Award Winning Author
Face Reading with Before & After Photos
How Often to Go? Why One BM a Day Is Best
Popular medical opinion has it that anywhere from three bowel movements a day to one every three days is normal.1 Pooh on that! Both history and science show that our biological inner clocks are innately set for one full evacuation a day. Furthermore, there’s an ideal time. Breaking the fast reactivates the digestive system and initiates a natural cascade of energy. Thus an A.M. BM represents “going with the flow.”
Morning Toilet
Contemporary studies tally evacuation frequency, volume and time. It’s not the sort of thing that Benjamin Franklin or Samuel Pepys included in their dairies. Nevertheless, history suggests this template. The terms “morning ablutions” and “morning toilet” imply that a movement of the bowels was a daybreak given.
My mother’s accounts agreed. She spent her childhood on a Utah homestead without indoor plumbing. From her stories, a first chore was emptying the chamber pot. This happened once a day (not three times a day and not three times a week). People did their morning business and then got on to the day’s business.
Simple Science: One Morning BM is Ideal
Today’s science backs history. From a study published in the American Journal of Physiology: Gastrointestinal Liver Physiology:
“Keep the balance that nature intended,” “regulate the rhythm of your bowel,” “restore your body’s natural digestive rhythm” are some of the commercial slogans with which the industry targets the millions of individuals that suffer from irregular bowel habits. Such slogans appeal to the general recognition that bowel habits follow a rhythm. Healthy individuals will have bowel movements during the day, but seldom at night. Furthermore, it is well recognized that disruption of daily rhythms, such as occurs with shift work or time zone traveling, can lead to gastrointestinal symptoms including bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhea, or constipation. These observations suggest a functional correlation between daily rhythms and gastrointestinal physiology.2
In a study of isolated individuals with no temporal cues (no daylight or clocks), the subjects pushed one button when they awoke for the morning and a different button when they defecated. The study revealed that the bowels move when the brain thinks it’s morning.3
Is it then not surprising that a “disruption of the normal circadian sleep cycle contributes to bowel disease and digestive issues,” according to a recent study from the Division of Sleep Medicine of the Department of Neurology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.4
What Caused the Histrionic Shift from One Daily BM?
The notion of three BMs a day dates at least to 1939 when Jethro Kloss, in his still-in-print book, Back to Eden, claimed that this was the optimum cycle. Next time you see an endorsement for frequent stool output, exercise your poop detector and note the recommended diet. It will likely be for a “purifying” vegetarian diet that, like Kloss’s, includes a high percentage of raw foods, salads and fruits.
So who fabricated the three BMs per week ratio? My hunch is that it merely describes a constipated population. If countless people report going every three days, this eventually is designated as ordinary. This, quite obviously, begs the relevant question: what is your healthiest cycle?
If you’re a vegetarian or eat an abundance of raw foods, several BMs a day might be your norm. But no matter your dietary preferences, you have diarrhea if your stool is frequent, loose, unformed, watery and/or accompanied by abdominal cramps. A rare bout of diarrhea is not a concern, but chronic diarrhea is a red flag. If you can’t quell your bowels by adjusting your diet,, see your health care professional.
On the other hand, the signs of constipation include less than one BM a day, BMs that require pushing effort, BMs that take more than ten minutes to pass, BMs that are dry, hard, small, or even pellet-like, or BMs that don’t feel complete.
Or if you’re plagued by both extremes and swing between bouts of constipation then diarrhea, you likely have irritable bowel syndrome. On the most obvious level, this aptly informs that your diet challenges your gastrointestinal tract.
In addition to erratic sleep cycles, shift work and time zone traveling, there are multiple other factors that contribute to bowel dysfunction. They include but are not limited to the use of antibiotics, some medications, some health conditions, a poor diet, grazing throughout the day and a sedentary lifestyle.
It is indeed curious how our modern diet and lifestyle have resulted in erratic bowel rhythms—or a lack thereof. But here’s what I’ve observed in my decades of diet counseling: a morning BM is one sign of enjoying a healthy diet and lifestyle that’s right for you. And here’s my definition of a healthy diet: being deeply nourished three times a day with freshly prepared, nutritionally balanced meals made of whole foods. Eating well helps the story end well.
1. In a Google search for “normal bowel movements per day,” the first sentence reads: “Three bowel movements per dayto three perweek is considered the normal range.” It refers to this web article: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/10/bowel-movements-segmentation.aspx
While not all sources concur, two other top entries do:
http://www.everydayhealth.com/hs/guide-to-constipation-relief/bowel-movements-whats-normal/
2. Hoogerwerft, W.A. Role of Clock Genes in Gastrointestinal Motility. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol. 2010 Sep; 299(3).
4. Vaughn B.V., S. Rotolo, H. Roth, Circadian rhythm and sleep influences on digestive physiology and disorders, ChronoPhysiology and Therapy, 2014, Vol 4:137–145.