Dr. Trisha Pasricha

I think you want to sit somewhere in the middle.

And if you are in those extreme ends, you should also talk to your doctor and say, like, what am I doing wrong here?

Like, is there something I can do to get myself a little bit more soft and fluffy?

Most people who have that nice, perfect sausage that is called a Bristol 4

that's kind of what everybody feels like is the ideal thing.

If you really wanna have success with your bowel movements, you have to respond when your body's telling you to go.

And I think we have all of these like kind of imaginary social graces where we're like, no, no, I'm at a friend's house, I could never.

And like we put it off, we're at work, people are embarrassed to go at work.

And the problem is that suppose it's 9 a.m., you're at work, you've just got to the office, you have to go.

At that point in time, with the cross section,

The poop that you have sitting in your rectum might be that nice sausage snake-like poop that if you were to go respond when your colon is contracting, it would come out easily, effortlessly, and you would consider yourself to have a perfectly happy relationship with your toilet.

But if you push it off and you say, no, this is not a good time for me.

I'm too embarrassed to use a public stall.

And then you wait until it's 9 p.m.

and now your colon's not contracting because you've suppressed it.

And you've had 12 hours for your colon to suck more water.

That's what it's going to do.

This is going to be a very different poop than it was 12 hours ago.

And suddenly now you are constipated because now not only is your colon not in the mood to play, but you have to work a lot harder because now you've become a little bit more pebble-like.

It's going to be a much more difficult poop to push out, which is why people who go when their body tells them it's time to go and people who eat a lot of fiber and makes it a little bit softer, you have more room to give and it's just easier to go.