Dr. Trisha Pasricha

It's not doing the work for you.

So even though, yeah, you think the timing, the atmosphere is right, suddenly you are faced with having to do all the work yourself, meaning you have to generate an even stronger valsalva maneuver to bear down.

We all know what that's like, where you're straining because your colon's just not playing ball.

And then second...

The longer that poop sits in your colon waiting to be expelled, your colon is going to do its other big important job to just continually suck water out of it.

So 12 hours later, you're not going to return to the same poop you would have had at 8 a.m.

At 8 p.m., it's going to be drier, harder, more pebbly, and that's going to be way more difficult to get out than if you had just gone in the first place.

I actually genuinely tell my patients to do this.

Put some headphones on and tune out the environment.

Maybe it's you're putting on white noise.

Maybe you're playing some music.

But that's half the battle is to just stop being hypervigilant and listening for every footstep outside the door, every rustle of someone who may be passing by.

because that's going to keep you on high alert.

And in order to have a bowel movement, you have to relax because you have to relax your sphincters.

That's the final door on the way to the exit.

And if you can't relax those sphincters, that poop is not going to come out as easily.

Why these foods?

Yeah.

These three foods, and one of them being like a little bit more, I'd say like a supplement than a food, the psyllium husk.

Yeah.