Are you pooping all wrong?
4/13/202613 min
Talking about poop can be taboo, and this social norm may be hurting our health. Dr. Trisha Pasricha says around 40% of people in the U.S. have bathroom issues so bad it affects their daily lives. Pasricha, a gastroenterologist, says her patients' bathroom and bowel education ends during potty training and doesn’t continue into adulthood. This is why she wrote the book You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong. In this episode, Pasricha speaks with host Regina G. Barber about the three P’s of pooping: pliability, propulsion and pelvic floor. They address whether to squat and whether certain fiber is the answer to better bathroom breaks.
If you liked this episode, check out our episodes on urine myths and recurring UTIs.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Regina Barber· Host0:15
[gentle music] You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. Are you regular? That's a question that I remember hearing from older movies or sitcoms when I was a kid, and it took me a while to understand what it meant, that it was a delicate question to ask if your bathroom schedule was regular or disrupting your life.
Trisha Pasricha· Guest0:36
40% of Americans report that their bowel habits disrupt their daily lives.
Regina Barber· Host0:41
Wow.
Trisha Pasricha· Guest0:42
Isn't that a huge number? That's, like, almost half of us.
Regina Barber· Host0:45
That's gastroenterologist and medical journalist Dr. Trisha Pasricha, who's taken it upon herself to help this 40% of people who need help.
Trisha Pasricha· Guest0:54
There's a lot that we just don't talk about, don't know, and if we could just all of us lean in a little bit more to our physiology and know how our body's supposed to work, then I think we could solve a lot of this problem on our own.
Regina Barber· Host1:06
Trisha's latest push to solve this problem is a new book called You've Been Pooping All Wrong, and she's never been shy when it comes to talking about, well, poop.
Trisha Pasricha· Guest1:16
[upbeat music] I grew up in a poop-positive family, uh, and I hope I am currently raising a poop-positive family. But my dad was and is also a neurogastroenterologist, so we talked about poop all the time.
Regina Barber· Host1:29
I was