Cosmos
From the Cosmos newsroom.
We often use constipation or diarrhoea as an indicator that something is wrong with our bodies. Now a US study has found a link between bowel movement frequency and long-term health as well.
The researchers found that healthy adults had a range of biomarkers that correlated with their frequency, which informed their inflammation, heart health, liver function and kidney function.
The study is published in Cell Reports Medicine.
“Prior research has shown how bowel movement frequency can have a big impact on gut ecosystem function,” says lead author Johannes Johnson-Martinez, a PhD candidate at the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), US.
“Specifically, if stool sticks around too long in the gut, microbes use up all of the available dietary fibre, which they ferment into beneficial short-chain fatty acids.
“After that, the ecosystem switches to fermentation of proteins, which produces several toxins that can make their way into the bloodstream.”
The researchers used data from 1,425 generally healthy adults participants who were registered with the Arivale Scientific Wellness program, a wellness data company which has since closed.
They classified bowel movement frequency into four categories: constipation (1-2 bowel movements per week), low-normal (3-6 bowel movements per week), high-normal (1-3 bowel movements per day), and diarrhoea.
The researchers then looked for links between poo frequency and other factors, like blood composition, demographics, and genetics.
Younger people; those with low BMIs; and women were all less likely to have frequent bowel movements.
Meanwhile, many of the gut bacteria, blood metabolites, and plasma chemistries, were linked with bowel movement frequency.
Bacteria that process fibre in the gut seemed to be particularly common in a “Goldilocks zone” of people who pooed 1-2 times per day. People in this zone were also more likely to have fibre-rich diets, regular exercise, and better hydration.
Meanwhile, bacteria which ferment proteins into damaging byproducts appeared more commonly in people with constipation or diarrhoea.
People with constipation were also more likely to have kidney-damaging metabolites in their blood from fermented proteins, while those with diarrhoea were more likely to have liver-damaging chemistries.
“Chronic constipation has been associated with neurodegenerative disorders and with chronic kidney disease progression in patients with active disease,” says corresponding author Dr Sean Gibbons, an associate professor at ISB.
“However, it has been unclear whether or not bowel movement abnormalities are early drivers of chronic disease and organ damage, or whether these retrospective associations in sick patients are merely a coincidence.
“Here, in a generally healthy population, we show that constipation, in particular, is associated with blood levels of microbially derived toxins known to cause organ damage, prior to any disease diagnosis.”
The researchers say in their paper that their results “underscore” common-sense dietary and lifestyle changes to improve bowel movements, like eating fruits and vegetables, because this might lead to better long-term health.
“Overall, this study shows how bowel movement frequency can influence all body systems, and how aberrant bowel movement frequency may be an important risk factor in the development of chronic diseases,” says Gibbons.
