These vegan health articles are presented to assist you in taking a pro-active part in your own health.
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Diet has a direct impact on the digestive tract—a fact that vegans can attest to firsthand.
Diet has a direct impact on the digestive tract—a fact that vegans can attest
to firsthand. If you’ve recently transitioned to a plant-based diet or are
simply looking to improve your bowel health, here are some things to keep in
mind.
1. Vegans poop more.
It’s true: Vegans poop more. A
University of Oxford study of 20,000 people found
that vegans poop more than vegetarians who poop more than meat eaters. Eating a
healthy vegan diet (i.e., rich in fruits, veggies, and whole grains) makes it
easy to exceed the recommended 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day, and it’s not
unusual for that to translate into daily poops for vegans—or two or three!
2. It’s about quality, not quantity.
More important than how often you poop is experiencing a sense of total relief
afterward, usually a welcomed side effect of eating plant-based. Without this
sense of satisfaction, you could be constipated—even if you poop every day or
have diarrhea (called overflow). “The goal is to sit on the toilet for less than
three minutes and to have a soft poop that comes out without pushing or
straining,” says Dr. Sarina Pasricha, MD, MSCR, a gastroenterologist
specializing in gut motility.
3. You can be plant-based and still constipated.
A plant-based diet lays the foundation for healthy poop (especially when it
includes flax and chia seeds), but other factors, such as hormonal changes, play
a role. Regular exercise and water help move food through the colon.
Stress-reduction techniques such as yoga and meditation can help, too. Pasricha
diagnoses about 50 percent of constipated WFPB patients with pelvic floor
dysfunction, where muscles that are supposed to relax during pooping actually
tighten up. The fix? Pelvic floor physical therapy.
4. Look before you flush.
Consult the
“Bristol stool chart” (the poster you’ll find in any GI doctor’s
office) and get to know the illustration for Type 4. That’s your shooting star:
poop formed like a long, bulky, soft sausage or snake, smooth without lumps.
Sixty percent of stool’s weight comes from gut bacteria of the microbiome. When
you feed gut bacteria the fiber-rich plant foods they prefer, they thrive and
multiply; as a result, you have larger BMs, says Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, MD, MSCI,
a gastroenterologist and author of Fiber Fueled.
5. Treat poop like a vital sign.
When your poop is off, it’s a red flag that your gut bacteria aren’t being
treated with TLC. Heed the warning. Since gut health is integral to all health,
dysbiosis may manifest into other disease states, says Bulsiewicz. Constipation
can precede diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease by as many as 20 years and is
common in up to two-thirds of patients. It’s also linked to an increased risk
for breast cancer, according to a study in the Cancer Epidemiological
Biomarkers, and mood disorders. Tend to your gut microbes with a diverse menu of
30 different kinds of plants per week, and if you see pencil-thin poops or
blood, or don’t feel like you’re completely emptying your bowels, call your doc
for a workup.
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We began this archive as a means of assisting our visitors in answering many of their health and diet questions, and in encouraging them to take a pro-active part in their own health. We believe the articles and information contained herein are true, but are not presenting them as advice. We, personally, have found that a whole food vegan diet has helped our own health, and simply wish to share with others the things we have found. Each of us must make our own decisions, for it's our own body. If you have a health problem, see your own physician.