College can be a terrible time for your digestive system. Greasy food, gallons of beer and the odd beige torpedo from Chipotle does not a good diet make. Thankfully, anybody can gauge the health of their own plumbing by becoming more vigilant poopers.
Your food's journey from mouth to porcelain citadel is a long one—the combined length of your large and small intestine alone is 26 feet. All of this tubing is put to good use. According to physicians Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz's book, You: The Owner's Manual,\ ""The small intestine is where most of your food's nutrients are absorbed. The large intestine, or colon, is wider and shorter than the small intestine and absorbs water to form feces.""
Oz and Roizen have become the United States' leading dookie doctors, laying down a roadmap to poop glory in their best-selling book. The first step? Listen carefully.
""The optimum feces enters the water like Greg Louganis—no splash. You want to hear a basketball through the net sounding (Swish!) rather than machine-gun rounds (PopPopPopPopPopPop!). Ideally, it should still be attached to you when it hits the water.""
Once the last movement of this bowel symphony is over, peek into the bowl before you flush. According to ""The Owner's Manual,"" your feces ought to be S-shaped, which is the natural curve of the tail-end of your digestive tract. If you're leaving behind gumball-sized pellets, on the other hand, this could be an indication of a lack of fiber and water in your diet, both big doodie-don'ts.
Found solely in plants, fiber plays a vital role in digestion. Oz and Roizen write that ""fiber helps keep digested food bulky and soft, so it passes through the colon easily.""
Without it, you're putting increased strain on your intestines and, as the stool makes its exit, you could develop hemorrhoids—potentially painful swollen veins in the lower rectum and anus.
To avoid Preparation H and an uncomfortably close relationship with your proctologist, fill up on both insoluble and soluble forms of fiber. Insoluble fiber doesn't dissolve in water or get broken down by intestinal bacteria and can be found in oranges, dried fruit, grapes and especially in whole-grain bread.
A roughage enthusiast friend of mine—lets call her the Fiber Queen—promotes stone ground whole wheat bread, which has more grams of fiber than other loaves.
Soluble fiber dissolves in water, regulating metabolism and digestion. It's found mostly in grains like oats, barley and rye; in legumes such as bean, peas, and lentils; and in some cereals.
Quality caca also comes from drinking a lot of water. A natural lubricant, water helps everything glide along through your system. Setting up your own digestive slip n' slide has other benefits, too, since water helps fight bad breath. Finally, hydration also means kidney stone prevention—the requisite eight glasses a day should do the trick.
Roizen and Oz emphasize that when they say water, they mean water. ""The empty calories and self-destructive ingredients found in soft drinks will leave you bloated, hungry and fat (OK, so if you like diet sodas, at least you won't consume the empty calories).""
I hope that this poop primer has shown that you can learn a lot from what you leave behind. So next time you're at the commode, keep an eye (and an ear) out for number two.
Adam Dylewski is a junior majoring in genetics and life-science communication. He wants to give a shout-out to all his readers in stalls. E-mail him at adylewski@wisc.edu. Wash your hands first.\
