I wanted to call this blog something like, “the good thing about getting the shits!”, but I am conscious of the fact that the title of each blog is how search engines find it, so I wanted to make it search engine friendly.

This topic came to mind this morning as I hadn’t ran for two days and  went for 11.4 kms this morning, on  beautiful  Cable Beach Broome, Australia.    Within an hour of the run, I had a bowel movement.  This happened even though I had three bowel movements the previous day and one before my run!

As someone who eats only plants and  almost no processed food(that is de-fibred food with added sugar, salt and fat from a factory or take away chain) my bowel movements are regular, substantial and easy to produce. (non – ease of production, that is forcing leads to varicose veins, haemarroids and hiatal hernia, coming from all of the blood being forced around our body over a long period of time, due to all that straining!)    Medical professionals need a classificatory system, a taxonomy of pooh, so that there is a standardised way of talking about bowel movements and everyone is talking from the same page, so to speak.  Nurses frequently in hospitals have to look at our bowel movements and report on them, as an indicator of our health and the taxonomy they use is the Bristol Stool Scale.    I like all  vegans who stay away from processed food, you will be happy to know, have bowle movements categorised as a 4 on the scale, right where you want to be.

It is not however, just the  quality of our bowel movements that is important, it is also the quantity.

And last but not least the speed of transit, through our gut to our bowel is also important.  One way to  test whether  your bowel movement today relates to what you ate yesterday or 3-4 days ago, which is where most people are at, is to eat a lot of beetroot.   Just sit back and wait to see how long it takes for your faeces to  turn red and you have some important information about the  health of your intestinal system.   You will have improved your intestinal system by eating a lot of beetroot, which has a lot of fibre, which is only found in plants.  Fibre is what is neccesary to have good bacteria in our

gut and good bowel movement.  For the curious,  it takes 16 hours for my faeces to turn red.   It shouldn’t take any more than 24 hours.  If it does, eat more fibre and  get more exercise.  Fibre, meaning eating more unprocessed plants or whole food plants is the main thing though.

So, even though, I tick all of the boxes, quality, quantity and speed of transit, my bowel movements are still improved by exercise!   The exercise doesn’t have to be running an hour/day, just walking every day will do it.  I used to lead off track bushwalking trips for a few weeks at a time, consequently the diet was largely plant based and of course, we were walking everyday, approximately 10 kms (this far would not be necessary to improve bowel movement).  After a few days, people invariably started discussing the extent, nature and urgency of the bowel movements they were experiencing compared to their life pre-trip.

Plants and exercise work wonders!!