Did you know the average person generates about five TONS of stool in his or her lifetime? Turns out, there is much to be learned from this mountain of poop.

The shape, size, color, and other fecal features can tell you a great deal about your overall health, how your gastrointestinal tract is functioning, and even give you clues about serious disease processes that could be occurring, like infections, digestive problems, and even cancer. Poop comes in just about all the colors of the rainbow... and please forgive me for using the words poop and rainbow in the same sentence.

If you’re one to poop and scoot quickly out of the bathroom without looking in the toilet, then you might want to slow down and look down. The Bristol Stool Chart is a handy tool that may help you learn what you’re going for. Ideally, your stool should approximate Types 3, 4 and 5, “like a sausage or a snake, smooth and soft” to “soft blobs that pass easily.” Type 4 is the Holy Grail.



How Often Should You Move Your Bowels?

Normal bowel habits vary. When we talk about regularity, what we’re really talking about is what’s regular for you. Three bowel movements per day to three per week is considered the normal range.

What’s more important than frequency is the ease with which you move your bowels. If you need to push or strain, something is off – moving your bowels should take no more effort than urinating or passing gas. The thing to watch for is a sudden change in your bowel habits. Many factors can affect regularity, such as diet, travel, medications, hormonal fluctuations, sleep patterns, exercise, illness, surgery, childbirth, stress and a whole host of other things.

Color: Bowel movements are generally brown in color because of bile, which is produced in the liver and important to the digestion process.

The food you eat typically takes three days from the time you eat it until it finishes its journey in your toilet. If it takes a shorter time, the result may be greener stool because green is one of the first colors in the rainbow of the digestive process.
If stool is black, it can mean that you are bleeding internally, possibly as a result of an ulcer or cancer. Stool that is black due to bleeding is also "sticky" (tarry) and smells bad. However, black stools are common when taking a vitamin that contains iron or medications that contain bismuth subsalicylate.

Stool that is light in color -- like grey clay -- can also mean trouble if it’s a change from what you normally see. Although it doesn’t happen often, very light-colored stool can indicate a block in the flow of bile or liver disease.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/14/normal-stool.aspx

A thread for sh#it,,On a serious note op,those colour of poo na for oyibo peeps o,my poo colours r dark green after eating vegetable soup,if I eat big cat fish head with big stout the poo go black,I hope no danger?

bad meat: A thread for sh#it,,On a serious note op,those colour of poo na for oyibo peeps o,my poo colours r dark green after eating vegetable soup,if I eat big cat fish head with big stout the poo go black,I hope no danger?

Does your poo smell bad? Not the usual odour, but an awful smell? If yes, then...

You mentioned that childbirth can affect bowel movement, how? Cos I know a number of women who have great difficulty passing poo up to 1month after delivery because the poo is sooo hard. What's responsible for this and how can it be corrected?

Merkki:

Does your poo smell bad? Not the usual odour, but an awful smell? If yes, then...

the smell na die,

mayblossom: You mentioned that childbirth can affect bowel movement, how? Cos I know a number of women who have great difficulty passing poo up to 1month after delivery because the poo is sooo hard. What's responsible for this and how can it be corrected?

Stay calm, eat fiber, drink a lot of water, a little exercise and the poop will come . As for the cause:

There are many physiological factors at
work that could interfere with your
bowel function after delivery. For one
thing, your stomach muscles, which help
you poop, have become stretched and
weakened. Your bowel itself may have
had a rough time during delivery and
needs time to get back to its old self.
Plus, you may not have much to go on if
you haven't eaten much since labor
started, and/or if labor began
with diarrhea.
Aside from all that (but maybe even
more powerful) is the fear factor.
You're probably worried about splitting
your stitches (you won't), aggravating
your hemorrhoids, experiencing a great
deal of pain (again, so soon?), or being
embarrassed — especially if you're still
sharing a room in the hospital.

http://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/symptoms-and-solutions/bowel-movements.aspx