Latest / Love Your Gut / Ep. 130: Sticky, Floating, or Hard to Pass? What Your Poop Is Telling You Before You Ever Run a Test

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Ep. 130: Sticky, Floating, or Hard to Pass? What Your Poop Is Telling You Before You Ever Run a Test · Love Your Gut

• 0:03
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast.
• 0:05
  Dr. Heather Finley: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:06
  Dr. Heather Finley: Heather Finley, registered dietitian and gut health specialist.
• 0:10
  Dr. Heather Finley: I understand the frustration of dealing with GI issues because I've been there and I spent over two decades searching for answers for my own gut issues of constipation, bloating, and stomach pain.
• 0:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: I've dedicated my life to understanding and solving my own gut issues.
• 0:25
  Dr. Heather Finley: And now I'm here to guide you.
• 0:28
  Dr. Heather Finley: On this podcast, I'll help you identify the true root causes of your discomfort.
• 0:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: So you can finally ditch your symptoms for good.
• 0:36
  Dr. Heather Finley: My goal is to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need so that you can love your gut and it will love you right back.
• 0:43
  Dr. Heather Finley: So if you're ready to learn a lot, gain a deeper understanding of your gut and find lasting relief.
• 0:48
  Dr. Heather Finley: You are in the right place.
• 0:50
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the love your gut podcast.
• 0:55
  Have you ever looked down after going to the bathroom and had the thought,"That doesn't look right," or,"That looks weird," and then flushed and just moved on with your day, and maybe you thought about it a couple times?
• 1:06
  I have definitely had that thought before.
• 1:08
  And if you're thinking,"That is so gross," you should be looking at your poop, because what your poop looks like and the texture of your poop actually tells you a lot about the health of your gut.
• 1:19
  And most women that we work with have been doing the exact same thing, whether it's poop that takes a lot of wiping and still isn't done, maybe their poop is floating no matter what they eat, or maybe they're having rabbit pellets and they cannot actually empty their bowels.
• 1:37
  So here is what I want you to hear today.
• 1:41
  Your body has been handing you clues this whole time, and every single trip to the bathroom is just a little report card on how your digestion is working from your stomach all the way down.
• 1:54
  And once you learn how to read that report, you get something most women with gut issues haven't had in a really long time, which is clarity.
• 2:03
  You know where to start.
• 2:05
  You can stop guessing.
• 2:06
  And I know how hard the guessing is because I did this for 20 years.
• 2:11
  I lived with gut issues for 20 years.
• 2:14
  I tried all the elimination diets, the supplements, the doctors who told me my labs were, quote-unquote,"normal." And eventually, I went back to school because I needed to understand what was actually going on in my body.
• 2:27
  And I did that so that you don't have to go get a doctorate to figure out why you can't go to the bathroom.
• 2:33
  So now, after working with over 1,000 clients, we see a lot of the same patterns over and over and over again.
• 2:41
  Women who come to us after trying functional medicine, conventional medicine, Google medicine, and a handful of providers, and some of them have already run really fancy stool tests.
• 2:53
  They have had good information, good protocols, and really what changed everything for them was reading the clues in the right order.
• 3:02
  So here is how I think about it.
• 3:04
  Digestion works from north to south like an assembly line.
• 3:09
  So I want you to picture a factory that bottles soap.
• 3:13
  So- The bottle comes down the line, it gets filled, it gets capped, it gets labeled.
• 3:18
  If the soap starts pouring before the bottle reaches the line, you will end up with a big mess on the floor, right?
• 3:26
  Your gut works the same way, and your poop is the very end of that assembly line.
• 3:32
  So it actually tells us a lot about what happened at every station before that.
• 3:37
  So I'll give you an example.
• 3:39
  A client that comes to mind is our client, Cat.
• 3:42
  We worked with her in the past.
• 3:44
  She came to us.
• 3:45
  She had done, I think, like, four or five rounds of SIBO treatment.
• 3:49
  She had H.
• 3:50
  pylori, and she had constipation so severe and bloating so severe that she was down to five foods.
• 3:58
  She said that she felt like she was just housebound, and literally every part of her life revolved around her stomach.
• 4:06
  So today, Cat travels.
• 4:08
  She sits down at restaurants and orders food without looking at the menu first, and that is really what this is all about.
• 4:15
  You actually probably don't care about what your poop looks like, right?
• 4:20
  But you care about the payoff of that And I think so many times we focus so much on the outcome of, like, just almost micromanaging our gut and micromanaging, every little thing that it does.
• 4:34
  We're so deep in the weeds that we forget to remember why we're doing this.
• 4:40
  You're not likely fixing your gut so you can have bowel movements, right?
• 4:45
  You are fixing your gut so you can be more present, so you can create more mental clarity and think about other things throughout the day.
• 4:54
  And if you feel discouraged on your journey, you have to create desire for that outcome that's on the other side of it.
• 5:02
  And you have to create desire for what you need to do in the interim, the boring, not so sexy things.
• 5:09
  Creating desire for those things helps you to actually make the changes to get what you want on the other side.
• 5:16
  So this is what it's really about, right?
• 5:18
  When you understand what your body is telling you, then you can make decisions with confidence.
• 5:24
  Testing, like we use, becomes a tool that you use on purpose at the right time, and your energy then goes back to your people, your work, your weekends.
• 5:35
  So I want you to think about what you saw this morning.
• 5:38
  or maybe you haven't gone to the bathroom this morning, because by the end of this episode, I want you to know what that could be pointing to.
• 5:45
  So if you're new here, you should know that we talk about poop a lot on this show.
• 5:50
  Like, a lot.
• 5:52
  Because in my world, poop is one of the most reliable pieces of data that you have.
• 5:58
  And something that I hear constantly is a client will say, Nobody has ever asked me about my poop in this much detail." Not their doctor, not even their GI, not the other three practitioners they've seen.
• 6:10
  Maybe someone asked, Are you going to the bathroom?" And that was the end of the conversation.
• 6:15
  So if you're comfortable talking about this, you are in good company.
• 6:19
  So let's just start with the basics.
• 6:21
  There is a tool called the Bristol Stool Chart, and if you've never seen it, I'll pull it up in the show notes.
• 6:27
  It sorts poop into seven types.
• 6:29
  Type one is, like, hard, separate little lumps, rabbit pebbles.
• 6:33
  Type two is lumpy, sausage shaped.
• 6:36
  Type three is sausage with cracks.
• 6:38
  Type four is what we're going for.
• 6:40
  Smooth, soft, kind of like a snake.
• 6:42
  And types five, six, and seven move as the numbers get bigger, they move towards softer, mushier, eventually watery.
• 6:48
  So type four, like I said, is where we want to be.
• 6:51
  You should be able to go easily without a ton of straining, and you should also feel like you're done when you go to the bathroom.
• 6:59
  But shape is only a part of the story.
• 7:02
  There are a few other details that I want you to start paying attention to Is it sticky?
• 7:08
  Like, does it smear or does it take a lot of wiping?
• 7:11
  Our clients will often describe this as, like, peanut butter texture stool.
• 7:15
  Does it float?
• 7:16
  What color is it?
• 7:18
  Was it easy to pass?
• 7:19
  Did you have to work for it?
• 7:20
  Did you feel finished afterwards?
• 7:22
  And If you can see pieces of food in your stool, that is also problematic as well, unless it's, like, corn or common things that don't get digested.
• 7:31
  So here is the important part.
• 7:33
  I want you to just notice it.
• 7:35
  There's no judgment attached to any of this.
• 7:37
  One weird day after a vacation or a stressful week is just one day.
• 7:43
  What tells you the story is your pattern over a week or two.
• 7:48
  That's really what your body is trying to show you.
• 7:51
  A lot of women that we work with have gotten really good at not looking, because it's just depressing and frustrating'cause they can't find a solution.
• 8:00
  So if paying attention to this feels uncomfortable, that is totally fine But just think of this as like gathering information about the body that you are working with, the same way that you would check the gas gauge before a road trip.
• 8:15
  So let's start with sticky stool, this like peanut butter, greasy, sticky stool, because this is very common.
• 8:22
  It's one of the, things that I hear the most from clients.
• 8:25
  the kind where, like, you wipe and wipe, and it just feels messy.
• 8:30
  Sometimes there's, like, film or, an oily sheen on the water.
• 8:34
  When I see that pattern, the first thing I think about is fat.
• 8:38
  Sticky or greasy poop often means that fat from your food isn't being broken down or absorbed the way that it should, so some of it is coming out.
• 8:49
  So why would that happen?
• 8:51
  This is where that soap assembly line comes in.
• 8:54
  In order for you to digest fat, you need two main helpers.
• 8:59
  One, which is bile, which your liver makes, and then your gallbladder stores it and releases it.
• 9:05
  Bile actually works kind of like dish soap on a greasy pan.
• 9:09
  So it breaks fat into tiny droplets that can be absorbed.
• 9:13
  The other helper is your pancreas, which releases enzymes that do the actual chopping.
• 9:20
  The part that I think is missed a lot is your gallbladder and your pancreas take their cues actually from upstream.
• 9:29
  So when food leaves your stomach with enough acid on it, that acidity is part of the signal that tells your gallbladder and pancreas,"Hey, food is coming.
• 9:38
  It's time to do your job." So if stomach acid is on the lower side, which is really common with chronic stress, long-term acid blockers, low minerals like zinc, chloride, sodium, potassium, that H.
• 9:53
  pylori infections can also be in there, that signal downstream gets weaker, and the soap starts pouring before the bottle is ready, right?
• 10:03
  So that's why we can't just look at sticky poop and say,"Well, just take bile acids, or take a liver supplement.
• 10:09
  Take a bile supplement." Sometimes that could be part of the answer, but often we need to look at one or two stations up the line first if we're kind of going with this, soap bottling process.
• 10:21
  The next thing would be floating poop.
• 10:23
  So floating poop gets a lot of attention online, and an occasional floating poop can be common.
• 10:29
  it just means that you ate something gassy or maybe a higher fat meal.
• 10:33
  What you wanna pay attention to is a pattern.
• 10:36
  If your stool is always floating, it can point to one of two things.
• 10:42
  One is there's extra fat in it, which brings us right back to bile and enzymes, or there's extra gas trapped in it, which often means that food is fermenting longer than it should.
• 10:53
  And that fermentation piece tends to show up alongside bloating, especially that, like, six-month pregnant, can't button my pants by the end of the day bloat that builds as the day goes on A couple other clues that are kind of related to this would be the color.
• 11:09
  pale, clay-colored, very light stool can be another sign that bile isn't flowing well since bile is a big part of what gives poop its brown color.
• 11:18
  So if you're seeing some of these things, it can point to that assembly line.
• 11:24
  So how well are you chewing?
• 11:26
  How much stomach acid are you making?
• 11:28
  A little corn, like I said, a few seeds here and there, that can be normal, but seeing yesterday's whole dinner in a lot of greasy, sticky stool is not.
• 11:37
  If you wanna go deeper on these, I did a whole episode on bile and greasy poop, and another one on stomach acid.
• 11:44
  So I'll link both of those in the show notes if you wanna dig deeper on this.
• 11:48
  So let's talk about the other end of the spectrum, like the hard pellet poop that you're, like, sitting there just waiting, and it could be painful, it could be like you're straining.
• 12:01
  So that would be like type one or type two on the Bristol chart.
• 12:05
  That usually tells me that your stool is moving through your colon too slowly, and the longer it sits there, the more water your colon pulls back out of it, so it gets harder, drier, tougher to pass, which makes it sit even longer, and that can also be related to maybe some of the bloating that you're experiencing.
• 12:23
  So what actually slows things down?
• 12:26
  There are actually a few usual suspects, and most of the time it's more than one.
• 12:31
  The first is motility, and I have many episodes on motility, but motility, very simply put, is just the rhythmic muscle movement that forces food through your digestive tract.
• 12:43
  When motility is sluggish, everything backs up.
• 12:46
  So the second is minerals, magnesium especially.
• 12:50
  Magnesium helps muscles in your gut wall to contract and relax.
• 12:54
  And really just minerals in general, a lot of our clients come to us and they're like,"I'm taking, you know, 1,000 milligrams of magnesium citrate.
• 13:02
  Why am I still pooping rabbit pebbles?" That could have to do with your whole mineral symphony.
• 13:07
  So things like boron and sodium and potassium, they help with magnesium absorption.
• 13:12
  Potassium helps with muscle contraction.
• 13:15
  So a lot of women are low in magnesium or need magnesium support, and this is also why some people take magnesium and feel like a new person, while others take it and they're like,"I literally noticed nothing." if the other minerals it works with are off, like I said, sodium, potassium, boron, et cetera, if something upstream is a bigger issue, magnesium alone isn't going to do very much.
• 13:40
  The third reason is just simply not enough water or not enough food, and this is actually more common than you think.
• 13:47
  Many women that we work with are eating really, quote, unquote,"clean" and also really light.
• 13:53
  Your colon actually needs volume to have something to move, so under-eating, even if it's unintentional...
• 14:00
  Maybe you're so bloated and so uncomfortable that you're subconsciously eating less.
• 14:05
  That can absolutely show up as constipation.
• 14:08
  The fourth one, thyroid.
• 14:10
  A sluggish thyroid is going to slow down just about everything in your body, including your gut.
• 14:15
  And especially if you have thyroid and iron stuff combined, this can be just a loop that we want to address.
• 14:24
  and then the last one, which I do think gets left out of a lot of conversations, or people just brush off, which is your nervous system.
• 14:31
  So your gut moves best in a rest-and-digest mode, so if you're eating in the car, maybe working through lunch, or running on high alert all day, your body is not prioritizing digestion.
• 14:43
  It is prioritizing getting through the day, and this is also a big part of why so many women get constipated when they travel.
• 14:52
  Now, there's one more experience that I do think I want to chat through just a little bit, because so many women assume it's just how it is.
• 15:02
  It's that feeling of like,"I went, but I'm not done." So you go to the bathroom and you don't feel relief at all.
• 15:09
  You still feel this sense of pressure or fullness, or you feel like you just can't empty your bowels.
• 15:16
  In fact, I talked to someone yesterday on a discovery call, and she's like,"I feel like I go to the bathroom, and magnesium helps me with that, and then my stomach just like blows up like a balloon again." So if you're dealing with incomplete evacuation or just bloating that will not go away regardless of what you're doing, that is a distinct sign, and it can point to slow motility, to the muscles of the pelvic floor not coordinating well, or just to stool that is too hard to pass completely.
• 15:49
  A lot of the women I work with have been constipated for so long that it just becomes, part of who they are.
• 15:55
  "Oh, yeah, I'm just the constipated one." I remember being at a business event a couple years ago, and someone pulled me aside and was like, Heather, I never go to the bathroom whenever I'm on a trip, and it's been two days and I haven't gone.
• 16:08
  Do you have any tricks?" And we, like, chatted through some ideas, and she ended up going to the bathroom later that day.
• 16:14
  And she's like,"I literally...
• 16:15
  My friends always joke that," I won't say her name,"like, I just never go to the bathroom on vacation.
• 16:21
  We could be on a seven-day vacation and I won't go, so, I can't believe that that worked." And does it always work that quick?
• 16:29
  No.
• 16:29
  But I think it's just good to reevaluate, like, what identity you are attaching to yourself.
• 16:36
  you don't have to be the girl that doesn't go to the bathroom, unless you wanna keep that identity, but I'm guessing that you probably don't.
• 16:42
  and I get that.
• 16:43
  Like, if something has been off for 10 to 15 years, it does start to feel like it's a personality trait.
• 16:50
  So I want you to just look at some of these clues instead.
• 16:53
  If your body has been trying to tell you something specific this whole time, maybe you just haven't had someone to help you translate it yet.
• 17:02
  So let's put this together so that it starts to click on what goes in order.
• 17:07
  So go back to that assembly line.
• 17:09
  Station one of that assembly line is your stomach, where stomach acid starts breaking down protein, sending the signals.
• 17:17
  Station two is bile and pancreatic enzymes, which help handle fat and finish the job of breaking food down.
• 17:25
  Station three is your small and large intestine, where motility moves everything along, your gut bacteria do their work of digestion, and then your colon decides how much water to pull back.
• 17:37
  When you look through that lens, the clues kind of start to sort themselves out, right?
• 17:42
  Because recognizable food is pointing to station one.
• 17:47
  Sticky, greasy, floating, or pale stool is pointing to station two, which often traces back to station one.
• 17:54
  hard pellets point to station three, though stations one and two can absolutely contribute.
• 18:01
  And this is why I say so much that sequence matters in every single case, because so many women have been working so hard.
• 18:11
  They're doing everything, fiber, magnesium, probiotic, bitters, all these things, and when nothing changes, they just assume that they are the problem or that their case is too complicated.
• 18:21
  What's usually happening is that they're working on station three while station one is still struggling.
• 18:28
  You can't bottle the soap until you have the actual container, right?
• 18:33
  So a fiber supplement works amazing once food is actually being broken down well and things are moving.
• 18:39
  But before that, it could make things worse.
• 18:41
  The soap is pouring before the bottle shows up, right?
• 18:45
  So the question that I want you to think about is, based on what you notice, where on the assembly line do your clues point?
• 18:55
  Not where they end up, but where do they start?
• 18:58
  That's usually where you need to start.
• 19:00
  now you might be thinking,"Okay, Heather, this is great, but where does stool testing come-- Like, how do I know for sure?" And I get that because I am a data person as well.
• 19:12
  I love testing.
• 19:13
  I love data.
• 19:14
  I think it helps so much, especially for those of you that feel like you've tried everything and have been told you're normal and you're like,"There's no way I'm normal." We use the GI map with almost every client that we work with.
• 19:27
  But I want you to think about it this way: your stool gives you kind of that rough sketch, your patterns, and a test, like the GI map, just fills in the detail.
• 19:36
  It sharpens the picture that you're already drawing.
• 19:40
  Which is why you cannot just treat a test.
• 19:43
  you have to have that rough sketch first.
• 19:46
  Before you start painting, you have to have the rough sketch, right?
• 19:50
  So here are a few examples of what it can show us.
• 19:54
  a GI map specifically and some of the other tests, like Tiny Health and some of the other great ones, they look at elastase, which tells us how well your pancreas is putting out digestive enzymes.
• 20:05
  It can show us where there's extra fat in your stool.
• 20:08
  It looks at markers of inflammation.
• 20:10
  And it also shows us the balance of bacteria and yeast and other organisms, including ones that can drive gas and fermentation.
• 20:19
  So if your clues point to station two, the GI map can help confirm whether enzymes are a part of it.
• 20:27
  If you're bloated and maybe your stools are floating, it can show us why.
• 20:32
  Like, what is fermenting?
• 20:33
  And then timing matters as well.
• 20:36
  When we run a test before the foundations are in place, this is why we will not review a stool test on a first appointment.
• 20:45
  It is so tempting to just, jump straight into that.
• 20:49
  But that is how people end up on, fourteen supplements with a lot of frustration and no results.
• 20:55
  You have to get that rough sketch first.
• 20:56
  You have to look at how it all goes together.
• 20:59
  You need to look at the whole assembly line so the results can actually be useful.
• 21:05
  And so by foundations, I mean, what does your caloric intake look like?
• 21:09
  What does your variety look like?
• 21:10
  What does your meal hygiene look like?
• 21:12
  What does your hydration look like?
• 21:13
  Stomach acid, nervous system.
• 21:15
  And this does not mean that everything needs to be perfect.
• 21:19
  We also need to be working towards a daily bowel movement.
• 21:22
  The test shows us, like, where we can start painting the color, and then we know what to do next, and it becomes a map.
• 21:30
  that is exactly what happened with that client, Kat, that I shared about at the beginning.
• 21:35
  She had done testing, she had done protocols, and those labs were helpful, but they matter the most once they are used within the right order and the right context, and in a way that her body was ready to respond.
• 21:50
  That is when things literally and figuratively start actually moving.
• 21:55
  Before we wrap, just one quick note that I thought I would mention is, of course, everything we talked about today is about everyday patterns that we're getting curious about.
• 22:05
  But there are a few things that deserve a call to your doctor.
• 22:09
  That includes blood in your stool, poop that is black or tarry, weight loss that you can't explain, severe or worsening pain, a huge change that sticks around.
• 22:19
  Those are things that you might want to get and seek medical attention for and get them checked, and then we can work on the rest together.
• 22:27
  Okay, so here is your homework, and yes, it is poop homework.
• 22:31
  So for the next seven days, I want you to just keep a log.
• 22:34
  You can do it in the notes app on your phone, you can write it down.
• 22:38
  Your Bristol type, whether it's sticky, floating, the color, how easy it was to pass, whether you felt complete.
• 22:44
  Then you can just add one quick line about what you ate, how stressed you felt that day, sleep.
• 22:49
  Like, however much detail you want.
• 22:51
  This is the type of journaling and logging that we do.
• 22:54
  Takes about 30 seconds.
• 22:56
  By the end of the week, I think you'll be surprised by how much of a pattern shows up, and that pattern is really the beginning of your answer.
• 23:04
  And then I want you to bring that log with you to my master class on October 23rd.
• 23:11
  We are gonna be talking all about sticky stool, constipation, bloating, low energy.
• 23:16
  We're gonna walk through what your patterns mean, what to focus on first, so you can stop guessing and start getting relief that actually lasts.
• 23:25
  Because your body gives you the clues, then you can actually respond with that data and know exactly what to do.
• 23:33
  So if you are listening to this on the day that this episode comes out, we are in early bird pricing for the webinar.
• 23:40
  It's just$29.
• 23:42
  The price will be going up to 39 five days before.
• 23:45
  So, early bird pricing will be through October 18th, which is three days from the day that you're listening to this, if it's on the day that it comes out.
• 23:54
  And when you sign up for the webinar, you will also get my Navigating the Holiday Bloat guide, which has tons of links and resources and supplements and things for you to navigate the holidays with your constipation and bloating and sticky stool and all the things, so that you can actually focus on the holidays and not on your gut.
• 24:14
  So plan to be there.
• 24:16
  This is a Friday at noon.
• 24:18
  We're testing out just a new time to see if Fridays at noon work great for you.
• 24:23
  So link is in the show notes, and I cannot wait to see you there.