Is a number four, an S-shaped number four. Yeah, and the reason why it's shaped that way is because it's developed into that S shape in your intestines, right? Yeah, and my brother, my amazing brother.

Oh, I'm sure it makes a cash register sound when he poops. He used to send me pictures of his poops because he was very famous for his long poops. Okay. You should post some of those, we should make a gallery. Well, I'll have to, I mean, this is before digital photography. He would take a photo, get it developed, and mail it to me in college.

Man, that's Scott. And one of them was a beautiful, perfectly shaped S, and he was like, look, I pooped my initial. And, but now I know, and I can tell him, if he doesn't listen to this one, that dude, you had the whole, the unicorn of poops. The holy grail. The long S.

Yeah, 18 inch S, two inch diameter, perfectly consistent exterior. That's what it was, tapered at both ends. It was gorgeous. And the color also is very important. It's just tittering like a child over there. A light brown color is really what you're looking for. I think most people understand what poops supposed to look like.

And the reason it has that light brown color is from Bill Rubens, which are- From Paul Rubens? From Paul Rubens, Paul Billy Rubens, which are, it's a pigment that comes from the breakdown of red blood cells in the liver. So it breaks it down, gets some Bill Rubens. That's what makes your poop brown.

We'll talk about color more in a minute, but- I just couldn't wait. I know. Type five, you're still in the pretty good zone if you have soft blobs with clear cut edges. Still, it's caused to be like, I can do better than this. If it breaks apart on impact, you're like, I can do better. And I can tell you exactly what you need to do to do better.

We'll get to it. Yeah, fiber. Man. Sorry. Type six, this is when you're heading toward bad news. Fluffy pieces of poop with ragged edges and mushy. Do you mean you're hungover? Yeah, quite possibly.

And number seven, finally, watery, entirely liquid, no solid whatsoever, AKA chuck on antibiotics, which I call poop pills, which I've said before on the show. Yeah. And by the way, the Bristol stool scale, we should give props to Dr. Stephen Lewis and Dr. Ken Heaton of the University of Bristol. Go fighting stools.

Yeah. 1997 was when they first published that thing. I love that thing. And you can find those. You see them in doctors' offices, certain kinds of doctors. Sure. My house. Do you have one?

Is it just right in front of the toilet? It was. OK. But you mean it's like, OK. So Chuck, you said fiber was a big deal. And we're going to talk about fiber a little more depth later on. But if you do have stool that is not sticking together

and it's really, you can't get past it, all you have to do is up your intake of fiber. There's two kinds of fiber. There's soluble fiber, which actually is absorbed. And that slows down your poop process. And it allows more nutrients to be absorbed from food. Good stuff. Then there's insoluble fiber, which

is what most people think of like fiber, like grains and things like that. That actually isn't digested by you. It actually becomes food for the gut bacteria later on down the road. Which is great because you want to keep them alive. It also has the added benefit of bulking your poop up and acting like a sort of glue that keeps your poop together.

That one long, perfectly smooth, 18 inch, 2 inch diameter, S shaped snake. If it is softer, but not completely diarrhea, like soft serve ice cream, it may be lactose intolerance, which is something I suffer from. Oh, really? Yeah, a little bit. Not terribly.

But you love ice cream. Yeah, I mean, it only really hits me hard if I have a lot of lactose in a single meal. Like if I have a lot of cheese, if I eat a cheese pizza and top it off with an ice cream sundae, it's bad news. So I just don't do that. Or I do, and I know what's coming, but it just can't help myself.

Or if you use artificial sweeteners, that can cause your stools to be looser than normal. Or if you have some sort of gluten intolerance or celiac that can hurt your, make your poop looser as well. It's true. And wreck all kinds of things in your body. We need to do an artificial sweeteners, man. Yeah, we should probably maybe revisit gluten.

I know we did that one, but that was a while ago. I think it's done. Is it done? Sure, all right. Have we ever done lactose intolerance? I don't think so, no. Really? I'm surprised we haven't done milk.

There's a lot of cool stuff with that. Like, you know, there's different kinds of milk depending on where you are in the world. And they think that that has to do with lactose intolerance. It's like type A or type B milk. Yeah. It's pretty interesting stuff. Yeah, and did you know that skim milk has an additional,

like, chemical additive? It has a lot of high fructose corn syrup in it. Oh, really? Yeah, because when you take, that's the whole secret to low fat. That's why low fat stuff made everybody tubby and gave everyone diabetes. Because when you take the fat out of stuff,

there goes the taste, too. So you have to bring some taste back with high fructose corn syrup. That does nothing to do with the fat content. It just gives it some flavor. But it also is sugar, added sugar. Yeah, there's also some other additive that you need. I don't drink a ton of milk anymore,

but I started drinking whole milk again. And it is so delicious. What is it doing to you? If your lactose intolerant, how did you reintroduce milk into your diet? No, that's the thing. Like, I can drink a glass of milk or eat a bowl of cereal or something.

It doesn't wreck me or anything. Like, it has to be a lot. Just a cheese pizza followed by a sundae. Yeah, just too much, you know? And a glass of milk isn't too much. OK. I'm lactose, I think, semi-intolerant. How's that?

Or if you're an optimist and the glass of milk is half full, you're lactose semi-tolerant. Yeah, there you go. We'll call you that. All right, well, let's take a break here. You read my mind. Let's gather ourselves. And we're going to come back and talk a little bit

about the difference between healthy and unhealthy stools. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Josh, you want to talk what a good healthy stool looks like? Yeah, and by proxy, an unhealthy stool as well. So we go back and forth?

No, I think we should go healthy, unhealthy. OK. That's how I think it'd be best. All right, great. Are you cool with that? I'm great with it. So healthy stool, you already said, medium to light brown. It's pretty good.

Different colors can mean different things. Sometimes it's not a big deal, like if you ate beets the night before, and you're pooping red, don't fret, and think, I have internal bleeding. It's just the beets. Have you seen that Portlandia, or the 9-1-1 dispatchers? But they're like, did you have beets? And the person's like, yes, they're like, it's the beets.

They're like, it's always the beets. No matter what it is, like Jeff Goldblum gets in a car wreck, and he's like, I need some help. And he's like, I'm covered in red stuff, and they're like, it's beets. And he looks around, and he's like, oh, I did run into a beet truck. How'd you know that? That's pretty good.

And then they hang up on him, and he's like, I still need help. That's a great one. I haven't seen that. Or like, I know from experience, too much red wine, believe it or not, can cause black poop. Oh, sure. A little distressing. If you have black tarry poop from what I read,

where it's literally sticky, you probably, and this is something you've started to notice about your poop, it probably, or it could mean that you're bleeding internally, and it's not good. That's not good. No. All right, let's go back to healthy stools.

Yeah, I thought that's what we were going to do. Yeah, I'm eating him to light brown, soft and smooth, and not a lot of pieces, like we mentioned. That shape is just amazing if you can do that on a regular basis. You should keep a little crown in your bathroom. Just don't dole it out all the time. It's not a participant ribbon. Really want to save it for the right one.

And listen up, too, because here's something I didn't know. How the poop falls into the toilet, and whether it floats or not, is a thing. So it says in here, the slightest little gentle whoosh, not a big cannonball splash. Like an Olympic diver going into a pool. Oh, on a well-executed dive. Not one where they lean a little too far.

No, no, like just a whoosh. Yeah, it's supposed to go stool. Yeah. And then I think the floating deal, if it floats, it may be that you're eating too much fat, which means it could be a sign of malabsorption. Well, yeah, it could mean that you're eating a normal amount of fat, but your body's not absorbing it.

Right. That could be a digestive issue or all sorts of things. It could be pancreatitis. It could be some problems. Again, if it's not becoming evident yet, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of information you can glean from your poop. Yeah, and if floaters are fun and cute,

because you can poke them and play with them, but you really want to sink her. Yeah. Do you still have that bathroom stick I got you for Christmas? The poking stick? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, I thought that was a back scratcher. Is it poop poker?

Yeah. For floaters. Well, I could use it for both. We're eight right now. Oh, boy. All right, unhealthy poop. Did we finish healthy? Yeah.

Ribbon-like or pencil-like, that's not good. That can be bad news. That could mean you have some sort of obstruction, maybe a tumor, sort of mashing things together. Yes. And again, once in a while, something happens like this. You don't need to go call 911, but just keep an eye on it.

Yeah, because it's just the beats. That's what they would tell you. Right. You covered a black and tarry. Bright red is also not a good sign. No. It could be a medication. Apparently, black licorice can cause black and tarry poop.

Yeah, if you're eating black licorice, though, you're a gross person, and you should stop that. I don't like any of that stuff. Black licorice, gross. Or any like red vines and twizzlers. Oh, you don't like any licorice. Red licorice is great. Well, Emily loves.

Which is the superior one? Twizzlers. I think it's the twizzlers she loves. She may think red vines are. There's a lot of people that do. No, I think she's a twizzler head. OK, good for her. But I've never gotten it.

I don't get it. Gummy bears and stuff, they just, I don't like those things. Those are like a totally different thing. Isn't the texture kind of the same? No. No? Not really. I don't like any of it.

Chewy, I guess, but yeah. No, not really. Not a fan. You should try them. You should also try licorice and gummy bears next to each other so you can suss out the difference. OK. Because they're not the same thing.

Well, the point is I don't like either one. Why would I try that? No. So white pale or gray stools is no good. That may mean you have a lack of bile or a variety of diseases from cirrhosis to hepatitis. Yeah, you want to be producing bile. Yes.

If you have white stool, it could also mean that somebody slipped you a little barium sulfate and gave you an x-ray. Oh. Yeah. OK. So if you've drank barium sulfate recently and you have white poop, it's probably not cause for alarm.

They'll probably tell you that when they give you the x-ray. I would hope so, but just in case somebody got a lousy medical provider, we're here to help you. Yellow's no good, right? Yeah. Geel-Bear syndrome, which means that your liver's not processing the bilirubins. So they're not breaking down and turning your poop brown.

They're passing through intact and dying your poop yellow. Geel-Bear, huh? Not Gilbert? No. I love it. Thank goodness for the Mayo Clinic. Geel-Bear. Yellow stool could also be Giardia or problems

with your gallbladder. Yeah. And then mucus, Chuck. So if you look closely at your poop, especially if you open it up with your poking stick, you're going to find that there's some mucus associated with it. Yeah.

A small amount of mucus is totally normal. Your intestines actually produce mucus to coat your colon so that it helps smooth the stool through, right? So of course, your stool is going to be coated in a little bit of mucus. If you notice that all of a sudden, it looks like someone snotted all over your poop, and this is a new development, that is cause for concern.

Because there are conditions where you can overproduce mucus, and it can be a problem. Yeah. Odor, here's what to look for. All your poop is going to stink somewhat because it's poop. Yeah, bacteria chew on undigested food and produce gases as a byproduct, and that creates the stinky poop smell. That's right.

But apparently, if it is really bad, and they quantify this as over, above, and beyond the normal stinky poop smell. Right, if it could make a billy goat puke. Very nice first blood reference. Thank you. It could be some other issues at play if it's really that bad.

Malabsorption again, celiac, Crohn's, chronic pancreatitis, cystic fibrosis. And I guess that's subjective. I think the key in all of this that I've read is look for big changes. Right, that's the key. Yeah, if your poop is normally just pretty stinky, and then all of a sudden you are revolting yourself,

then you could have something else going on. Or if your pet billy goat is just throwing up everywhere every time you go, that's a big change too. And again, you yourself, you have your own pooping rhythm. You have your own pooping thing. And a lot of people wonder, how often are you supposed to poop? And apparently, it's a very wide range.

Anywhere from three times a week to three times a day. That's me. So I think that washes out which one? About three times a day. OK, that's normal, but then again, if you said three times a week, that'd be normal too. Yeah, I've never had issues with getting backed up and having trouble, which it's terrible, you know?

Yeah. Well, never mind. So I won't reveal too much about my family. All of that washes out to about once a day on average. But that's kind of a terrible thing to average out, because it makes people think, well, I do it three times a day, or I do it three times a week. So really, anywhere between there is normal.

Yeah, and different things can cause you to get backed up if you're traveling a lot. Sometimes it hadn't happened to me, but I've seen it before on vacations when beloved family members have trouble pooping while they travel, whether that's from being in a different not wanting to poop in a public restroom.

That's part of it. To just changes in your diet because of travel. Your circadian rhythm because of jet lag. Sure, absolutely. Hormonal fluctuations, how much sleep you're getting. What else? If you're sick, obviously. Right.

All those things can add up, and apparently age has a lot to do with it as well. If you are 65 and over, something like 40% of people over 65 have some sort of constipation. It's just part of growing old, they think, which sucks. Because if you can go three times a day and you're snapping while you do, you're a lot happier than if you are over 65 and constipated.

Sure. There's a lot of problems with constipation. Initially, there's just the problem of straining when you go, which is not fun. There is not feeling like you have fully eliminated everything that needs to go. Apparently, you can feel sluggish after you go. Oh, really?

It's weird. There's that defecation syncope, which I said correctly this time. Oh, right. And then there's larger, larger problems. Like after a while, your digestive system is OK to hold about a week's worth of food at one time if it needs to.

It doesn't want to, but it can. Once you go beyond that, or even if you are eliminating, but not eliminating everything, it starts to build up and you're constipated, you can have an impacted colon. And then the real joy begins. Yes, and by joy, you mean pain. Yeah, they will go in with a mineral oil

and a motor start. That doesn't work. They may go in and manually break up your poop, which is exactly what it sounds like. Thank you for demonstrating that with your hand. You're very welcome. And then if that doesn't work, they may surgically remove the poop from your digestive system.

Man, it's not good to not poop. That's sad. We're going to talk about some ways to help yourself poop. If you're one of those people who poops less than you'd like to, or you find yourself constipated a lot, we're going to help you out right after this. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.

Stuff you should know. All right, it takes about between 18 and 72 hours for your food to become poop and for you to pass it in general. Yeah. And if that's shortened, that's when you're going to get the diarrhea, because that means your intestines didn't have enough time to absorb the water to make that poop more dense.

Yeah, and we talked a lot about that in the digestive system episode, which was great. Yeah, we also did one on fecal transplants. Yeah, but we haven't still, in my opinion, focused enough on just the poop, which is why we're doing this one. Thank you. We need a poop spotlight.

And then constipation is the opposite. That is when too much water has been absorbed. And that's those hard stools and hard to pass stools, which can lead to hemorrhoids. It can. So hemorrhoids is the result of swollen veins in your anus and rectum. Not awesome at all.

No, I had them bad once. It's no fun. So it can be very painful? Yeah. And it makes you not want to go, because you have to strain. It's like a vicious circle, right? Yeah. Like you have to strain, but it hurts to strain,

because it makes your hemorrhoids worse. And then you don't want to go at all. So you avoid going, which is a carnal sin, as far as staying regular goes. When you get the urge to go, you go. You don't hold it. Doesn't matter if you're at a truck stop or at the Queen of England's house.

You go. I would love to poop there. That's the best. Hemorrhoids will eventually clear up with treatment, especially. But it's a part of the problem with being constipated, as you can very easily get hemorrhoids. Yeah.

The key is really try and not strain, even though you really want to get the poop out. It's just going to make it all worse. So that's easier said than done, Chuck. What do you do if you are constipated or you don't poop as often as you'd like to? What are some of the fixes for that? Well, they don't advise you to run out and start

using laxatives immediately. No. That's sort of a last resort home remedy. Which is crazy, because laxatives are marketed in a way that makes it seem like you have trouble poop. Take a laxative, it'll be fine. And that's actually, they're supposed to be a last resort option, like a nuclear option, basically.

Because, well, they train the muscles in your intestines to rely on them and to basically get weak. And you need to keep those things strong. Yes. More tips? Yeah. Eat whole foods. We're talking fresh veggies, fresh fruits.

Fiber is, I mean, you should have, I think, an adult, I think they recommend now between 25 and 35 grams of fiber per day. Yeah, but we're getting, like, 10. Yeah. And Mericola suggests 50 grams of fiber per 1,000 calories we consume a day. Oh, wow.

Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah, that's a fiberglass. That guy's got a colon blow. Do you remember that silent life commercial? Oh, yeah. That's a classic. So the fiber you want should come from not grains, but from vegetables.

Like we mentioned, those artificial sweeteners, too much sugar, MSG, too much caffeine, and too much processed food. That can all wreak havoc on your system. And this is all just good for just health and digestive health in general. Exactly. You know?

Did you say exercise? Not yet. That's a big one. Yeah. Exercise not only gets things moving. It also, usually when you exercise, one of the things you're doing is working on your core, whether you mean to or not.

Sure. Kind of the center of all of the rest of the muscles you're moving. And when you're working on your core, you're inadvertently strengthening those intestinal muscles that help that choreographed dance of moving your food into your poop and along and out of your poop chute

is what it's called. Yeah. Staying hydrated if you're not drinking enough water that it's not going to do any favors in the poop department. If you are addicted to painkillers, one of the awful side effects aside from being addicted to a drug is you're going to have a real hard time pooping. Yeah, because it relaxes those muscles, too.

Yeah. And they need that help. They sure do. They're out there wearing sunglasses, laying on a Shae's lounge at two in the afternoon, like the rest of your body when you're on those things. And then look at the, let's talk a little bit about the toilet. The shape of the modern toilet.

By the way, Strickland and I did a tech stuff on toilets. That was really fascinating. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, it's counterintuitive to how your body should be positioned to poop. You should not, we did not evolve to poop sitting at a 90 degree angle as if on a chair.

No. I've said it before on the show. When I go camping, you go out in the woods, you walk a little bit away from where your friends are. At least three, four feet. At least three or four feet. You squat down, and that's the most natural way to poop. It's effortless.

It comes right out. You don't even think about pushing or straining. I believe what it does, doesn't it straighten out the pathway? So it relaxes your pubo rectalis muscle, which yeah, which straightens out your colon, which basically says stool. Release. Right there on the leaves.

It's wonderful. Well, do you remember when we were talking about India's defecation problem, like outdoor defecation problem? Yeah. On internet roundup years back, and they were saying one of the big things they were running up against was that people who live in rural areas say, this is one of the benefits of wholesome, rural living.

It's getting to poop outside, man. Get off my back. I can understand where they're coming from. Yeah, so there are things you can add to your toilets now. Little to raise your feet. Stools. Yeah, ironically, little foot stools. Not to buzzmark it too much, but I know the squatty potty

is something that fits neatly in front of your toilet. And basically, it just gets you more in that squatted position than you are normally on your toilet. And this used to be the domain of strictly the whole earth catalog or something like that. But you can find those things at Bed Bath and Beyond now. Yeah, I think people are catching on. It's a better way to poop.

Yeah, so you can still use your toilet to squat. It does the squatting for you by lifting up your legs. It's like a given birth, basically. Yeah, it's still no substitution for actually squatting right on the ground. I mean, in Japan, they have toilets that are made for squatting exclusively. Oh, it's just like a hole in the floor?

It's a lot like a urinal on the ground. Interesting. Yeah, so it's not vertically oriented. It's horizontally oriented. But it looks just like a urinal. So when you go to an old city park and the urinal has fallen off onto the ground, and you squat and poop in that, it's the same thing.

It's kind of like that. Imagine that, but the cleanest experience you could ever imagine. Even the squatting toilets are clean in Japan. I believe it. It's nice. And here's a little tip if you want to avoid hemorrhoids or if you just want to live a cleaner, more sanitary life,

get a bidet. I know I talked about it when I installed my little unit. They have them. Do you have a bidet? Well, you can attach them to your regular toilet now. Yeah, just like a t-line or something off of your water support? Yeah, and it sits under your toilet seat,

and it's spring-loaded. So when you turn the water on, this little nozzle pops out. It shoots right up your butt. Right up your butt. And I've long campaigned against toilet paper. And now that I have a baby, it's even more apparent. It makes no sense to me that you have a baby, and you're like, well, yeah, use wet wipes,

because that's how you should clean poop. And then you get to a certain age, you're like, all right, let's just go with dry paper now. Like, forget the superior wet method. Well, the thing is, it just doesn't make any sense. Why would you move to dry wipe feces from your butt with a dry piece of paper? Like, I understand what you're saying.

It's nonsensical. But our sewer systems in the United States are not set up to accept wet wipes. Well, that's why you have the bidet. Okay. No wipes. I mean, dab it dry with a couple of squares. But I'm telling you, it'll change your life.

It's amazing. I have a feeling the people with bidets are gonna be the first with their backs up against the wall when resource conflicts break out over water throughout the world. They'll be like, you're doing what with that water? Use toilet paper. Yeah, well, that's what they're gonna say.

If that happens, I will. And it's not a ton of water. You'll turn it off, but you'll be crying, shedding a tear. Goodbye, bidet. See you in 150 years. Where are we? What else we got? We're pretty far off.

Oh, the microbiome. We should talk about that. And we did a great podcast on the microbiome. If we do say so ourselves. Yeah, it was a good one. And what they have found is that the modern diet where you're not eating nearly as much fiber as you should and you're eating more processed foods

is not only just impacting your short-term digestive, degrading your short-term digestive health, but it's affecting your microbiome, which you know if you listen could also affect your children and your children's children's. That was another good one. Can your grandfather's diet shorten your life? So fiber is great.

It's hard to digest. So it doesn't break down fully. And that's what you want when it's going through your colon. Because like you said earlier, the bacteria feeds on that and you want to keep that bacteria alive. Right. Because it's great for you. This is a mental floss article

that we were working off of, right? I think so. They were talking about a study from Stanford that found that they've created mice that are microbe free, which is beyond bizarre. I don't understand how they stay alive for even a second. Yeah. But then they fed these two populations of mice

both microbe free, high fiber diet and the same diet with low fiber and no fiber, I think. And they found that with the microbes in the mice that had a high fiber diet, they had like three times more diversity in their microbiome than what the other mice developed. Yeah.

I think you had mentioned they were microbe free and then they put human. Oh. Microbes in there so it simulated the humans. So then the human microbiome was reduced by 75% in the mice with the low fiber diet. That's what it was. And if they changed that diet after a number of weeks,

it could partially recover, but only partially. It could never fully recover. Yeah. So the upside, they did say poop transplants are a viable way of taking microbial colonies and like diverse microbial colonies from a healthy person and putting them in an unhealthy person. Yeah.

And fully recovering. Right. And then you can get it all back. But the point of this was is that like our diet is largely based on a, almost a fiber free model. Like we eat very little fruits and vegetables and apparently we're supposed to be eating something like 10 to 20 cups of fruits and vegetables

of high fiber foods a day. 10 to 20 cups. When's the last time you ate 20 cups of fruit and vegetables in a day? Never. So right. And exactly. And then the, even the other stuff,

the bad type of fibers that we get from grains, the grains that we're eating have most of the fiber removed. Like bleached flour, there's virtually no fiber in it. So we're not getting a lot of fiber and it's becoming increasingly apparent that not only do we need it so we can poop better or microbiomes need it so they can make us better serotonin. Higher quality serotonin is what you're looking for.

Yeah, there's a big push for against white foods. White flour, just apparently most white things. White rice, white sugar. Not great for you. Right. Do you want to cover some of these weapons? I really mainly just wanted to talk about the guy in Northern Canada.

Oh, the Inuit? Yeah. All right, well quickly, this is from Vice and there was a list of history, brown death, colon, a history of poop as a weapon. And they list out some times throughout history where people have put poop on the end of their arrows or literally launched poops in a poop exploding poop bomb

to make people sick and infected poop. The Soviets had a method of getting rid of poop in a tank. Basically, when you're in a tank and you're going along, you got a poop. So they said, well, let's just turn it into a weapon. Yeah, poop in the artillery shell and launch it out. But this one about an Inuit man who lived in the 1950s. Apparently, he appeared in a TED talk by Wade Davis

and he was the guy who did the serpent and the rainbow. Okay, I knew the name. I couldn't, okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. He said that this guy was basically left by some Canadians to starve to death in Arctic Bay, right?

Yeah, apparently in the 1950s, Canada forced Inuit people into settlement camps way in the high Arctic zone. And it was basically like, here's a couple of dogs. Good luck dying. Right. And that was it. Yeah.

The Inuit elder was like, I'm going to survive this one. This is not my first rodeo. Because I'm going to, you know how it's super cold outside? I'm going to go outside and poop. And as my poop freezes, I'm going to fashion it into a knife. And then your face is going to be red because I'm going to use that knife to kill one of these dogs and use it for meat.

Yeah. That part made me sad, of course, but it was for survival. And I think we didn't mention that they took all of his tools away from him so he didn't have the knife. Right. He just had himself his poop in the two dogs. Yeah.

Until he fashioned his own poop knife. Frozen poop knife. Yeah. And he butchered one of the dogs, used it for food for him and the other dog and basically turned that dog into a sled used the other dog to pull said sled and hightailed it down to San Antonio.

I was waiting for the end when he like, then stabbed members of Canada's government with poop with the poop knife, but that didn't happen. No. He didn't have any sour grapes. He just said, it is what it is. I'm just glad I got out. And frozen poop knife is not a good band name.

Nope. And I feel bad for saying this because I love these guys, but there is a band called Diarrhea Planet that are great. What do they sound like? Oh, it's just a wall of guitar. They've got like four guitar players. And it's just really good, but it's the worst name ever. And I don't know why someone hasn't said,

guys, just do yourself a favor. Like you're not helping yourselves here in your career. Right. By calling yourselves Diarrhea Planet. So just, if you're listening guys, change it to frozen poop knife. And thank me later. I want to say, before we sign off, you got anything else?

Nope. I want to say, I want to hear your euphemisms for poop. For pooping. Oh, like dropping a deuce. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. You got any clever ones that I haven't heard before?

Love to hear them. Yeah. Yeah. I've always thought take a dump was weird. It's terrible. Because you're leaving a dump. Yeah. But even still, this is gross.

Yeah. Stool. That's what you say. Stool. That's what you say. I'm going to evacuate my bowels. You've heard me say that before. I think I have, actually.

Yeah. Yeah. Very medical. While you're sending us those, go ahead and go on over to HowStuffWorks.com and type in poop in the search bar, and it'll bring up some cool stuff. And since I said poop, it's time for Listener Man. I'm going to call this Listener Mail that Josh picked out. Oh.

Hey, guys. I started listening to you a couple of years ago, since then I've blown through almost every episode. The reason I say almost is because I didn't keep track of which episodes I listened to from the beginning, so I constantly have to go through all the old episodes to figure out which ones I already heard and which ones I hadn't. The reason I mention this is because I noticed something, what he started doing was keeping track basically.

Right. And he said, I noticed something curious is to start listening to only new episodes. That's exactly the next day after a new show, I noticed that whatever topic you covered has made its way to me in some other form. Usually, this comes in the form of a Reddit post or a Mashable in-gadget or Gizmodo article. The latest such occurrences from your episode on cryotherapy go to in-gadget. You'll find that today there was a post talking about the subject, article covers exactly what you two had already covered.

I call this the Chuck and Josh effect. I love that. Yeah. And I usually berate my wife about how I just listened to you two talk about the subject. I'm sure it's been happening for quite a while, but it's always fun to see new articles pop up from subjects you just covered. You have a big influence on the interwebs and what information gets passed around. I don't know if it's due to us or coincidence.

I think a lot of it is coincidence, but some of it's probably inspiring. I had tickets to see you in New York City last time you were here, but unfortunately our beloved dog Henry passed away that day. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry to hear that, Ted. I hope you two are planning to make another trip out east. It's not out east. It's up north.

It's up north, out west, back east, and down south. Oh, yeah, back east. Back east. Wagons east. But if you live down south and you're going east, you don't say I'm going, you say you're going up north. Yeah, you go up. You go east, you end up in the ocean.

Just because we don't hear Jerry doesn't mean she shouldn't get recognition for the work she does there. Jerry gets enough recognition. Hope to see you on the next tour. That is Ted Wheeler and Ted. We read this in the Poop article, so I don't know how this is going to touch your life personally, but you can't wait to hear. Ted, he just said Poop article and touch your life personally.

May all your poops be brown s's. And Jerry, way to go, man. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSKpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at HowStuffWorks.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult-classic

show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.