Flashback Friday: How Many Bowel Movements Should You Have & Should You Sit, Squat, or Lean?
Channel: NutritionFacts.org
Date: 2020-07-10

Most people have between 3 bowel movements a day and 3 a week, but normal doesn’t necessarily mean optimal. Squatting and leaning can help straighten the anorectal angle, but a healthy enough diet should make bowel movements effortless regardless of positioning.

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I know people are suckers for poop videos! In Diet and Hiatal Hernia (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/diet-and-hiatal-hernia) I talk about the consequences of straining on stool. Hernias are better than Bedpan Death Syndrome, though, like I talked about in the 2nd half of this video.  Then there’s diverticulosis (the “ballooning of out-pouchings from your colon”), which I covered in: 
• Diverticulosis & Nuts (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/diverticulosis-nuts/)
• Diverticulosis: When Our Most Common Gut Disorder Hardly Existed (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/diverticulosis-when-our-most-common-gut-disorder-hardly-existed/)
• Does Fiber Really Prevent Diverticulosis? (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/does-fiber-really-prevent-diverticulosis/)

I do have some other older videos on bowel health:
• Stool Size Matters (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/stool-size-matters/)
• Food Mass Transit (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/food-mass-transit/)
• Bulking Up on Antioxidants (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/bulking-up-on-antioxidants/)
• Prunes vs. Metamucil vs. Vegan Diet (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/prunes-vs-metamucil-vs-vegan-diet/)
• Breast Cancer and Constipation (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/Breast-Cancer-and-Constipation)

Update: I also have some newer videos. See Prunes: A Natural Remedy for Constipation and The Best Poop Position for Constipation. (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/prunes-a-natural-remedy-for-constipation and https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-best-poop-position-for-constipation/)

For more on this concept of having “normal” health parameters in a society where it’s normal to drop dead of heart attacks and other such preventable fates, see my video When Low Risk Means High Risk (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/when-low-risk-means-high-risk/).

More on that extraordinary African data here:
• Dr. Burkitt’s F-Word Diet (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/dr-burkitts-f-word-diet/)
• Our Number One Killer Can Be Stopped (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/our-number-one-killer-can-be-stopped/)
• One in a Thousand: Ending the Heart Disease Epidemic (https://nutritionfacts.org/video/one-in-a-thousand-ending-the-heart-disease-epidemic)

So excited to be able to slip in a plug for Dr. Kahn’s work. His brand of “interpreventional cardiology” can be found at http://www.drjoelkahn.com.

Have a question about this video? Leave it in the comment section at http://nutritionfacts.org/video/flashback-friday-how-many-bowel-movements-should-you-have-every-day-should-you-sit-lean-or-squat and someone on the NutritionFacts.org team will try to answer it.


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Thanks for watching. I hope you’ll join in the evidence-based nutrition revolution!
-Michael Greger, MD FACLM

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