BMW

In this post I am going to talk about pooping.  If you have no interest in that end of the digestive system, stop reading. Now. (even though you should have some interest, as discussed below)

I think that my--well I wouldn't call it an obsession--but my interest in bowel movements comes from my mother.  My mother was always concerned/interested in our bowel activity.  "Have you had a BM?" or "Have you had trouble having a BM?" was my mother's first question whenever we said we weren't feeling good.  Heck, even if we expressed a mood issue, i.e. we were sulking or annoyed, she went straight to asking if our BM's had been good.  Often "eat something" and "put some fiber in it" were her solutions to a LOT of ailments. My mother never said poop or poo, it was always clinical: BM.  She would talk your ear off about bowel movements--their consistency, size, color--but she wouldn't stoop so low as to use profanity.  (I kid you not on the frequency of this topic.  My sister and I almost made her a birthday card that said on the front "For your birthday, we got you a BMW" and on the inside there was to be a cartoon W made out of poop.  We opted for flowers instead).  Of course, my mother never swore and wasn't too fond of our sarcasm as we got older;  to her, being sarcastic was a way of being unkind, no matter how funny it was.  This dislike of low behavior extended into words that even sounded like swear words:  Mom: "I don't like you saying that word freakin', you're just using it in place of the f-word" 14 yr old me: "So you'd rather me say fucking?"  Mom: "I don't find that kind of talk funny Kate" (this does not mean my mom is a pill.  Example: when Paul Reubens was arrested for indecent exposure, my mom dressed up like Pee-Wee Herman for Halloween that year and "exposed" the sock in her pants at my parents' annual Halloween party.  That party was bad-ass, and I know that because we kids were always shunned upstairs by about 7 pm, and only parties that are gonna get a little crazy make sure the kids are removed.  I only found out about the exposing later on).

So growing up the importance of being "regular" was drummed into my head.  As a mom now, and having helped with my sister's kids for the past few years, I sort of get why she was so fixated on our BMs.  Your days, for years, involve monitoring the poop your child produces.  Having healthy bowel movements is a good indicator of a healthy diet and overall healthy child.  My sister and I casually discuss my nephew and niece's poops on a regular basis.

And then you grow up and NO ONE talks about their toilet business, it is not polite.  I understand completely.  And so, unless you are in the GI biz, comparing notes about what is normal and what isn't doesn't really happen anymore. Enter, again, my experience hotshoting (and having a family member with Crohns).  You see, when you are out in the woods with the same 20 guys, day in day out for six months, you often run out of creative/interesting topics for conversation.  You spend every waking minute of your day with these people, and the conversation usually comes back to what is most on your mind.  And with 20 guys, ages 18-30, (especially the type of guys that get into that job) away from civilization and the comforts of home, there are really only 5 things on their minds: booze, food, pussy (pardon my french, but it is true), sleep, and pooping.  They want to get home, eat some real food, get drunk, get laid/go to a strip club, sleep in a real bed, and take a good shit on a real toilet.  My point is, they talk about pooping.  A lot.  About how eating MRE's (military rations) for the past couple of days has affected them.  Or how they had a unfortunate experience in the woods/in a port o john at camp.  On any given day, I could tell you the poop statistics on anyone in my squad, and most of the guys on the crew.  This person is pooping too much, this person hasn't shit in a few days, THAT person is afraid to shit because he has an internal hemorrhoid, etc.  And with our workload often exceeding 16 hours of hard manual labor in a day, the effects of what you eat and how your body uses it up became interesting to me and here was a large group of people offering up information about it.  What was healthy?  What was normal?

The more I talked to different people (ones outside of my work), the more I realized people weren't analyzing their poo, which is one of the best ways to quickly assess your health.  I am not being weird here, colorectal types of cancer are the third most diagnosed cancer in the country, more common in men than women. 

The answers to these questions are found here: (I looked at a lot of sites, this one was the most concise) healthy BM .  You should take a look at this list.  And then a look in the toilet.