Knees Up And Ditch The Newspaper – How Bowel Experts Poo
We all know there are things we can do to keep our bowels moving-and-grooving – and getting plenty of fibre is often top of that list. But did you know there are different types of fibre, and you can increase and decrease your intake to alter the consistency of your poo?
That’s just one of the life lessons gastroenterologists swear by. And in the spirit of ‘sharing is caring’, they’ve told us plenty of other ways they keep their bowel health in check in the hope it’ll encourage us to think about our own habits.
The issue is important, of course. Constipation cost the NHS £162m in 2017-18, with people sweeping long-term battles of being bunged up under the rug. The report last year revealed that £71m was caused by unplanned, avoidable emergency admissions and £91m was spent on prescription laxatives.
In the same year, 71,430 people in England were admitted to hospital with constipation – that’s equivalent to 196 people a day – with women accounting for about 60% of admissions.
So, what can we learn from bowel experts about how to stay regular?
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Don’t avoid the urge to poo
If Dr Benjamin Disney, consultant gastroenterologist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, suddenly needs the loo, he’ll go straight away. “It’s important to have a regular routine and not avoid the urge,” he says.
Ignoring the urge to go for a poo could lead to impairment of the defecation reflex, he told HuffPost UK. This basically means the strength of the urge to go to the toilet could lessen, making it harder to know when you need a poo in future. This, in turn, can lead to constipation.
Knees up, hips down
For Professor Anton Emmanuel, consultant neurogastroenterologist and director of the GI Physiology Unit at University College London Hospital, getting into an...
