EP 81 – Eat This: Digestion, gas and poop

Digestion and toilet talk are generally not very gauche to strike a conversation about but it needs to be talked about. Before birth, while you’re swimming around in your mama’s womb you poop. And from your first breath onwards,you’re hopefully going to poop every day. What comes out of your body–down the poop shoot; whether solid, liquid or gas, tells a story of what’s going noto only within the digestive system but within your body. Do you know what it all means though? That burping, constantly trying to navigate a gut explosion or when you haven’t moved your bowels for days. What about that air or gas that you pass. Sometimes it’s smelly and sometimes not. The colour and texture of your stool also matters, but who is going to tell you all about that? We are. Yep we are going there. With a list of slang descriptions for defecation like; your morning constitutional, taking a dump, answering nature’s call, make a deposit at the porcelain bank, and drop a deuce, you gotta know that in the list 69 ways to talk about having a bowel movement, it’s a hot topic amongst some. Oh and there are many more that made me laugh so hard that my abs got a workout, but I’ll stop there for now knowing you might be squeamish in hearing more like liberate the brown trout, so I’ll spare you the other 63 or so. 

If you’ve heard this podcast before, you know that the focus of my career has been digestion and all things gut related, so today on EAT THIS with Lianne we are going to talk about what many wouldn’t get into detail about–your digestion from burping, to gas, to the quality and type of poop – and to help us with that, health coach and my colleague Jason Persaud is back to share some of his experience with his clients and what he sees in in practice that could help you too.

When my girls were around 5 and 7, I remember a good friend and her kids coming over and sharing a really funny observation with me; around the dinner table of course. She took herself to the washroom before sitting down to dinner and one of my kids had been to the bathroom before her. They had a pee and poo and didn’t flush. My friend came back to the table and shared that she thought that I asked my kids NOT to flush because I wanted to see their poop before it went down the drain. Now it could be because I have a chapter in both my books Sprout Right Nutrition from Tummy to Toddler and Sprout Right Family Food all about baby poop, but I assured her that I was not analyzing my kids poop in the toilet and bathroom how-to did not include saving their porcelain deposits. 

In my 22 years of working with clients, their digestion has always fascinated me. From a teen that I worked with in the first years after I finished my studies,who had a parasite called Giardia that caused diarrhea after every time she ate to  a colleague who tested to have the Blastocystis hominis parasite that took six months of rotating antiparasitic supplements, bugs in the belly – good or bad have always fascinated me. My mom got Campylobacter from a corned beef sandwich she ate in hospital while having chemo treatment for lymphoma and she only just recovered from it, to an elderly friend getting Clostridium difficile in hospital which is an antibiotic resistant bacteria that can have life threatening results, what is going on in your digestive system can absolutely knock you off your healthy journey through life, and for years and years until what is underlying is found. One of my favourite books that I poured over in college was Ann Louise Gittleman’s Guess What Came to Dinner – parasites and your health, so this is absolutely an area that I like to geek out on. And of course pass on what you need to know. 

Today, to help with the sharing of knowledge, I’ve invited my colleague, Jason Persaud back on EAT THIS with Lianne. Jason is a Holistic Health Practitioner who works with chronic disease and chronic pain. Coach Jay’s mission is to simplify the complex reality that is the human body by teaching individuals how to navigate through the layers of the human condition. He not only has been looking after me and my daughter of late, but he radically improves his clients health, so look out, Jason is going to share some of his clinical experience with us, all about digestion, and poop.

Welcome Jason.

For anyone who wants more information about Jason, head to quantumhealth.ca for all his details. 

So what do you think you’re going to do now with all that we talked about? Notice more about the quality and type of your stool? How gassy you are and what could have contributed to it? 

Dealing with this can often take more digging that the tests that are typically done in the doctors office. The years that I tested client’s stool (not personally-the lab did) with the CDSA, it was fascinating what a functional test showed up versus what a doctor would do. Not to mention that if you have a parasite or bug, they don’t typically test after any period of time but assume that it’s gone. Never assume. Please. It can be the living nightmare of a never-well-since that you know, or don’t realize, is at the root of your issue. Jason and his EAV testing can help. Probiotics like Bio Boost can help. Antifungals, antibacterials and antiparasitics can help too, but you need to know where you’re starting, what your symptoms are to know that you’re improving and getting rid of the buggers. 

Question more, write down your symptoms along with the foods that you eat to see if your burps, gas or stool are negatively triggered by what you eat, your sleep or alcoholic preference. 
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