Of course, poops come in all shapes and sizes — as shown in the Bristol stool scale , created by the University of Bristol's Ken Heaton, at right — but Chutkan says the ideal poop is a three or four on the scale. If your poop isn't a perfect, easy, continuous log, it's not necessarily a sign that you're sick. But it may be a sign that you're not eating enough fiber, or that your gut microbiome isn't in great shape. The key to good poops, Chutkan says, is straightforward: "What really makes a good stool is large amounts of the indigestible plant matter that feed gut bacteria.
But having a diverse and healthy community of gut bacteria is also essential — and for many people, overuse of antibiotics is a problem. Research has shown that a single course of ciproflaxin, for instance, can disrupt a third of the microbe species naturally present in our gut, and other work has suggested that in some people, the microbiome might never really recover. Over-the-counter probiotic products , meanwhile, usually just have a single species of bacteria, and can't replace the diversity of microbes that have been lost.
Killing your gut bacteria can lead to many problems, in some cases giving harmful bacteria, like C. But it can also lead to overly soft, unpleasant poops. For these reasons, Chutkan recommends thinking carefully before asking for or accepting a case of antibiotics, and making sure that the infection you're seeking to treat really needs it.
The explanation for the widely-observed corn-kernel-in-poop phenomenon is pretty simple: the outside of a kernel of corn is made of cellulose, that indigestible plant fiber.
We can digest the inside of the kernel, but the hull makes it through us unscathed. This is also true for lots of other parts of plants — like, for example, kale stems — but corn's bright yellow color stands out, making it easy to spot.
There's a benefit to this phenomenon. If you're interested in tracking how long it takes food to transit through your body — whether to gauge the health of your digestive system, or just to satisfy your curiosity — you can use corn kernels as a tracker. It might not be a huge surprise, because different diets lead to different types of poop. But Chutkan says that the feces of most people in the developing world are noticeably different from those of people eating a Western diet, mostly because the latter contains so much less fiber.
A very fiber-heavy diet — the type eaten by many people in developing countries, and by some vegetarians in the US — leads to much denser and bulkier poops. Western-style stools, by contrast, are much softer, and the colon has to push harder to get them out. The first few bowel movements of a newborn infant are called meconium — and if you've never seen it before, it's pretty bizarre.
It's the result of nutrients consumed by the infant inside the womb, and it's a dark green, tar-like substance. It looks so different from normal poop because of the sorts of things the baby was consuming in the uterus: amniotic fluid, blood and skin cells, and mucus. A doctor prepares for a fecal transplant in a North Carolina hospital.
It might seem crazy, but research increasingly tells us that the most effective way to treat C. The formal name for this is a fecal transplant. That doesn't mean you should try it at home. But controlled studies have found that fecal transplants have success rates around 90 percent, higher than any antibiotic. This makes sense: a C. This is becoming an increasingly mainstream procedure, and researchers are currently working on alternate means of fecal transplant deliveries, like frozen poop or pills that can be taken orally.
Further reading: Everybody farts. But here are 9 surprising facts about flatulence you may not know. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. However, undigested amounts remain as dietary fibre. The amount of fat excreted into our stools is highly dependent on dietary intake. Even with no fat intake, though, we do get some excretion of fat into our faeces. Fat in faeces can come from bacteria in the form of short-chain fatty acids when they ferment foods, in addition to undigested dietary fat.
A recent study has found that microscopic plastic particles can appear in our faeces when we drink from plastic bottles or eat foods that have been wrapped in plastic. This small study of eight participants who were exposed to plastics in their food and drink identified up to nine different types of plastics in their stools. But we need larger studies and additional analytical research to understand the clinical significance of this.
Diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease can lead to changes in the type of bacteria in our gut and result in raised inflammatory proteins that can be detected in our stool. Fortunately there is a good screening test that can pick up the presence of trace blood in the stools and lead to further investigations such as a colonoscopy.
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While raw sewage is cheaper than traditional fertilisers, its usage can often lead to increased numbers of microbes and parasites. Thankfully, safer solutions are being devised. The simple loos are filled with tiger worms that can convert poo to compost in about six months.
The hydrogen in hydrogen fuel cells is obtained via the electrolysis of water. A current is passed through water to obtain hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Using the same technique, oxygen and hydrogen can be cleaved from ammonia and urea — two of the main compounds in pee. In fact, the process is far more efficient with urine because less energy is required to obtain the substances.
Researchers at the University of Ohio are looking to harness this power in urine to generate electricity from large buildings, such as offices and sports stadiums. One problem: researchers have waxed lyrical over the promise of the hydrogen economy for decades, with few results.
Are these hydrogen visionaries just pissing in the wind? Time will tell. Talk about turning trash to treasure: scientists are looking at ways to extract precious metals — including gold, silver, platinum, copper and titanium — from sewage.
But poo could also be serving up the goods: titanium dioxide, for example, is added to many doughnuts. Whatever the source, more research is needed to figure out where the metals are coming from and how to extract them.
This all points to a much bigger issue. Just as we now increasingly view paper, plastic and metal waste from households as a resource to be recycled rather than rubbish to be discarded onto landfills, we may need to think of our own excrement in the same way.
We could call it urban mining, perhaps?
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