The Surprising Link Between Bathroom Habits and Organ Health: What Experts Want You to Know

The health of your kidneys and liver, indispensable organs in your body, play a pivotal role in maintaining your overall wellness. They take on multiple indispensable tasks, predominantly executing the crucial function of waste filtration. Maintaining these organs in a healthy condition often involves a multifaceted approach, encompassing a nutritious diet, consistent physical activity, and moderated alcohol consumption. However, recent studies bring our attention to a surprising aspect that may potentially impact your kidneys and liver adversely: the frequency of your bowel movements.

In an intriguing research endeavor, analysts from the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) took on the mission to comprehend what the regularity of an individual’s bowel movements might indicate about their long-term health. The results, published recently in Cell Reports Medicine, are based on the detailed analysis of medical, lifestyle, and multi-omic data obtained from over 1,400 healthy adults.

Through a careful examination of this data, the researchers have identified four distinct categories of self-reported bowel movement frequencies: constipation (one to two bowel movements per week), low-normal (three to six bowel movements per week), high-normal (one to three bowel movements daily), and diarrhea.

Interestingly, the study highlights that the healthiest bowel movement frequency was observed in the high-normal group, i.e., individuals who reported bowel movements one to two times per day. These individuals exhibited a higher count of fiber-fermenting gut bacteria that is often linked to optimal health.

Johannes Johnson-Martinez, a PhD candidate at ISB and the primary author of the study, commented:

“Prior research has shown how bowel movement frequency can have a big impact on gut ecosystem function.”

He continued, “Specifically, if stool sticks around too long in the gut, microbes use up all of the available dietary fiber, which they ferment into beneficial short-chain fatty acids. After that, the ecosystem switches to fermentation of proteins, which produces several toxins that can make their way into the bloodstream.”

Contrastingly, constipation and diarrhea present on the extremes of the bowel movement frequency spectrum were associated with potential health threats. The study pointed out decreased kidney function in individuals who experienced less frequent bowel movements and fell under the ‘constipated’ category.

The research revealed that p-cresol-sulfate and indoxyl-sulfate, toxins produced by microbes due to protein fermentation and known to harm kidneys, were found to be predominant in the blood of constipated individuals.

“‘Here, in a generally healthy population, we show that constipation, in particular, is associated with blood levels of microbially derived toxins known to cause organ damage, prior to any disease diagnosis,” said Sean Gibbons, PhD, ISB associate professor and the paper’s corresponding author.

Conversely, the study discovered a correlation between diarrhea and “higher levels of inflammation and blood markers of reduced liver function,” as Gibbons reported to Today.

According to Gibbons, “Overall, this study shows how bowel movement frequency can influence all body systems, and how aberrant bowel movement frequency may be an important risk factor in the development of chronic diseases.” He went on to stress that these findings could help in formulating strategies to manage bowel movement frequency, optimizing health and wellness even amongst healthy populations.

For those looking to improve their bowel movement habits, gastroenterologist Will Bulsiewicz, MD MSCI, who wasn’t part of the study, suggests increasing fiber intake. He informs us that “95 percent of Americans are deficient in fiber,” emphasizing that “Fiber helps to normalize our bowel movements and get us into that sweet spot where the gut microbiome is optimally healthy and our bowels are moving at just the right pace, without diarrhea or constipation.”

Let us know what you think, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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