Bowel habits is a topic not everyone is comfortable talking about.. but as a gut health naturopath I happen to LOVE talking about the quality of your poo, and what it means for your digestive health. I love the fact you can quickly and easily assess the contents in your toilet bowl to determine how your digestive health is tracking, and it’s a free, daily measure of your health. Honestly, we should all be discussing this topic more!

In fact, if you’re part of Dr Carrie’s Regulated and Thriving Kids Bundle, we do a whole presentation on what you’re looking for in a perfect stool.

The composition of your stool is such as important part of the digestive process and gives you vital information about your health.

So what makes a perfect poo?

There are 3 things to consider for a perfect number 2 – how frequently you go, the form and shape of it and the colour of it.

Frequency of releasing your bowels

You should be going at least once a day. If you have a faster metabolism you may go after every meal which is okay too. Anything less than once a day, is termed constipation and anything more than three, could mean you are experiencing diarrhoea, both of which are problematic.

You should also feel a good urge to go. This means that the stool is in the correct position for an easy motion. If you are in the toilet for longer than a couple of minutes you are not ready to go. We have a bend in our digestive tract between the rectum and anus that stops us from pooping when we are upright, much like a kink in a garden hose.

When your stool is truly ready to be evacuated there is a complex orchestration of pressure forces, muscle contraction and relaxation that brings the stool into this area.

With our busy lifestyles we tend to “go” to our schedules rather than listening to our body signals correctly. If you are spending too much time in the toilet it might be worth trialing waiting a little bit longer when you first feel the urge before heading to the toilet and seeing if this helps.

Form & Shape of your poo

The length of your stool should be around 30cm or the size of a school ruler. Yes, you heard right 30cm! How long is yours?

Introducing the Bristol Stool Chart

I tend to use the Bristol stool scale chart with patients to categorise their stools, so it might be worth getting familiar with this chart (below).

There are 7 main types of stools to choose from each with a picture and a description to describe what yours might look like.

This tells you vital information about whether you are digesting and assimilating your nutrients correctly as well as your ability to eliminate your wastes effectively.

A type 4 is the perfect poo, but a type 3 or 5 is also ok. This means that your stool has transited through “the garden hose” without touching the sides and is smooth like a sausage.

Any variations on these mean you have constipation (top half of the chart) or diarrhoea (bottom half of the chart).

Variations to your stool form can be due to several factors such as:

your diet
how much fibre you eat
how much water your drink
bacteria and yeast overgrowths
parasitic infection

Colour of your poo

Chocolate brown is the perfect colour.

If it is lighter this can mean you are not absorbing your fats well.

Darker brown or black stools can suggest some internal bleeding and bright red blood either in the stools or on the toilet paper can mean you have haemorrhoids from straining, all of which need addressing with a health professional.

Variations of green/yellow or mucous generally mean bacterial infections and/or leaky gut, and you will be feeling other gut symptoms like bloating, pain and gas. These also need addressing and may mean you need to do some comprehensive stool testing to figure out what is going on, on the inside.

Other things to consider about your poo when assessing it:

It is also worth checking for the following as this can mean your digestive system is in trouble:

Regularly seeing undigested food or vegetable fibres in your stool
Greasy stools or fat droplets in the bowl
Explosive stools that paint the porcelain
Pain before, during or after you pass your stool
Blood - always a cause for further investigation

As you can see crafting the perfect poo is a complex process and one you need to take note of so that you can catch any issues before they become a major problem.