Tracking Your Poo

BogLogger is an app to track your bowel movements, here is a guide about being mindful of your poo

We’ve probably all been to the toilet, done what we’ve had to do, and then thought, ‘Wait, that felt different.’ Right? 

Let’s hope you’re having the kind of life which offers you more excitement than this. That said, you should take special notice of what you’re doing in the smallest room of the house. Because the type of poo you’re passing can be an indication of how healthy your gut is, and specifically, how healthy your microbiome is. 

What is your microbiome?

Your microbiome is the mix of microbes that lives in your gut. They’re a mix of good and bad, much like the microbes that live on the outside surface of your body. Get this though: there are more microbes in your gut than there are cells in your body. So you want them to be largely healthy. And that means paying attention to your poo. 

People who have conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Crohn’s Disease, gallstones, ulcerative colitis, haemorrhoids, diverticulitis – all these folk probably already think about their poo quite a bit. Passing it is a pretty important part of their day and a measure of their health. 

But anybody can be mindful of their poo. There’s no harm in it, and it can tell you a lot about your general health, and the health of your gut. 

If you’d like to learn more about your gut and the microbiome, you should read Gut; The Inside Story of our Body’s Most Underrated Organ.

So let’s take a quick closer look (don’t worry, we’ll keep it clean) at the Bristol Stool Chart. 

The Bristol Stool Chart

There are seven types of poo – believe it. You may not have passed them all personally, but here they are: 

Constipated

Numbers 1 and 2 may have you in the smallest room for the longest time. Those things are hard to pass. Nutty little nuggets, or a sausage-shaped thing like lots of nutty little nuggets glued together. Pain medication can often cause this type of blockage. Prune juice is a natural remedy to help get things moving along.

Normal

If you’re passing a number 3 or 4, high-five anybody you meet on your way out of the bathroom (wait till you’ve all washed your hands). You’re cooking on gas. Or whatever you’re cooking on, your intestines are loving it. Threes and fours are like sausages – cracked on the surface, or smooth and slippery, it doesn’t matter. You are to be congratulated. Carry on as you are. 

Lacking Fibre

If you’re heading south of a number 5, it’s downhill all the way, and increasingly quickly. Anything blobby and soft which passes easily is not ideal. Fluffy things with ragged edges which are in a hurry probably don’t feel or look too good. You might be experiencing this after a big night of drinking or from eating spicy food and nobody’s going to be wanting to use the toilet after you for a while. A bit of fibre can help things return to normal. 

Diarrhetic

If you’re all the way down there at number 7, you’re probably not reading this. You’re mostly likely in bed clutching your stomach and thinking about all the liquids you need to replace. Whatever you’ve been eating or drinking, don’t go there again.  

Tracking your poo

There’s a lot written about looking into the bowl after you’ve done the business. We don’t necessarily hold with that. You can feel these babies coming out, and you don’t have to eyeball them. But you should definitely be keeping tabs on it all. 

Everyone seems to be doing things mindfully these days – living, eating, spending time with friends. The Bristol Stool Chart is your most important tool when it comes to crapping mindfully. It’s easy to find, and we recommend you get familiar with it. If you are interested in tracking your poo, there is an app on the apple store{COMING SOON} or google play store{COMING SOON}, for you to download.

While we hope that what we’ve said here is an easy-to-digest introduction to the chart and using it, none of the above is intended to replace the advice of your doctor or a medical professional.