How Often Should Women Have Bowel Movements

Dr. David Rakel shares how often women should have bowel movements.

How Often Should Women Have Bowel Movements Well, I think if you have a healthy intestinal tract you will evacuate well each day. I used to think that, you know, everybody has their own time to evacuate. You know, some people evacuate every four or five days and I used to think that was normal but now as I have studied some of the Eastern traditions and the healthcare. And I explored some of this GI dysfunction more, is we are learning that we need to evacuate on a regular basis and if we don’t evacuate on a regular basis then we might have more of a not so ideal balance in our GI function. So I generally, we should have a large luminous tool, it’s okay if they float but they shouldn’t be real oily but, I know this isn’t the most pleasant thing to talk about. But the stool quantity should be fairly large and it shouldn’t be a bunch of pebbles stuck together and we should have at least one stool a day if not more. And we should have, we should crave and enjoy our food, take time to eat because when we take time to eat, particularly with friends and people we enjoy, we are more relaxed and when we are more relaxed we stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system that encourages our pancreas to secrete enzymes that allow us to digest our food. So when we eat on the run, that is an opportunity for us not to digest our food well and it’s going to lead to intestinal dysfunction. So take time, this is hard for us to do but take time and really enjoy your meal, alone or with friends, because you will digest it better. So we should be able to tolerate our food well. We should be able to eat a variety of different foods but generally the GI tract works better if we are rich in those high fiber foods such as multicolored fruits and vegetables, whole foods that were recently alive in a variety of different foods that we enjoy with other people.