Your poo has to do a lot with your Mental health!

 I know you might think this is a bit far-fetched, but I promise you it's not. You need to consider your gut health (including your poo and bowel movement regularity) if you are trying to get better, whether that's physically or mentally. Here's why!

Why do I always cover gut health in my consultation? 

When I take the case history of my Patient or clients, I always ask about their bowel movements. The consistency, the color, the bowel movement frequency, even the smell. They tell me whether they experience diarrhea or constipation, or indeed both. Whether there is pain, a sense of urgency or the worry that toilets aren’t nearby when they leave the house. 

And depending on symptoms, I often order a stool test too. Why? So that I can have a better understanding of their gut health, digestion, and the state of their microbiome.

And why does this matter when my patient or client comes to see me for their mental and physical health? Here are the few reasons:

Talking about your poo in connection to your mental health isn’t funny or hocus-pocus, either. To prove that straight away, just look at the following fascinating study result.

The mental health benefits of receiving a healthy person's poo!

In this study published in 2018, 17 patients that either suffered from IBS, chronic constipation or chronic diarrhea received a fecal microbiota transplant. What’s that? It’s literally the process of giving bacteria and other microbes from the stool of a healthy individual to someone else. The donor stool is simply infused into the recipient’s large intestine… funny, right?

But it turns out that within this study, 12 out of the 17 patients experienced significant improvements in their depression, anxiety, and sleep symptoms! And this was regardless of any gastrointestinal symptoms changes. 

So for 12 out of these 17 people, their mental health improved after receiving stool samples from a healthy individual. That makes a remarkable note!

And by the way, it is known that people with depression tend to have lower microbial diversity than people not suffering from depression.

It is a great example why your poo and the state of your microbiome matters with your mental health!

Why your poo and mental health are linked

If you are constipated, there’s a risk you are reabsorbing toxins into your circulation that should have been excreted. And an overburden of toxins in the body is implicated in many conditions, including mental health.

If you are constipated and stool is difficult to pass, it gives you so much valuable information about your diet and water intake. Don’t dismiss it! Your bowels and yes your mental health might benefit from a change to your diet.

This study showed that the prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders in constipated people is much higher than in the general population. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4017427/)

If you are suffering from runny and perhaps even “explosive” diarrhea, it’s an indication of inflammation within your gut. And those inflammatory markers can be affecting your brain too!

Particularly with diarrhea, there is a risk of nutrient malabsorption because your body might be struggling to absorb the nutrients from your food efficiently. And nutrient deficiencies are hugely linked to mental health problems such as depression.

This fascinating 12 years study with 1,002 people showed that there’s a bidirectional relationship between chronic gut issues and anxiety. It showed two things: (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22234979/)

1) People with anxiety had a much higher risk of developing chronic gut issues later on.

 2) But it also showed that those people who first had chronic gut issues (with no anxiety to start with) had a higher risk of developing anxiety later on.

So there’s a really important message here. We can improve our mental health by focusing on our gut health! Just as we can try to reduce, for example, a nervous stomach by reducing our stress levels.

And then there’s the big world of the microbiota. All the microbes that reside within your gut (and in your poo) have so much more to do with your overall health and mental wellbeing than we realize. A fascinating area to know and understand the relation of your gut health with your mental health or vice versa.