Are you one of the people who often visit the toilet, even two or three times a day or by those whose use is a rare and special occasion?

In both categories of people, if you belong to what you need to know is that the frequency with which we visit the toilet to act, reveals important things about our health.

According to the BBC, how often we visit the toilet can be different from person to person. Each time we eat, the large intestine contains and pushes the food along the digestive tract. This automatic “gastrocetic reflex” results in the release of hormones that create the desire for combustion, otherwise known as “dawn call”. However, most of us have learned to suppress this impulse, which means that at best we go to the toilet once a day or even at all.

“We all tend to be too busy to spend time acting,” says Martin Veysey, a gastroenterologist and general medical physician based at Canberra Hospital in Australia.

NHS and other health agencies say that going to the toilet from three times a day to three times a week is considered a normal bowel function. But normal and healthy are not necessarily the same thing. Scientists may have solved the mystery of how often we go to the toilet to act but there is no answer to how often we have to go. However, more and more, researchers discover that a person’s stools are a powerful indicator of their health.

A study presented in 2023 examined 14,573 adults in the United States. The research has shown that 50.7% people used to go to the toilet seven times a week. As for their shape, it was “like a sausage or a snake, with a soft and soft texture”. The researchers then attended the participants for more than five years to see if there was a relationship between the frequency they went to the toilet and mortality. What the research showed was that people who defeated four soft stools a week were 1.78 times more likely to die within five years than those who normally stated seven times a week. Those who rarely went to the toilet also had 2.42 and 2.27 more likely to die of cancer and cardiovascular disease, respectively.

In 2024, Sean Gibbons, a microbiologist at the Institute of System Biology in Seattle, USA, studied 1,400 healthy adults dividing them into four groups, based on their toilet, constipation (one with two vacuums per week) (three-six vacuums per week), high-psychological (one or three vacuums per day) and diarrhea. They then searched to see if there was a correlation between the frequency and the gut of a person’s bowel. Gibbons discovered that those who had one to three stools a day had a higher ratio of “good” bacteria in their intestines than those who visited the toilet less frequently. On the other side of the coin, Gibbons found that people who went to the toilet less than three times a week were more likely to have toxins in their blood who had previously been involved in situations such as chronic kidney disease and Alzheimer’s.

Gibbons also believes that one reason that people who had constipation had higher levels of harmful toxins in their bloodstream is because stools stick to their gut for long periods. This forces the bacteria in the gut to “eat” all available fiber. The problem, however, is that once all fiber disappears, the bacteria begin to knead proteins instead – which release harmful toxins in the bloodstream. These toxins are known to cause damage to organs, including kidney and heart.

A measure of your bowel health is also the time it takes to travel the food through your digestive system – known as the time of the bowel. You can easily try it at home by eating bold colors such as sweet corn and then specifying how much time it takes to get rid of it. In 2020, researchers at King’s College London gave blue muffin to 863 people to count crossing time from the intestine. This was part of the Predict1 study. The study revealed that the intestinal crossing times were widely different from person to person, ranging from less than 12 hours to many days. It is noteworthy that the germs found in the intestines of people with short transit times – which tended to be more frequent – were noticeably different from them with longer transit times.

“What we found was that people who had longer passing time tended to have more” bad “bowel bacteria,” says Emily Leeming, a microbioma scientist at King’s College, London. This finding was more intense for people with 58 hours or more passing time, who tended to go to the toilet less than three times a week.

In addition to a healthier gut microbiome, Leeming’s study revealed that those who had shorter crossing times from the intestine had less visceral fat – a type of fat that is deep in the abdomen and surrounding the abdominal organs. Visceral fat is dangerous because it can increase the risk of many health diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and certain forms of cancer. Also, those who belonged to this category of individuals also had healthier reactions to food, known as “postprandial response”. This means that they had lower levels of sugar and lipids in their blood after a meal, reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.

The finding fits what scientists know about constipation and its relationship with chronic diseases. If one has chronic constipation, then there may be a higher risk for diseases such as bowel cancer. However, the elements that come to this conclusion are different. An analysis that followed and combines the results of many other research that answers the same question found that bowel cancer was no more widespread in people with constipation.

“But we also see a connection to other parts of the body. For example, people with Parkinson’s disease may be constipation of up to 20 years before they have any motor symptoms, ”says Leeming.

What to look out for

However, Leeming says that the basic thing to look out for is Any unexplained changes in bowel habits. It also advises that it is a good idea to monitor your regular habits to find out what is normal for you.

“We should all look at our stools, because it’s like a free bowel health test,” says Leeming. ‘It’s not just important how often you go to the toilet, it’s also important their color and shape. What you are really looking for is type 3 to type 4 [της κλίμακας σύστασης κοπράνων Μπρίστολ]which means they should look like a sausage with cracks or a gentle sausage. ”

As for color, if you see black or red in your faeces, this indicates the presence of blood. Although there may be an explanation for what does not necessarily mean that there is a serious health risk, it could be a sign of colon cancer and so it is important to visit a doctor as soon as possible. You should also talk to your doctor if you have regular diarrhea, bloating and gases after eating.

Finally, if you want to become more “regular”, there are three simple things you can do. “In our study, people in the Goldilocks zone ate more fruits and vegetables, they were more hydrated and were more active physically,” says Gibbons.