Doctor Answers Gut Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

i'm dr ugori roku a board-certified gastroenterologist and digestive disease specialist today i'll be answering your questions from twitter this is gut support [Music] queer republican how long is a small and large intestine because that's how many feet per second food moves through my body so the small intestine is about 18 feet long the large intestine is about six feet long oftentimes people will eat food and feel like it's running straight through their body but it turns out that there is a process called the gastrocolic reflex that's probably accounting for that immediate bowel movement you have what is that it's when your stomach senses that this food coming in and wants to create space in the body so it tells the colon move things along through the process of peristalsis it relaxes the muscles at the bottom of your anus and you are able to poop and so the poop you're pooping out is not the food you just ate it typically takes about two to three days for you to eat a food and actually have it leave your body you should know that at king of kgn aren't we all a little lactose intolerant the answer king is no just you but just kidding uh a lot of us become lactose intolerant over time the whole concept is that we're all born typically with enzymes called lactase that help us digest breast milk and so as we get older oftentimes many people in the population lose their ability to break down that dairy it happens more commonly in african-american communities american indian communities asian communities latino communities and that makes us more intolerant to dairy daily issues 98 my poop is dark green like the color of spinach am i dying the color of poop starts off as being green for everybody and that's just the color of the pigment bile as bile makes its way through your digestive tract it's oxidized it's digested by the time it comes out it's the poop that you normally come to know and love of a brown color the green color in poop is not a sign of anything dangerous but that green it's all coming from you you're probably just having a faster motility movement of the poop through your body that's letting you still be able to see that green color that you normally wouldn't see two boobs and a toot this person needs a gastroenterologist badly if you hold all your farts in do you start floating away like a balloon obviously the answer is no if you were to hold all your farts in uh you would be a very uncomfortable person there would be a high likelihood of gas incontinence so likelihood that you would indeed let one rip at some point with some movement but after a while gas being gas just finds a way to dissipate from one area and go to another area if it finds it's not able to go out through the anus like it usually can it'll dissipate into your body and find its way excreted out your body perhaps through your respiratory system or through another method so to make the distinction between the anus and the sphincter i can show you on our little diagram here the anus pretty much refers to this entire area that includes a number of supportive tissue and muscles it's the thing right at the end of your digestive system now as part of your anus you have sphincters external internal that help to tighten the bottom of your anus to make sure that nothing escapes so pretty much the sphincter are those muscles that exist within the anus to help prevent incontinence of gas liquids or solids and what is incontinence doctor incontinence just means that you're letting things rip without intending to sometimes people have gas incontinence they're passing gas without meaning to or they could actually have poop incontinence we're actually having you know bowel movements at moments you just didn't plan on having those not fun twin cities chick asks how long does it take for you to get food poisoning after having eaten something suspect asking for a fr okay no that's bull i'm asking for myself concerned emoji face and so it turns out that when you eat something that makes you sick we call that food poisoning it can happen pretty quickly within an hour you can have toxins that have been formed by the bacteria affecting your gut bacteria like be serious found in items like fried foods or clostridium found in dented cans that can have toxins that are infiltrated in the food can make you sick again within an hour or two there's some that take a couple of days to develop but you might be running for the toilet bowl even before you're done with your plate simply thinking what is a gastroenterologist and why do commercials talk about them like we should all have one so a gastroenterologist is a physician who spent six years after med school training on digestive disease health oftentimes you need to see us for many reasons 20 million americans have chronic gastrointestinal diseases like ibs or ibd one of the most common procedures that we do as gastroenterologists is the colonoscope and this is where we look with the camera into your colon and look for any signs of any disease or polyps that need to be removed and just in case you are feeling comfortable i'm going to show you exactly what we do during your kaleidoscope so what i have here is uh one of our enteroscopes in particular this is designed to look into your upper abdomen but a similar process we use for a colomoscope so it has a couple of dials that allows me to drive the scope as it makes its way through your intestines it has a light source that lets me have a good look and look to look for polyps or any sign of disease it has a few channels through the scope that allows me to take samples with the biopsy forceps and it also has clips that let me stop bleeding or cauterize and burn any bleeding sites if necessary next up mucosal immunology are there really 10 times more bacteria than cells in our body mucosal if i can call you that the answer is probably not the 10 times number comes from earlier on in our examination of the microbiome so the collection of bacteria viruses and fungi that exist in our gut and the estimation at the time was that there was 10 times more microbiota than there were actually human cells that number has been revised recently especially when you're just looking at bacteria it's thought to be more that for every one human cell you have about 1.3 bacterial cells but still if your body were a democracy you might be voted out of power raphael cheerio okay who needs a fecal transplant rafael we just met first of all what we call it is a fecal microbiota transplant and what that means is yes we are taking fecal content from person a and putting it in person b but this is not something most of you need which is a good thing for you to hear it's typically used for people who have a very severely damaged environment in their colon one situation is people who have cetaphicalitis where their gut has pretty much been overrun by this bacteria called c difficile and so in those cases we have to transport a whole new population of healthy bacteria from a healthy person into their gut there are many ways we put it in through a colonoscope or sometimes do a nasal gastric tube but one way or the other we get that healthy poop into the colon to help it feeling better just to let you know again there's this whole thing called the gut microbiome and so we're not just transferring poop for poop sake we're transferring a healthy community of healthy bacteria from one person to the other we have this entire amazing universe that exists inside of us that can keep us healthy and some people need a little help from their friends to get through some situations fran dreschler could there be a connection between your gut microbiome and alzheimer's that's a great question fran it's one that we're closely looking into what we do know is that a healthy gut microbiome produces nutrients that are important for a healthy brain omega-3s polyphenols are all very important for proper neuron formation and function in your brain and so it's very possible that having a very healthy gut leads to a very healthy thought process in terms of how to actually make that work what to do about that information that we're still working on the answer to camiate the worst thing about being a woman bloating why must the air in my stomach feel like 10 000 knives women frequently can have hormonal effects that come from the uterus come from the ovary and affect the gut dynamics and so sometimes you have aspects of the gut that are not relaxing the way they should or that are not moving your bowels along the way they should there are many medical definitions of the word bloating but typically to be honest we do tend to use that as a description of the symptom when it comes to what the underlying problem is it could be constipation it could be diarrhea it could be gastritis what can you do about it modify your diet so that you can tolerate those times of the month a little better there are many conditions that can have the symptom of bloating and cause people to feel like they're having a thousand knives shooting through their guts all right angry angry alice asks what is constipation if not clogged farteries all right alice uh you're creating a whole new terminology here constipation is essentially when your bowels are not emptying out as routinely as they should in a way that they should and so there's this component of frequency and then there's this component of a subjective description of how your bowel movements are and how you feel with it so you should be moving your bowels at least three times a week anything less than that is formally constipation if you start it off however is moving your bowels daily and then you drop down to four times a week that might be constipation for you that change in bowel movements rsb 90. i know bananas are a good prebiotic but what else is i've started on probiotic tablets for gut health so probiotics are bacteria that exist that we intentionally sometimes consume they come in pill form with the concept of trying to put healthy bacteria into our body i will say that not everyone needs to take probiotics if you have a healthy diverse diet that could actually give you the probiotics you need just from your consumption alone so if you're having your kimchi and kombucha and yogurts that may be all you need probiotics essentially eat prebiotics and what are prebiotics in shorthand those are essentially fibers they're things that probiotics like to eat so that they can increase the number a healthy diverse diet will contain all the pre and probiotics you need to be healthy yourself cookie for you and me that's nice my poop is black am i dying okay i hope not and odds are you're not dying but yes black stool can be very important what cookie is referring to is the fact that black stool often refers to blood in the stool blood of course starts off as being red by the time it goes to the digestive process and gets all the way down to the toilet bowl it's often seen as being black and tarry and so if you notice that change in your bowel movements that might mean that you have an important gastrointestinal bleed going on other reasons for having black poop it might be food coloring it might be licorice it might be pepto-bismol but typically it's not something you want to see and if you have that very important to talk to your doctor about ian hammond asks why does coffee make me poop all right we know not to hang around you right after your cup of java there are many reasons why coffee might be making you poop one of them is that coffee in general can cause peristalsis in the colon so that's that p word again it just means it makes your colon move the poop another thing that coffee can sometimes do through caffeine is relax the anal sphincter making poop more ready to come out of your body and sometimes it's just having a warm liquid and the routine of it all something entering your stomach that really more than anything else is just a trigger of that gastrocolic reflux for things to start moving along conor leary 64. does my ibs cause my anxiety or does my anxiety cause my ibs question asked for billions of years and the answer is yes so for the uninitiated the lucky ones of those of you who are ibs stands for irritable bowel syndrome it really just means that your gut is irritated and hyperactive and very sensitive to any amount of distension in your gut causing a lot of pain a lot of gassiness and either a lot of pooping or a decreased amount of bowel movements your ibs does cause your anxiety often in the form of a person having severe symptoms and not having a clear answer as to why they're having symptoms additionally we do find that people who have anxiety or depression have a higher likelihood of having irritable bowel syndrome work out frolic how does gut health impact your immune system so it turns out that in your gut again we have this microbiome and that's the word that just keeps coming up that's intimately involved in the function of our immune system it's important to note that your immune system 70 of it exists within your digestive health tract having a healthy diet for your microbiome keeps your immune system healthy as well it's able to produce short chain fatty acids that keep your colon cells very healthy and robust and all of this leads towards a healthy immune system and a healthy you that's it that's all our questions from today hopefully you learned something i know i did i learned about farteries and i will see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 1,251,762

Keywords: black poop, bowel movement questions, bowel movements, dr. ugo iroku, dr. ugo iroku gut support, dr. ugo iroku interview, dr. ugo iroku wired, gastroenterologist, gastroenterologists, green poop, gut flora, gut questions, gut support, guts, guts support, innovation, normal poop, ott tech support, poop questions, science & technology, wired

Id: Q2ysbTVlPdk

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022