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:

How to prevent getting sick from the flu

You can prevent germs from making you ill in two ways: prevent entry into the body by careful hygiene, and if they do get in, make sure your body’s natural immune system is able to fight these germs, so they self-destruct before overwhelming the system.

Most flu germs are spread in two ways:

• touching such as hand-to-hand contact
• droplet spread when germs ride along on tiny water droplets that are sneezed or coughed into the air

Try these flu prevention tips to avoid person-to-person spread:

• avoid shaking hands, but bow or give a head nod
• avoid nose-picking as the nose is a breeding ground for germs
• sneeze into a disposable handkerchief and if you don't have one available, sneeze inside your elbow
• shun coughers and sneezers as much as possible.
• avoid crowded rooms

Dangers of antibiotic resistance

Anyone who has followed the health news for a bit, will know there is widespread fear about antibiotic resistance spiralling out of control.
Ever since penicillin, the first mass-produced antibiotic was introduced in the 1940s, bacteria have become resistant against antibiotics at an alarming pace.

Antibiotics are considered one of the greatest advances in medicine because they prevented a lot of casualties after formerly uncontrollable bacterial infections. Unfortunately, many individuals seek this prescription as the first line of defense. Overprescribing them has in turn resulted in the development of resistant bacteria. These bacteria don’t respond to the antibiotics like they might have in the past.

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.

Six tips on how to stay healthy at a BBQ

Eating outdoors as the weather heats up is one of the hallmarks of summertime activity, but before you fire up your barbecue grill or send out invitations to the family picnic, there are some precautions you should take to avoid a common occurrence: food poisoning.

Each year one out of 4 persons suffer from food borne illnesses as a result of eating contaminated food.

Preparing foods with unclean hands, eating undercooked meats, transferring contamination from raw meats to other foods, eating unwashed fruits and vegetables, and leaving perishable food out in warm weather can release a slew of bacteria, including E. coli and salmonella, as well as other food borne illnesses. This can result in nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or fever.

Here are six tips to stop food-borne illnesses from ruining your BBQ-fun

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.

Friendly aliens

Probiotics are live bacteria and yeasts that are good for your health, especially your digestive system. Probiotics help move food through your gut, and ease symptoms of (antibiotic-related or spontaneous) diarrhea and bowel diseases.
Furthermore probiotics can improve skin conditions like eczema, improve urinary and vaginal health. Probiotics are vital for our immunity as they are solely responsible for keeping the gut healthy.

Irritable bowel syndrome

Many of us suffer silently from chronic bowel pain. Contrary to many other types of pain, we rarely go and see a doctor for treatment, unless the discomfort is intolerablen as with Crohn's disease, thinking there is not much that can be done.

While it is true there are few useful drugs that help with bowel pain, diet, lifestyle changes and supplements can and do help a great deal. Pinpointing what food exactly aggravates your symptoms is very important and calls for the so-called elimination diet in which you make a list of foods that worsen your symptoms.