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Topics: Health
Britt Jones
When it comes to toileting, it seems like most of us aren’t doing it properly – despite how easy letting one drop appears to be.
Acronyms are fun to use, from your Ps and Qs (please and thank you), to a more fun LOL (laugh out loud).
However, your three Ps is a little less jovial, but wholly more beneficial and health focused.
According to a gastroenterologist, you’re probably going to think about your toilet habits after finding out more about the meaning of the Ps.
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Dr Trisha Pasricha reveals that she sees people unwilling to talk about their bowels, despite her being a leading physician scientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Simply put: Nobody wants to talk s***.
While it might not make for polite conversation in a social setting, it’s essential that people can name their digestive issues. It’s also necessary they know how to drop a log, otherwise it could bite them in the a**.
To help, Dr Pasricha developed a framework called the three Ps of pooing, which aim to aid her patients with common digestive struggles like constipation and diarrhea.
In her book, You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong: How to Make Your Bowel Movements a Joy, she broke it down.
Like anything that uses propulsion (a boat, or jet), force is sometimes needed to get an object in motion – be it a voluntary or involuntary motion.
When it comes to the colon, it creates its own movement to get the stool from A to B.
But you can also help your body out during key times if the colon is past creating this movement – typically after drinking coffee, within the first hour after waking, after eating, or after exercising.
At this point, if you sit on the toilet and raise your knees toward your chest when constipated, it’ll emulate this natural occurrence.
If you hold your stool instead, you could increase your risk of hemorrhoids, and further strain, per the Cleveland Clinic.
Pliability is the second of the Ps that Dr Pasricha created.
This refers to the consistency of your stool.
Now, if you know anything about the Bristol Stool Chart, you’ll know that the consistency of your poo can tell you a lot about your body.
The Cleveland Clinic shows the ranking system, which showcases a series of stools that are very dry and hard to pass, to liquid stools that are far too easy to pass.
In the middle is an area where stools are not too hard and not too soft – like the Goldilocks of s***.
Essentially, if your hydration and fiber intake are just right then you’ll get that level three or four delightfulness.
Per the Clinic, drinking more water and eating foods rich in soluble fiber can help you get to that level.
The last of the Ps is equally as important as the other two, and this can help you to keep physically healthy so that you can poo properly.
Dr Pasricha used a toothpaste tube for reference in her book, which ultimately explained that squeezing toothpaste when the lid is still intact can only cause trouble.
In this instance, the cap is the pelvic floor, and the paste is...obvious enough for me not to have to write it.
She said that the pelvic floor – the muscles from pubic bone to tailbone – can cause incontinence, pain during sex or even prolapse if not taken care of.
This means you need to stop straining when pooping, as pressure weakens the muscles!
Again, this is where helping your colon out is key via listing your knees up when on the toilet.
However, if you have chronic constipation due to pelvic floor dysfunction, she writes that a method called biofeedback can retrain the muscles so you can get your strength back in that area.
Biofeedback gives ‘real-time physiological feedback that trains them to shift behaviors,” Dr Pasricha wrote, adding: “A therapist may use electrodes on the skin outside the anal sphincters to measure muscle contractions. As you watch the recordings, you can see exactly how what you’re doing — such as where you direct force while bearing down — is helping or hurting.”
However, she warns that pain or bleeding in any stool related situation requires the advice of your doctor.