Why Looking at your Poo Patterns is Essential for Beautiful Skin

Your bathroom cabinet is full of carefully chosen, natural face and body care products.
Your daily beauty rituals are fit for the likes of cleopatra yet you struggle with re-occuring acne, rosacea, eczema or maybe even body odour and bad breath that leave you feeling extremely frustrated and bewildered.

If this sounds all too familiar I suggest taking note of how often you poop. Is it a daily affair or more like once a week?

It may sound like a strange request but constipation contributes to acute and chronic dis-ease in the body, including the health of our skin and scent. Stick with me while I explain…

Constipation is a huge problem with many people suffering and self medicating with laxatives and harsh natural senna based products.

This is not ideal, as long-term laxative use can cause dependency, electrolyte imbalances, poor heart and colon health, severe dehydration, weakness, tremor, lazy or infected bowels, or damage to the kidneys and liver.

Most people avoid professional support because they are embarrassed or ashamed, but there really is no need because, guess what?
You are not alone—in fact, there’s a big tribe of constipated folk out there. I used to be one of them.

Pooping is part of our “manufacturing process.” It’s completely natural and highly essential.

We instinctively know that we need to poop and feel uncomfortable when we don’t go for days, but do we know WHY pooping regularly is important?

Let me shed some light and hopefully extinguish any embarrassment as well

What is constipation?

It can be any or all of these:

• Incomplete emptying of the bowels. You may poop daily but you often feel dissatisfied, as if there is more that can be evacuated
• Hard, dry stools that need excessive strain to pass
• Infrequent or unsuccessful evacuation of the colon
• Loose stool, which some assume is diarrhoea, but is actually overflow incontinence, may seep out around a hard impacted stool. Your body’s desperate attempt to get rid of waste
• Other digestive symptoms such as abdominal cramping, excessive wind, or bloating often accompany constipation

Most people do not know whether they are constipated and what condition their bowel is in.

 

Why is pooping is so important?

Pooping is our body’s natural way of removing waste, toxins, and hormones.

Waste is predominantly made up of water, bacteria, indigestible vegetable fiber, metabolic waste, and those things our body wants to get rid of such as medicine remains, cholesterol, and food colourants.
The skin, kidneys, lymphatic system, lungs, and bronchioles are also elimination organs, but it is the bowel that is the most abused and neglected.

There is no “normal” poop pattern, only averages.
Studies have shown that people poop anywhere between three times a day to three times a week.
Many experience bowel movement irregularity, and women tend to have more sluggish bowels than men.

I believe that while not always possible, it is important to encourage a nice, healthy poop once or twice daily.

Why daily? Let this article do the talking…

What happens when our bowels don't cooperate?

In a nutshell, think self-poisoning and inflammation.

TOXICITY

We recycle our waste and hormone by products which leads to toxic build-up in the bowel. An unclean bowel leads to unclean circulating blood and as a result unclean tissues (organs). This weakens the health of our organs and as a result they do not function as well as they are designed to.

DIVERTICULITIS

When too much pressure is used from straining to get poop out we can develop bowel pockets, where the lining of the colon bulges and food and contents collect there. These pockets are called diverticula and can be a house for fermenting, rotting food and other contents.

PATHOGEN GROWTH

Rotting of food in the bowel and the development of diverticula can stimulate the growth of dangerous pathogens such as parasites, bacteria and fungus.

LEAKY GUT

Toxins can weaken the bowel wall and cause a leaky gut. As the name states the intestinal lining becomes “leaky” allowing undigested food, proteins, toxins, cholesterol and fats to pass through into the bloodstream and lymph where they go on to affect the health of other organs, especially those that are weak.

POOR ENERGY

Toxicity leads to poor oxygen delivery in the body. Without oxygen, our energy levels are depleted. An exhausted body does not remove toxins well.

To put it bluntly toxicity and inflammation can aggravate pre-existing conditions or cause pathological change in tissues (organs) such as the acute or chronic inflammatory conditions listed below:

• Skin manifestations- acne, eczema, psoriasis
• A compromised Immune system – chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, allergies
• Mental health – loss of concentration and memory, mental incoordination, anxiety, depression, melancholy, parkinsons, Alzheimers, ADHD
• Digestive health – inflammatory bowel disease, coeliac disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s, malabsorption of nutrients
• Hormonal imbalance – risk of infertility, miscarriage, thyroid disorders, pathological changes in breasts
• Weight gain
• Arthritis and pain
• Headaches
• Body odour and bad breath
• Insomnia and bad dreams
• Hiatal hernia
• Varicose veins
• Gallstones
• Heart irregularities
• Increased risk of colorectal cancer
• Hemorrhoids
• Anal fissure

Now that you understand the big impact that irregular bowel movements have on health, will you let your embarrassment and shame stop you from exploring solutions?

Remember, we all poop; it’s a natural bodily function, and most of us experience snags in regularity at different times in our lives. Sometimes constipation can be resolved quickly, while at other times further investigation and a long-term, repair approach is needed.

Learn ways to get the bowels moving in 15 Tricks To Have A Great Poop, Every Time

While on the journey toward regularity and afterward I recommend supporting the skin topically with all natural skin care products such as Ecology Skincare so that you reduce the severity of flare ups and accelerate healing.

Look out for the next installment of poop talk as we delve into exactly how constipation contributes to poor skin health and how stress affects gut function
~ Lynda Griparic

SOURCES

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4017427/
• http://www.jpp.krakow.pl/journal/archive/12_11/pdf/591_12_11_article.pdf
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK415/
• https://chriskresser.com/the-healthy-skeptic-podcast-episode-9/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15740474
• http://gutpathogens.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1757-4749-3-1
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604730/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1727410/pdf/v044p00435.pdf
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3122153/