Poop Redux!

When Max was a puppy, it took me a few months to train him to understand the difference between poop time vs walk time.  I wanted to make sure he knew this difference since in case of emergency or bad weather , we can skip the walk. 

He would have to poop in a particular area(s) without walking so that he doesn't take his sweet time to poop. Max understood the difference and for the rest of his life he followed this. 

Yes, Max would take his time to sniff but after he squats, he would poop within 10 to 30 seconds. Neo does the same now. And yes, same for me as long as I could remember. 

So it always baffles me when people sit in the toilet and read New Times for minutes if not hours. 

After years of living with Max and when he got prostate cancer, he started struggling to poop. It would happen to me very rarely when I had too much junk food or not feeling well mentally. 

I don't remember when I came up with this hypothesis but it was long before Max had cancer:  

Evolutionarily, if John squatted to poop in African Savanna's pondering about life for minutes, he would soon be an easy dinner for any predator.  We all are evolved to poop only for few seconds. 

If someone breaks this rule daily then their health and/or diet is not good. There is something fundamentally wrong with their microbiome which in turn also affects their thought process, outlook of life and god knows what else we don't know. 

Hence, we could cautiously come up with a heuristic that not only eyes but "time to poop" is also a window to someone's character (I am not sure what soul means so let's stick to observable, known and simple words here). 

In recent years, there has been a lot of research going on to support my simple hypothesis. Earlier post stating that around 12 seconds should be our optimal poop time!

A new paper is telling us, microbiome helps to extract energy effectively from what we eat and hence we poop within seconds. If someone is struggling to poop then the process of extracting energy from food is not optimized ad takes a long time because of lack of microbial diversity. 

Abstract

Background

It has been hypothesised that the gut microbiota causally affects obesity via its capacity to extract energy from the diet. Yet, evidence elucidating the role of particular human microbial community structures and determinants of microbiota-dependent energy harvest is lacking.

Results

Here, we investigated whether energy extraction from the diet in 85 overweight adults, estimated by dry stool energy density, was associated with intestinal transit time and variations in microbial community diversity and overall structure stratified as enterotypes. We hypothesised that a slower intestinal transit would allow for more energy extraction. However, opposite of what we expected, the stool energy density was positively associated with intestinal transit time. Stratifications into enterotypes showed that individuals with a Bacteroides enterotype (B-type) had significantly lower stool energy density, shorter intestinal transit times, and lower alpha-diversity compared to individuals with a Ruminococcaceae enterotype (R-type). The Prevotella (P-type) individuals appeared in between the B- and R-type. The differences in stool energy density between enterotypes were not explained by differences in habitual diet, intake of dietary fibre or faecal bacterial cell counts. However, the R-type individuals showed higher urinary and faecal levels of microbial-derived proteolytic metabolites compared to the B-type, suggesting increased colonic proteolysis in the R-type individuals. This could imply a less effective colonic energy extraction in the R-type individuals compared to the B-type individuals. Notably, the R-type had significantly lower body weight compared to the B-type.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that gut microbial energy harvest is diversified among individuals by intestinal transit time and associated gut microbiome ecosystem variations. A better understanding of these associations could support the development of personalised nutrition and improved weight-loss strategies.