Dr. Trisha Pasricha

And oftentimes, kids retain.

They don't want to go.

They're nervous.

They're embarrassed, whatever the reason is.

And that, even if you have eaten the right foods, like a very nice, fluffy, plant-based diet, if you retain it, you're going to foil yourself.

I have a hunch that it is significantly worse.

So I'll give you a couple of examples.

So one, you know, when I talk about what it takes to have a good bowel movement, I often explain it as trying to get toothpaste out of a toothpaste tube.

And, you know, you mentioned motility, which is like what I call this sort of the 3P framework, but that's the propulsion.

So you can squeeze that tube of toothpaste and you can try to force the toothpaste out.

And even if that toothpaste is like a little bit hard, brittle, it's like 10 years old, like with enough force, you can get it out.

But ideally, the pliability of that toothpaste would be really soft.

That's the second P. And so you can have, if you start to eat more fiber, then you actually don't have to generate so much force anymore.

Then it just comes out on its own.

And that's a lovely thing.

But the third P here that we often overlook is the pelvic floor.

And we really don't spend that much time optimizing the pelvic floor the way we think about these other two factors.

And that's like trying to push toothpaste out of a toothpaste tube without ever taking the cap off.

And the pelvic floor is this set of over a dozen muscles in our pelvic floor that have to

coordinate so precisely in order to have a bowel movement and if you think about it you know when you have a bowel movement you're bearing down because we're generating this Valsalva maneuver and if I were to like try to make a Valsalva maneuver right now like my fist would clench you know because you're generating this pressure