Corey Huetter   CEO - Cheapest EDDM Printing
 YOUR STOOLS CAN REVEAL A LOT ABOUT YOUR HEALTH, IF YOU LEARN TO READ THEM.

LET'S FACE IT: DIGESTION HAPPENS. Few of us, however, are able to talk about the end result without embarrassment. It's too bad we're not more willing to pay attention to our stools, because they may be just as useful in diagnosing our health as taking our temperature or our blood pressure. "People can tell a measure of their health by their bowel movement," says Ted Loftness, M.D., an internist in Litchfield, Minn. "Nothing is so overrated as sex and so underrated as a good bowel movement."




From your stool you may be able to get clues about your diet, your gastrointestinal health, and even whether your stress, anger, or anxiety levels are too high.

HOW FOOD BECOMES STOOL From the moment food enters your mouth, your body embarks on a campaign to turn it into a soupy mush called chyme. Chewing, saliva, peristalsis (the involuntary contractions of gastrointestinal muscles), bacteria, hydrochloric acid, digestive enzymes, bile, and other secretions all work to give each meal the consistency of split pea soup. While your digestive

cells are absorbing sugars, starches, fats, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, waste products continue traveling down the line. In the colon, all the leftovers are combined, packed together, and partially dehydrated. What remain--our feces--consist of water, indigestible fiber, undigested food (such as corn and small seeds), sloughed-off dead cells, living and dead bacteria, intestinal secretions, and bile. (The worn-out red blood cells in bile give excrement its distinctive brown color.)
Nov 8th 2007 03:51