Transcript
jQvn1qw8YzM • 5 Warning Signs Your Poop Isn't Healthy | Dr. William Li
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Kind: captions Language: en all right today we're going to talk about the five signs that your poop is in healthy and this is where I'm going to come in not just as somebody who studies food as medicine but I'm actually going to come in with a little bit of medical knowledge as well so I'm going to bring a little bit extra uh that has more to do with uh clinical uh advice okay so sign number one if you have bright red blood in your stool and your toilet water or on your toilet paper or you look down at your poop and there's actually blood bright blood in the water that is a warning sign it could actually be a sign of colon cancer colon cancer is a u malignancy a cancer growing in the large bowel cancers On The Rise uh overall we don't quite understand why but colon cancer in particular especially in younger people is on the rise as well now uh the issue about blood in the poop is that the colon actually is the last place where uh your stool is dehydrated a bit so it absorbs the your large intestines absorbs water and now you form the log and if there is a tumor in that last part of your gut when that log passes through there and the tumor is actually usually pretty fragile scrapes along it and it can actually bleed and tumors are filled with new blood vessels uh feeding the cancer and so bleeding is actually pretty common uh in in cancer like you always hear about uh Blood on the skin with melanoma blood in the sputum for lung cancer Blood on the nipple for breast cancer and blood in the toilet bowl or in your poop actually for coloral cancer now here's the thing doesn't have to be colon cancer it could also be hemorrhoids if you have bright red blood hemorrhoids are basically veins right in your Anor rectal area so right where the anus is there's some veins and if you spent a lot of time doing staining or women who've actually uh gone through child birth where you know hours of actually trying to push often times hemorrhoids are really just bulging of the veins think about varicose veins uh of your anus all right uh and those actually are right where uh stool comes out and if you have hard stools you're pushing those veins you can pop a vein and you can actually have some bleeding now it's it's bright red blood now that blood will actually the bleeding will actually stop by itself but it can be very irritating and painful and it can be scary too that's where you can actually get blood on your toilet paper but bottom line is that blood anywhere bright red blood anywhere in your poop on the water on the paper or if you actually look at it and you can see it uh in your stool is a warning sign you got to actually do something about it now some of the things that your doctor might do is suggest that you uh get a colonoscopy that's actually the ultimate thing to do is to go ahead and take a look right in there and have a gastroenterologist it's a medical procedure um they'll give you sedation um and by the way this is where you got to clean your poop out all the night before you drink this stuff you'll wind up actually going to the bathroom you'll clean it out the next day they'll put you under um sedation and then they'll stick a tube with a camera and just take a look in there and see if there's anything abnormal all right so that's uh one uh option if uh if you wind up actually having uh a doctor advise you another uh thing that your doctor might suggest that you do is to take a test so a CAG guard test actually is something you check your stool with to see if there's any trace of blood this is basically a blood test uh for your stool to see if there's any hemoglobin or blood uh so those are the two things that normally happen uh but it's really important for you to actually let your doctor know if you see bright red blood uh in your stool now what can we do from a preventative perspective to prevent colon cancer I think this is a good time to talk about that because nobody wants to have colon cancer so researchers have shown that uh there are certain foods that actually are correlated ated with a lower risk lowering your risk of colon cancer all right green tea is one of the foods that beverages that if you actually drink it uh it contains a kaken a polyphenol called egcg that's EPA Gala kakin 3 Gala egcg all right and egcg is a potent inhibitor of angiogenesis it inhibits blood vessels that the tumor might want to hijack abnormal blood vessels to feed the cancer so when you actually cut off the blood supply to the tumor it it doesn't grow or it can't grow as quickly and so you're actually lowering risk of col rectal cancer uh and studies EV eventually shown that people who drink three to four cups of green tea a day have a lower risk of colon cancer here's another food that's actually been shown to have some effect in lowering the risk of colon cancer um from labr research I guess what it is purple potatoes you know when you go to the grocery store you look for your potatoes you got your Russa potatoes you got your white potatoes and then you'll see these unusual kind of um Dusky looking purplish looking potatoes if you try that um potato it's actually really delicious and it's beautiful if you cut it in half you'll see the inside is actually a really really deep purple and by the way here's a cool thing if you put it in the fridge after you cook it you'll see this uh purple turns actually blue and it actually has got resistant starches that actually occur which has featured got microbiome as well but here's a key thing purple potatoes are purple because of a natural dye that's called anthocyanins it's the same thing that makes a blueberry blue Blackberry dark dark purple those are anthocyanins and they are present in purple potatoes and studies in the lab have shown that anthocyanins can kill colon cancers but even more they can actually kill colon cancer stem cells now stem cells are the little tiny baby cells um in a cancer that can turn into cancer cells and make more cancer cells and this is how cancer cells keep coming back or tumors keep on coming back through their um stem cell now we don't have a drug there's no oncology drug or cancer treatment that actually can get rid of col colon cancer stem cells but purple potatoes can and if you like purple potatoes you want to try something uh in my first book Eat to beat disease I actually included a recipe for purple potato noi uh I think I put Walnut with a walnut pesto or a walnut sauce oh about walnuts guess what walnuts have also been shown to uh kill colon cancer stem cells as well purple potatoes and walnuts so a purple potato Miyaki with a walnut pesto that's actually uh not only delicious but it actually has some health benefits uh as well now if you do have colon cancer uh there has been a research study a big one with more than 700 patients with stage three colar rectal cancer showing that people who ate just two fistfuls of tree nuts like walnuts uh per week actually had a dramatically like a 70% lower risk of mortality all right so I know we're we started talking about you know warning signs of poop and here we are talking about colar Ral cancer so I'm just giving you a little bit of extra uh tips uh when it comes to food that can actually help fight cold and Cancer all right hemorrhoids listen uh there are things that can actually shrink hemorrhoids uh you can get those over the counter in a drugstore but if they have really have a problem like hemorrhoids can keep on bleeding you might need to see your doctor and they can actually um schedule you for a procedure that will sclerose the veins now they'll just close up the veins and then they won't be a problem again all right sign number two change in St stool caliber what am I talking about what's a caliber of a stool right um well it's the diameter of the stool you know uh poop we used to joke about this as kids right your poop is comes like a log all right not really like a log like I guess like a canoli siiz uh piece of poop is is what normal poop is like maybe a thin canoli um but a warning sign is if your poop starts coming out like different sizes like Pencil Thin all right weird right you're actually see in the toilet you actually have these little Pencil Thin uh ribbons of poop that's a warning sign as well all right you know what happens when you actually start changing the diameter poop one of the things that could happen is you've got an obstruction so the colon is a tube if you have a mass in your colon guess what this mass is growing and you actually squeeze poop through it you see that little the little hole right there right that I'm showing you that you're squeezing a little Pencil Thin ribbon out and that change in stool caliber could also be a warning sign for colon cancer you this case you need to see your doctor to get it checked out colonoscopy um is something that would be warrant warranted there you might get a barium Ena as well to see you know to to see if there's any uh obstruction you can see on an X-ray uh but here's the key you want to you want to catch colon cancer as soon as possible and that's why the blood we talked about earlier but also change in school caliber that's very consistent uh you know you might be squeezing out um uh ribbons of poop that actually requires uh urgent attention because the sooner you can get to that to get a diagnosis the more likely you're actually going to be able to survive it if it's colon cancer all right not trying to scare you I'm just trying to tell you these are the facts it happens to people you need to know the bleeding the changes Su caliber and what could actually should be causing it all right warning sign number three now look I'm actually giving you serious warning signs right the things that aren't serious maybe not such a big deal I want to start off by the things that are like life and death they're significant health issues that's kind of what I feel like I need to tell people if I'm explaining to a patient I will actually tell them the most serious things they need to look out for first now uh warning sign number three is if you have black tar stools I don't need to tell you what colored blacks looks like but our stool regular poop isn't black right black like paint and tar is kind of like you know tar is black and sticky all right and it's liquidy thick and liquidy sticky if your poop comes out tar and black that is a sign that you could be bleeding from your stomach or your upper digestive system so here's how your digestive system is laid out it starts with your mouth right goes down your throat your esophagus and then your esophagus enters into your stomach we're still in the GI tract this is the upper GI tract and then from your stomach which digests your food um then you got this long tube small intes winds around and around and around and around and then you get to the large bowel the colon we talked we just talked about the colon and then that colon loops around and then it empties out into the rectum and the rectum squeezes it out from the anus right so that's kind of like from mouth to tailpipe that's your gastrointestinal system um if you have dark tar stools it could be that there's bleeding from the stomach now remember mouth esophagus stomach and the stomach's got a really really uh specialized lining that um helps digest the food um and and the stomach of course releases acid stomach acid um if you got reflux you feel the acid kind of coming up in your esophagus and it's burning right acid it's going to burn but if you the it's kept if the acid is kept in the stomach it's kind of churning uh uh the the foods kind of digesting it like think about your washing machine and your clothes getting um really churned up in the in the washing machine uh that's like your stomach now that lining your stomach is highly resistant to acid but if the lining is worn down meaning if you have it will actually create an injury in your stomach that high acidic environment if that mucous layer that protects the stomach light the the lightting of the stomach but protects the stomach wall it gets worn down guess what the acid could Digest the actual stomach itself and what happens there you got bleeding that's what we call a stomach ulcer a gastric ulcer uh there are many other types of ulcers but the gastric ulcer can bleed and if it bleeds you're probably not going to see it coming out your mouth all right I mean unless you're vomiting from your stomach more likely it's going to be a slow leak slow bleeding and that blood is going to trickle from your stomach down into the small intestines that that winding road that I told you before it gets to the colon that's a long way I mean we're talking about you know 10 20 feet of small intestines and during that period of time the bright red blood like bleeding from your stomach is going to be bright bright red but it will the blood will oxidize right it's got you know the chemical uh environment will change and when hemoglobin blood oxidizes you know what color it turns it turns from bright red to Black all right and blackened oxidized blood in your gut is sticky all right it does it it's um it's just got a sticky uh texture to it um and so guess what now it all goes all the way down into your colon the end right uh and then when you go to the bathroom guess what you are expelling tar black stools that's how we used to describe it we were taught to describe this in the medical office we asked patients hey have you had any tar black stools most people say no but if you say yes because you've seen tar black stools and by the way toilet paper it's also going to be black and it's going to be kind of sticky all right that is a sign of bleeding from your upper GI tra most likely your stomach and that could be a sign of a stomach ulcer all right um and by the way when you actually have blood that's oxidized and sticky running down from your stomach all the way down to your stool uh blood is a a cathartic meaning that it actually makes your uh guts move a little bit faster so you might have a little bit of loose stool little diarrhea so loose stools black sticky tari usually a sign of a bleeding ulcer all right so what do you need to do with that you need to see a doctor you need to see a doctor who's probably going to refer you to a gastroenterologist this is a specialist who uh most likely uh is going to uh do an endoscopy which is to stick a tube down through your throat and you got a camera at the end and you can see your stomach to look for bleeding to see if there's any sign of an ulcer you can see it really really clearly um and in the medical record they actually take pictures of it right um and um basically they're doing kind of a tour of your stomach to make sure all the everything looks healthy and and normal and intact but if they see an ulcer and they they might even see bleeding in that ulcer or they might see an old healed ulcer that's actually a Telltale sign of what might be going on for those sticky black stools okay all right so what are some tips to actually avoid uh a gastric ulcer well a lot of things can cause gastric ulcers right I mean um too much secretion of of acid um could actually cause an ulcer that's why there are these things called proton pump inhibitors you can get them from the drugstore they lower the amount of acid that your stomach is going to secrete all right um I would I wouldn't do that by yourself I would talk to your doctor about that so that you're not missing the mark and that you're getting the right um treatment then there's a way of following up on it but the other thing that can happen is uh you can um wear down the lining of the stomach so some of the things that we know can wear down the lining of the stomach is a bacterial infection in fact for years we just thought that the only thing that or the most common thing that would actually cause a stomach ulcer would be alcohol drinking a lot of alcohol you know it's hard on the stomach right Harden esophagus as well and and it's true alcohol if you drink a lot can cause a stomach ulcer bleeding ulcer um smoke cigarette smoking um people are still smoking and vaping and we know that cigarette smoking can actually wear down the lining of your stomach as well also a setup for uh bleeding stomach ulcers but an important discovery that was made several decades ago is that most stomach ulcers are caused by an overgrowth of bacteria so this is you know um our entire m microbiome is in a gut from your mouth through the stomach into your lower intestines into your colon we talk about your gut microbiome what we're usually talking about is the healthy bacteria in the colon at the very very end but your stomach can have some bacteria as well if there's an overgrowth of one kind of bacteria called H pylori H pylori p y l o r i that's a bacteria that can wear down the lining of your stomach and cause a stomach ulcer and bleeding and the acidic environment makes it harder for your stomach to heal itself up all right so now that we know that a bacteria can causes there are tests for h pylori in fact there's even a breath test you can do to see uh if there's a sign for hpylori but that treatment for an ulcer is pretty straightforward because you can take a triple antibiotic this is a prescription that your doctor can give you and that's actually been a remarkable treatment to uh uh reverse the risk for uh stomach ulcers and bleeding ulcers so uh I know I don't usually recommend you know using antibiotics willy-nilly but you need a prescription for this anyway and this is why you want to consult with your doctor if you actually have black tar stools you want to get the proper work up but I'm explaining to you a warning sign is actually a black tar stools and this is some of the other things that could actually happen all right okay so it's uh if you get antibiotics by the way for uh bleeding ulcer don't forget to build back your gut microbiome antibio will can affect your your gut microbiome and your your body's microbiome everywhere so what should you do you should eat Probiotic foods yogurt whole yogurt is what I recommend whole yogurt does not have emulsifiers that are used to reconstitute the the texture of whole yogurt and a whole yogurt actually isn't doesn't increase your cardiovascular risk in fact it actually helps lower your cardiovascular risk and it's because the healthy bacteria uh that you're eating with a probiotic actually helps your other healthy bacteria rear up uh and do their job which is to lower your blood lipids which then lowers your cardiovascular disease so you want you can rebuild with yogurt and then you can eat foods with um Prebiotic like uh value so bioactives polyphenols you know bright colorful eat the rainbow kind of thing um uh so what are some really colorful Foods uh strawberry blueberries you know all kinds of green uh broccoli kale all shades of green are actually good red bell peppers guava watermelon you know anything that's colorful and all any shade of green actually has got these polyphenols that your gut microbiome love so you're taking good care of your gut microbiome now the other thing you should do to rebuild your gut microbiome if you happen to take antibiotics or give be given antibiotics to cure your stomach ulcer by getting rid of the h pylor eat foods with uh dietary fiber so foods like avocado I know avocado is like soft and smooshy you don't think it has dietary fiber in it but it does quite a lot of it mushrooms another food I love mushrooms um soft and Squishy you don't think there's a lot of dietary fiber yep it's got a lot of soluble fiber and a bioactive beta dlue can that actually feeds your gut microbiome and by the way you know mushroom if you want a lot of the fiber um you certainly have it in the cap of the mushroom that's usually what we eat right so you buy mushrooms take them home what do you mostly do you put the mushroom you got to clean the mushroom you cut it and you're going to save the cap and a lot of times I used to throw away the stem but research that I've done shows that the good bioactives that in the Caps of the mushroom there's twice as much of the good stuff in the stem so don't throw the stem away you can do something with the stem sauté it uh actually stems taste great same thing as a mushroom but you're now you're recapturing uh the stuff that uh you're not wasting um good beta de glucan good uh dietary fiber good for your gut health uh and that actually can help repair your gut microbiome all right um uh and then of course there are foods that clearly have fiber broccoli kale bras cauliflower cabbage those are going to actually give you a good source of dietary fiber as well now the other thing you might want to do if you've actually taken antibiotics for a stomach ulcer you might benefit from having your gut microbiome checked to make sure the microbiome's okay after you're done treating and so this is something we never used to do in the medical clinic but I think that you know um as a consumer we should be asking our doctor hey can I get my microbiome checked if you're being treated with antibiotics and uh if your doctor isn't able to order it for you or W order for you you can order it yourself all right there's many places that actually uh can measure your gut mic microbiome this is from poop right so uh here's what you want in the results of your gut microbiome you want High diversity in this is the result from the results of your gut microbiome test you want High diversity lots of different types of organism lots of different types of bacteria that's a good thing all right you don't want pathogens you don't want H pylori you don't want C diff you know you don't want any of these uh bacteria that are going to be detrimental or harmful bacteria hopefully after the antibiotic treatment actually everything is hunky dory and you've got a decent community and now you're going to be building it back with your yogurt and your avocado and your colorful vegetables all right and then you want to have healthy organisms and this is where you um the people that do the microbiome testing they can tell you with the results whether or not you have a general amount of healthy organisms so you want diversity number one number two you want to make sure check for pathogens you don't want the bad bacteria and number three you want good bacteria and so this is what it got micro biome test can tell you so all this coming from a warning sign uh that your poop might not be normal all right uh and that was talking about dark tar stools side number four all right that there's something going on if you've got hard dry stools now who hasn't experienced that right and I know look listen uh I'm talking about a a subject that might be uncomfortable for some people uh and I'm not joking about it I there's plenty of poop jokes we can actually talk about um but I'm G to kind of just give it to you straight let me let me explain hard dry poop all right uh so basically you eat food you chew food you swallow food the stomach digests food and after the stomach it's all about absorbing all the nutrients out of the food getting everything you can out of it and then everything that's left including some of the polyphenols that are left in the food and the dietary fiber roll down your gut through the the twists and turns all the way to your colon and guess what after you've eaten your human body's eat eat then your uh gut microbiome gets to eat right they're like sitting at the Kids Table they get to eat second all right now the key thing uh is that all throughout this uh path your food is going to have a certain amount of water to it and you want water to be present uh remember when you're digesting and absorbing remember nutrients remember I told you about like the washing machine you put your clothes in a washing machine and it gets soaking wet and it gets churned and think about that is really kind of what's going on through most of your gut but when you get to the tail end of the gut the colon the last mile of your gut not a mile but the last third of your gut is a colon It's a larger container and this is basically where poop is actually made and finished all right so as your food is going going through the poop it goes up uh your um right colon then it goes across a transverse colon It's like the the the colon is kind of like a gateway it's got to go up the right side right side and then it's going to go across the top and then it comes down and as it goes through the colon guess what your gut your colon absorbs fluid really a lot of fluid out of the poop all right when the water the liquid is absorbed out of the poop you know what it does it dries it out a little bit and so you wind up having very liquidy stuff uh into being more formed material all right and that's actually how you create the log all right the normal size log in your uh in your poop that's actually from a little bit of dehydration not total dehydration but a little bit of dehydration um and then uh when it's ready to be expelled and you poop it out in the toilet you've got just the right amount of of solids and liquids mixed together so that you can push it through squeeze it off cut it off and then it pops into the toilet water all right that's normal now if you have hard dry stools there could be a couple of things going on number one it could be that you're dehydrated and that's the most common cause if you're dehydrated all right guess what you're not uh able to uh I mean you're going to your Colon's going to absorb as much water as possible and when it goes Super absorbing of water now the poop is going to be not kind of dried to just right it's going to actually have most of the water extracted out it because your body needs that liquid okay um and that's an easy fix easy fix is to make sure you're properly hydrated drink plenty of fluids and the best fluid to drink is not alcohol okay for sure and the best liquid is not soda whether it's regular sugar sweetened soda or diet soda the best way to prevent dehydration is water okay uh so make sure you drink plenty of water make sure you drink plenty of fluid throughout the day uh to stay hydrated I can tell you a story once I um during my Gap year I went to the beach uh this was after college and I fell asleep on the beach um and and it was overcast but in fact it was really really hot I was on a Greek island and um uh and I was really tired and I fell asleep and guess what I got really dehydrated so I stood up I felt really lightheaded that's a sign of being laded it's called orthostatic hypotension you go from laying down to sitting up to standing up and all of a sudden you don't have enough uh fluid in your body to keep the the the blood pressure of your brain so boom you start blood pressure comes down you start feeling woozy and and that was my experience my really bad experience with dehydration so now whenever I go out into hot weather all right and you gotta you got to get your common sense when you're going to do this is I always make sure I'm very conscious of always drinking plenty of liquid along the way all right uh you want to stay hydrated now the other thing you want to do is if you want if you got hard dry stools you want to keep that stool moving so stay hydrated all right and if you feel like you're having hard stools start drinking water you need to put some water back into your system and now you want to kind of move your bowels because it's very easy to get constipated when you um are dehydrated and and now your stool's not moving right you got a traffic jam of poop in your guts in your intestines and that's not a good thing so it's uncomfortable it's crampy and you know you feel like you've got poop but you can't get it out so this is you should just know this dietary fiber uh when you eat dietary fiber helps gut motility so when you eat foods with fiber not only does it feed the gut bacteria but it kind of nudges the poop forward it keeps that keeps it Rolling Along because it keeps your gut from going squeezing the poop uh along the way so dietary fiber um what are some of the good foods with dietary fiber talked about them avocado leafy greens actually beans have good source of dietary Fiber Well you know white beans kidney beans black beans uh red beans they're all fine all right and tree nuts tree nuts are also a source of dietary fiber that's actually good U walnuts pecans pistachios uh almonds pine nuts even macadamias those are all um actually fine all right fifth sign that there that there might be something going on with your poop uh that you need to be checked out is if you have diarrhea now look we've all had diarrhea in our lives some of us more than others and lots of things can cause diarrhea but I want to explain to you the underlying mechanism that you wind up actually having diarrhea so remember we just went through this hard stool right because your gut is absorbing the liquid and so you're drying out the stool to ideally to the right um amount so you can kind of move it out and you form the log and you poop it into and you cut it off with your anal sphincter right into your toilet water hey just a quick note here if you're looking to eat to beat disease on a budget check out my free list of five affordable foods that you need to add to your next grocery shopping list what's exciting is that we now live in a time of enormous and fast scientific progress and food as medicine research is showing us that good health is within the reach of everyone with the rising cost of healthc care the very best way to save money and gain quality of life is to make those healthy food choices every time you're at the store get my recommendations for the five budget friendly foods to fight disease right now in the caption below now back to the video okay now what happens if your colon doesn't absorb the water it's called malabsorption so if your gut your colon is unhappy and has got a problem and it's not absorbing the water guess what not only are you not getting all the liquid that your body might need by absorbing it from your colon but guess what's else is happening you're not removing you're not solidifying the poop because you're not removing water so all that water is in your poop watery poop is diarrhea okay that's one reason that diarrhea forms is that your gut is malabsorbing meaning it's not absorbing all the liquid it should all right uh and so then the poop is just more much much more liquidy now what can actually cause that um malabsorption well a lot of things can cause malabsorption malabsorption but inflammation in the gut can also cause that because if you inflame the gut the lining of the gut has a hard time doing its job remember the large col the colon absorbs water when you've got inflammation there in your colon lining it's going to have a harder time absorbing the liquid so it leaves a liquid in the poop and now the poop is actually very liquidy and diarrhea all right so that's the other thing malabsorption uh inflammation uh and by the way you can have overgrowth of harmful bacteria as well so classically if you have SE defil okay which is a harmful gut bacteria overgrowing your gut it interferes with the absorption of water guess what you find you have massive explosive non-stop diarrhea and in fact you can have so much diarrhea that you actually get dehydrated and you get to be plugged into IV fluid just to keep up uh with the right amount of liquid uh in your body so that's why uh liquidy uh uh stools diarrhea is really an issue of absorption all right you might have Disturbed uh microbiome as well meaning that your gut microbiome is unhappy uh maybe overgrowth of some of these bad bacteria or maybe not enough good bacteria and now your gut's going to be inflamed and uh when it's inflamed it can't actually store um uh it can't absorb water in the right way and so the water's left in a poop and it winds up being very very liquidy all right so what do you do if you actually have um liquidy diarrhea right most diarrhea by the way resolves by itself so you don't need to worry about it too much but it can actually be pretty uncomfortable number one if you're having a lot of diarrhea the first thing that you should be thinking about is staying hydrated right because when you have diarrhea you're not absorbing the right amount of water you're actually losing the water so you want to make sure you drink plenty of fluids in order to keep up uh with uh with your fluids so you don't get dehydrated dehydration is really bad for virtually every tissue in the body all right uh and by the way if you want like a simple little Pro tip a hack to see they dehydrated what you do is you just pinch the skin on top of your hand for example and it should actually go right back down right so look at that goes right back down you can't really pinch just goes right back down if you're dehydrated you you pinch it it'll tin it'll stay right up there it's called tenting because there's not enough liquid in your tissue all right so drink plenty of fluid but you might actually need a little help to slow down your uh diarrhea all right it could be socially awkward you might be at work you might not be able to go to the bathroom you might not have a bathroom you know listen uh we've all been there uh I know you've been there all right so and I I've been as well so here's what I always tell you just you just know keep this in your back pocket of your thinking of like if you're traveling for example there are two things you can keep with you that can help you if you have diarrhea one is called Pepto-Bismol and the other one's called em modium those are just two uh names of of of um over-the-counter uh treatments that can help you with diarrhea they they can slow down diarrhea and make you much less uncomfortable so let me tell you what they do Imodium uh slows down your gut motility so you know your guts already squeezing squeezing squeezing squeezing this goes away let's not squeeze so fast all right that gives your gut a especially is inflamed a little more time to absorb a little bit more water so your stools are becoming a little bit more formed and your diarrhea will slow down it'll also slow down because your gut motility is also slower think about like slow motion you know like the Matrix bullet time uh in your gut em modium will do that so it can actually help to counter the diarrhea and slow things down a bit all right Pepto bismo all right uh Pepto bismo is this like pink liquid or pink capsule uh uh uh and you can chew it Pepto Bismol has two things it's got bismuth which is a metal and I'm going to tell you what that does and then it's called Subic Subic okay and the Bismuth the first part of Pismo helps your body absorb more water that's what you need when you're having diarrhea just you get got a little more absorption that'll make the stool a little bit drier make it more solid so you slow down the formation of the diarrhea less than the diarrhea and then the sub cicil uh reduces inflammation remember I told you that it's the inflamed gut that has trouble absorbing water so the subs solic late in pep Bismol kind of lowers the inflammation a bit and uh and then that less inflamed gut is able to do its job a little bit better absorb some of that fluid until your microbiome and your gut kind of corrects itself in because you may have an infection food poisoning by the way is a kind of a different story because when you diary from food poisoning That's all natural but it's your body's overall reaction of getting everything getting rid of everything you might be vomiting and then you might be having diarrhea the whole point is your body is on Red Alert okay in order to be to get rid of anything that's bad it could be infected it could be poisonous whatever it is uh in that case if you if you think it's food poisoning you should let that diarrhea happen but make sure you're always always always getting enough fluid that's important all right so we talked about diarrhea mostly self-limited kind of very annoying and especially if you're traveling and so my little travel tip travel hack for you is when you pack your um dot kit uh your meds if you're traveling get some em modium and get some Pepto a small like bottle of it just have it you hopefully won't need it but if you ever do guarantee you you'll have that and you'll remember this video in terms of like taking em modium or prep abysmal all right again if you're diarhea doesn't uh slow down and it's just profuse all right uh non-stop profuse diarrhea you're going to need hydration drinking water might not be enough you might need to go to an emergency room and get an IV hookup all right and that give you liquid and that can be lifes saving all right you can die from dehydration think about you know the person stuck in the desert they just dry out that's not what you want to have happen so you got to monitor yourself DEH hydration is really critical for help dehydration can be very very dangerous uh for health um if you're having diarrhea you might want to check your microbiome right see if there are um bad guys present that you need to get rid of and make sure you have enough Good Guys in there you want to see a balanced microbiome C diff would be one of those bad guys you could easily find with a gut microbiome check so checking your microbiome is always really really um helpful and based on the results of the microbiome you've got low diversity you might want to eat more diverse types of foods and to improve the diversity of the microbiome if you've got harmful bugs in there harmful organisms you might need some antibiotics or you might need some probiotics to be able to rebalance your gut all right one more bonus sign that your poop might not be in good shape and that's if your poop smells really really bad okay really bad nobody thinks that poop smells good but in general healthy poop is kind of innocuous all right when the poop smells really bad that is a sign that you might have malabsorption you're not absorbing everything you might have bacterial overgrowth might be some bad bugs that are overgrowing and you're smelling really kind of like the telltale signs of bacteria uh over overgrowth and so that's a sign that you might want to kind of re-evaluate what you're eating so uh if you've got really smelly poop here's what I actually would suggest you do as a first order of business now at the end of the day if you have any doubt always go to see your doctor all right that then you can actually get the proper workup but in general if you're seeing a really weird looking uh poop or you're smelling your poop and it's terrible smell um think about um some cutting down or cutting out some of the foods that can actually uh disturb your microbiome right so we're talking about Ultra processed foods um I'm going to keep repeating this you're going to hear this over and over again along with me and all all the other experts out there all the data shows Ultra processed foods are damaging to our gut microbiome healthy gut bacteria if you're eating spending all your time eating stuff out of a box look um you are probably not having the healthiest microbiome and that can actually cause your poop to smell bad all right it's just one cause but it's I'm telling you because you can cut down and cut out your Ultra processed food and switch to Fresh Whole Foods fruits and vegetables nuts and seeds right when you when you eat more good stuff you've got less room in your stomach for bad stuff and you'll start to heal your gut your gut will actually is pretty resilient it'll it wants to heal itself all right and when you're choosing healthier foods keep in mind you want foods with high dietary fiber and foods with high dietary fiber are the ones that are like leafy greens and the colorful Foods um I did mention to you that avocado and mushrooms are kind of soft you know um actually also have a lot of dietary fiber that can be helpful and then think about it if you got really stinky poop like awful smelling poop try having yogurt whole yogurt and see if you can use some Probiotic foods uh to build back your Healthy microbiome yogurt's not the only thing right you can try kombucha you can actually try kimchi you can try sourkraut all right you try a mix of all these things I mean nobody's going to sit there and eat only one thing but incorporate some of the Probiotic foods back into your diet and remember if you have any doubt about the health of your uh body based on the telltale signs that we went through the five ones we went through plus that six bonus one contact your doctor you should really speak to your doctor let them know they can actually guide you uh and hopefully reassure you uh what to do next in order to be able to protect your health that's it I hope you learned something and thanks for watching Dr will Lee out hi there if you enjoyed watching this video I know you'll love the next one stay here and check it out and I'll see you there