The shape, color, frequency and behavior of our stools is a wonderful indicator of health. The ideal stool is at least two inches in diameter and twelve inches long, but of course it depends on how much fiber we eat. Some foods have a very fast transit time so the stool stays very thin, this is not a bad thing if you know that foods are causing this. If you are prone to thin stools no matter what you eat, then that indicates a colon with strictures preventing the formation of thicker stools.

Stools should be formed but loose, mostly uniform in color, and sink to the bottom of the bowl but slowly.

If you can tell what you ate by looking at a stool, it wasn’t digested completely and this causes many complications over time. Some foods never do digest completely, including whole flax seeds, sesame seeds, and corn as a protein-starch combo food is tough to digest, and salad greens. So don’t worry if you see these occasionally. Think about chewing your food more thoroughly, cooking the foods rather than eating them raw, or putting them through a blender.

A stool that totally floats on the surface is full of fats. Only fat floats on water. This indicates that the fats you ate were not completely digested. This could be due to eating too much at once time for your digestive power; eating them with something that prevented their emulsification such as fruit or starch; having a congested liver that doesn’t produce enough bile; having bile that is full of fat so it is ineffective as a dissolving agent. Digestive enzymes, lecithin, carrots, apples, beets and liver management are called for. If it was a one-time deal due to enjoying some treats, don’t worry about it.

A stool that is very compact, hard, indicates that not enough water is being drunk. If the stool is grainy, or shaped into little balls, you have eaten very badly and should do an enema to get it all out of you properly, as the little balls can clog the appendix and cause appendicitis. Increase your intake of fiber too.

Stools should be rather brown, or red-brown, or dark brown. Gray colored stools indicates a severe lack of bile due to a stone or gunk clogging the bile ducts. Do a Liver Flush immediately. Other colors such as green or orange represent the foods or which microbes went to work to fully digest the foods and aren’t a worry. Yellow indicates toxins and a very fast transit time so that the toxins didn’t have a chance to turn brown. Certain foods will color stools, beets and carrots especially.

Dark, tarry stools, black stools, indicates blood in the feces. Bleeding can be due to Crohn’s or parasites or lack of good microbes.

If bright red blood is seen, this can often be due to old fecal matter coming off the intestine like a scab that comes off before the skin is healed. Avoid fiber for 1-3 days, enjoy a liquid diet, and let your intestines heal. Aloe Vera juice is very healing in this case.

Stools are often accompanied by a bit of gas; this is normal and to be expected. If the flatulence happens more often, such as in between bowel movements, and you haven’t eaten any sulphur vegetables such as broccoli or cabbage, then the gas indicates poor digestion. Foods that are not completely broken down by chewing or the stomach’s gastric juices go into the intestines in large enough pieces that your microbes have to do a lot of work to break them down further. The food then ferments. This creates gas. Meat especially requires a lot of microbe work. Eating a fruit dessert after a high-fat/meat meal causes this problem.

It helps to get to know your average transit time. For instance, if you eat breakfast and dinner and don’t have a bowel movement until the next morning, your average transit time is 12-24 hours -the number of hours since your last breakfast and dinner. This should be your slowest transit time, your bowel movements should be at least once a day unless you’re fasting.

For larger people who consume 2,000 to 3,000 or more calories a day, you should be having two bowel movements a day. If you’re not, you need to take a look at your diet. You may not be eating enough good oils, grains, vegetables - fiber - or foods with fast transit times. The ideal diet has a mixture of fast and slow foods. You may not have a strong liver or colon.

You should not have to strain to void a stool. Straining is very hard on the rectum and can cause hemrrhoids. It is better to do an enema or, ahem, go digging, rather than strain.

If you find yourself constantly having to wait for the bowel movement to the point that you read the entire magazine rather than just a paragraph, you’re either eating badly or have a prolapsed colon or both.

Sitting upright is not the best position for a bowel movement and doing so our whole lives long can cause weakness. Use a stool or a commercial stand that is designed to go around the toilet bowl so you can crouch over it rather than sit. Or use a training potty on the ground.

When you begin bowel management, you may see things come out of you that are pretty amazing. I never had mucoid placque myself, but plenty people do. If you had a long history of constipation or eating the standard American beef diet, chances are good that you have mucoid placque. Even if a colonoscopy didn’t turn up anything, you could have it in your small intestine.

The columnar epethelium tissues that make up the intestines are lined with villi so that the surface area, although scrunched up to fit into your abdomen, is huge. The mucous layer is where the microbes live and is the first line of defense against toxins getting into the bloodstream, while allowing the good nutrients and water to enter. The mucous layer, once compromised by undigested foods or poisons, gets thicker in order to protect the epethelium and blood supply. After awhile, this layer of mucous gets so thick that it is “shed” and left to form a kind of striated rope. Over time, it will harden until it looks like tire treads. So if you see mucous that still looks mucosy it’s a pretty recent shed. The darker and dryer it is, the older it is.