Healthy bowel function: how does normal poop look like?

What are the different types of poop?

Food poisoning

By this time of year, it has become warm enough to spend more time in our gardens. We don't just spend time gardening, but will want to dine here, too. And possibly prepare food on the BBQ or at least prepare a food buffet on holidays such as Kings Day. Unfortunately, a festive meal especially during warm weather is almost automatically associated with stomach bugs.

For elderly persons, the cause of food poisoning is mostly different. They have frequently been raised in a time of food scarcity and are less prone to discard food that is past its expiration date. Or as happening during the current lockdown, they will want to go grocery shopping as little as possible, so they may be eating food that would have been discarded otherwise. However, at their age, they will become sick more easily due to reduced immunity than a young person who has less qualms about throwing out spoiled food.

Foodborne illness, more commonly referred to as food poisoning, is the result of eating contaminated, spoiled, or toxic food. The most common symptoms of food poisoning include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Although it’s quite uncomfortable, food poisoning isn’t unusual. According to reliable data 1 in 6 persons will contract some form of food poisoning every year.

Food poisoning symptoms

If you have food poisoning, chances are it won’t go undetected. Symptoms can vary depending on the source of the infection. The length of time it takes for symptoms to appear also depends on the source of the infection, but it can range from as little as 1 hour to as long as 28 days. Common cases of food poisoning will typically include at least three of the following symptoms:

Why celebrating life with food is important for our health

Especially in the darkest months of the year, there seems to be an endless amount of celebrations.
No matter what is always a common theme: food is the main attraction! In fact, the focus society currently places on food has caused us to associate certain foods with holidays, past events and special times. When we sink our teeth into such foods, it can bring back memories we hold close and take us back to a time we enjoyed. Food is much more powerful than we think!

From catching up for coffee, relaxing over brunch, indulging in a long lunch or bonding at a BBQ, it’s hard to imagine getting together without the company of food. Food is something we all have in common, we all must eat, most of us find food pleasurable and trying new foods or cafes is a new experience we can share with others. 

PFAS pollutants causing turmoil

In October, nearly every construction project came to a grinding halt in the Netherlands, because not a single project except the smallest ones can be completed without excessive paper work or laboratory tests.

Why? The current legal threshold for PFAS, an abbreviation for perfluorinated alkylated substances has been set extremely low until the government is able to define a proper health limit for contaminated soil so as to prevent contamination of clean soil with more heavily contaminated soil.

If cemeteries hadn't been exempt from the rule, not a single dead body could have been interred, since PFAS-chemicals , also known as 'forever chemicals' have accumulated in our bodies to an extent that exceeds the legally set threshold, which is currently as low as the lowest possible detection level.

What causes gall stones and how to get rid of them?

Many people suffer from gallstones. While it's possible to have gallstones and not know it, severe cases can lead to rupturing of the gallbladder and even death. Understanding your gallbladder and naturally supporting it with the right nutrition is imperative for good health.

How to get in enough fluids and not feel embarassed 

Whomever is interested in health and fitness will have been told countless times to drink enough fluids to stay healthy!
What they never tell you, is how to combine drinking plenty fluids with being out and about on the road or stuck in a place where you aren't allowed to take potty breaks! Yikes!

I can't even begin to tell you the amount of times when I was cycling some event and needing to pee so badly, but not find a bush to hide behind. Or, when I did see one, already have gone past it, and of course you never ever turn around, but pedal onwards.
Oh, how I envied my shameless male companions, who simply could get off at a tree and empty their bladder.
But even men encounter a problem when it comes to what is called, doing a 'number 2'.

Can artificial sweeteners harm gut health and make you gain weight?

Early September we published an overview of various natural and artificial sweeteners that are currently available and possible avantages or disadvantages associated to them.
Until very recently the clear-cut explanation of all official governmental dietary agencies as well as most mainstream dieticians was that artificial sweeteners are harmless and not a single iota of proof was available to the contrary.

Even your humble writer still believed sweeteners are relatively harmless as by definition, rats and mice aren't human so evidence about harmfulness for those laboratory animals doesn't prove too much.
However, over time more and more evidence has come up that artificial sweeteners are truly not as good for your waistline as you think they are, in ways that wasn't looked at before. Our gut microbes, which have a bigger influence on your weight and insulin sensitivity than we realize, are negatively inflenced by the artificial sweeteners we ingest.

What foods deserve the name 'superfoods' and why?

Many different foods have been touted as superfoods over the past few decades and undoubtedly many more will come.
Why are we all so focussed on superfoods? Secretly, we all hope for the miracle natural 'drug' to cure or prevent heart diseases and other degenerative diseases, especially when it can compensate for other bad habits, such as smoking, drinking too much alcohol, not sleeping enough and moving too little.

In order to do away with the hype of it all, we at Pasio decided to get rid of the category of 'superfoods' and merge all edible products (fats, proteins and superfoods) into one major category called 'nutrition'.
While there is no official legal definition of superfoods, this doesn't mean there isn't a scientific basis for calling a food “super.”

According to nutritionists, a superfood is the type of fruit and veggies that packs a lot of micronutrients into each calorie and is linked with a reduced risk of chronic disease. Studies also suggest that people who eat more of them tend to be thinner and live longer than those who rarely or never eat them.
However, what type of micronutrients these are , is up for debate.

A healthy gut, a healthy brain

Few people realize how the amount of microbes residing in our gut between the mouth and the end of the large intestine outnumber the amount of human eukaryotic cells by ten to one. This complex ecosystem is formed mainly by bacteria, but also viruses, archae, protozoa and fungi.

Even less known is how gut microbes lays a major role in host health by shaping the development of the immune system, metabolizing dietary nutrients (such as fatty acids, glucose and bile acids) and drugs, digesting complex indigestible polysaccharides and synthesizing vitamins and bioactive molecules.

Throughout different life stages, various changes occur in the microbial diversity of humans.
While babies are massively 'inoculated' with microbes from their mother during birth, smaller amounts enter the baby's gut via the bloodstream and placenta.
After birth, the composition of the gut microbes in the infant changes slowly with age, and stays mostly the same until old age.

While the composition of the gut microbes don't change much in a healthy adult, that is not to say that they aren't vulnerable to outside factors, such as lifestyle, use of antibiotics or even vaccinations, and overall health.
However, outside those factors, diet is one of the most important factors for gut health.
A change in a diet, especially by eating more or less fiber can change the composition of the gut microbitics within a few days. When this change is negative, a dysbiosis can result, characterized by an overgrowth of potentially pathogenic organisms.
This change in the delicate balance between 'good' and 'bad' organisms will result in a 'leaky' gut because of a more porous gut lining and cause chronic inflammation, which can even influence our brain because it also affects our central nervous system. So, as incredible as it sounds, an unhealthy diet can cause you to have an unhealthy brain as well.

This makes it easier to understand why an increasing amount of people try to improve gut health.

How reliable is the Glycemic index?

Almost everyone who's ever started a diet in the past decade, will have heard about the glycemic index (GI) and have been advised to eat predominantly foods that have a lower glycemic response, that is, foods that will not increase blood sugar level so much.

A high blood sugar level is closely associated with health problems such as diabetes and obesity, and it's easy to measure using a continuous glucose monitor.
A standard developed decades ago, called the glycemic index (GI), is used to rank foods based on how they affect blood sugar level and is a factor used by doctors and nutritionists to develop healthy diets. However, this system was based on studies that average how small groups of people responded to various foods.
This method of the glycemic index (GI) was developed at the University of Sydney where the glycemic response to foods were compared with those of glucose after an overnight fast.

The emphasis on the glycemic index led to an oversimplification of food items as being 'good' or 'wrong' based on their GI-ratings. It can even falsely portray unhealthy foods as “safe.”
Frequently agave syrup and coconut sugar are being advertised as “healthy” because of their low glycemic indexes, yet they lack nutrients such as fiber and vitamins and are nothing but 'empty sugar'.

A bigger problem with the glycemic index is that glycemic responses to foods are highly individual.
While the University of Sidney did their research on just 10 persons, a study with no less than 800 healthy and pre-diabetic volunteers, whose blood glucose levels were monitored every five minutes for a prolonged period of time, a startling difference between individual response on specific foods were shown.

Separating chaff from the wheat or the importance of indigestible fiber

Sandwiched in between sugar and the starches are a group of carbohydrates called oligosaccharides, that we never heard much about until recently, and most people  probably still have no idea what they are.

Beware the chair

Just 'hitting the gym' several times a week may not be enough to off-set the negative consequences when you spend most of your time sitting on a chair or bench. According to scientists, prolonged sitting should carry a public health warning.

Be kind to your bowels!

Probiotics or beneficial bacteria are important for good digestive health. In order to keep these same bacteria happy and thriving, they need to be fed PRE-biotics, in other words, fiber!
Fiber is the undigestable part of vegetable foods. The most common source of fiber are beans and legumes, onions and garlic, cabbage, unpeeled potatoes as well as fruits such as raisins, figs, prunes, berries and (unripe) bananas.