December 11, 2013

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/digestion-podcasts/what-should-poop-look-like/

[00:00] Introduction/Audible

[04:45] About Troy Casey

[07:13] Troy's Life Story

[16:59] How To Optimize Poop

[29:01] On Constipation

[41:52] How To Determine Impacted Colons

[44:45] A Good Poop & How To Have One

[54:49] End of the Podcast

Ben:  Hey folks, it’s Ben Greenfield, and I hoped you missed me a little bit.  I missed you.  I am still travelling, I'm presenting this week, all week, at a thing called Creative Live, and you can check out Creative Live right now at creativelive.com.  You could probably jump right into any of the sessions that I'm doing there on achieving ultimate human performance live, if you happen to be listening to this podcast right when it comes out.  But in light of the fact that I am probably standing on stage right now there presenting, I am going to bring you a podcast, a very popular podcast, a very popular poop podcast, and I chose this particular podcast topic because I happen to have been struck by the bacteria from hell while I was in Thailand last week, and it certainly gave me a pretty serious case of the poomergencies.

So not only are you today going to get a podcast that we originally released entitled “The Zen of Taking A Good Poop:  How To Poop The Right Way” in which you're going to learn about all sorts of things like how to get rid of constipation, what your poop is supposed to look like, how minerals and hydration play a role  in healthy pooping action, how to clean your poop shoot, are colonics any good, etcetera, but on Friday, two days after this podcast comes out, I'm also got a comprehensive article that I wrote for you about how to protect yourself and your own gut from what happened to me.  And also if something like what happened to me, happened to you at any point or you want to know what to do if it happens to you at any point, that blog post is going to tell you all about what to have handy and what to be ready for.  So for the next couple of days, we're going to be focusing on poop.  Keep your eyes peeled on the bengreenfieldfitness.com newsletter for when that article comes out, and if you're not signed up for the newsletter which is free, just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com.  Sign up, I send you a free gift as well, and speaking of free gifts…

Before we hop into today's pooping podcast, allow me to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Audible at audiblepodcast.com/ben.  And at audiblepodcast.com/ben, you can download a free audio book with a thirty-day trial membership, and here is the book that I'm going to recommend to you.  It's called “Clean Gut: The Breakthrough Plan For Eliminating The Root Cause of Disease & Revolutionizing Your Health”.  I've had this guy on my podcast, his name is Alejandro Junger, and he wrote this book and recorded this book about how to protect and heal your gut.  It's chockful of recipes of everything that you'd ever want to know about, kind of how your gut works and why you need to keep it clean.  If you like this kind of stuff, if you're into poop, which you probably are if you're still listening, or if you're into your gut, your digestive system and you just want a really good program to eliminate a lot of the major problems that arise from your gut, you should definitely check out this book.  So it's over at audiblepodcast.com/ben, and finally beginning next week, we'll be back into regular Ben Greenfield Fitness episodes with Brock and myself.  But until then, sit back or sit down or squat down, as the case may be, and take a listen to “The Zen of Taking A Good Poop”.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here, and as has been our MO a few times on the bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast, we are going to talk about bowel movements today, and rather than me sitting here all by myself, talking to you about poo, I've got an expert on the call.  His name is Troy Casey, and Troy is from certifiedhealthnut.com, and that's his website.  He lives down in Santa Monica, California, and he has a pretty cool story. For much of his life, he was really involved in the fast lane of drugs and alcohol and was actually a male model during that time back in the 90s, and eventually, he moved to LA.  He sobered up and he healed himself by immersing himself in things like comedy and meditation and the healing arts, and he's gone on and done things like immerse himself in indigenous cultures and interacted with master teachers around the world and really kind of become a self-taught expert in a lot of the fields that kind of fly outside the radar of modern medicine or our typical Western medical approaches like sacred plants and primordial wisdom and higher states of consciousness and restoring our natural movement patterns, just lots of really cool things.  So Troy is going to be a wealth of knowledge for us today, and Troy, thanks for coming on the call.

Troy:  Great, thanks so much, Ben.  I'm always happy to share good information with as many people as I possibly can, and so thanks so much.

Ben:  Yeah, you were kind of a hard guy to introduce 'cause you've done so much man.

Troy:  I loved the introduction that you came up with.  He's immersed himself in stuff like comedy.

Ben:  Well that's what you say on the bio on your website, so there you go.  So actually though, before we start talking about poop 'cause that's just kind of a weird way to jump right into things, tell me a little bit more about your story and how you came to be where you are right now in terms of health and what it is you're doing now like how it is you're spending your days?  Are you consulting with people or writing or just continuing to explore?  Tell me a little bit more about Troy Casey.

Troy:  Okay, great.  Yes, so about 23 years ago, I was sitting in Milan.  I was a Versace model, and I would bloat.  I would eat stuff, and I would just bloat.  My agents, the agents in that industry are ruthless, and so they're like you're fat, you know?  And you're not going to work, and so I'm sitting in Milan.  I've shipped myself over there, I'm looking to make a career.  So I started educating myself and researching everything I could get my hands on to look and feel my best.  I was economically motivated to do so, and so usually being economically motivated was a great motivator, and so I devoured all of the information that I could get.  I went to the English bookstore and started buying books.  There was Farmer's Markets in Italy, and so I started buying fresh fruits and vegetables 'cause let's face it, I was an American, and I realized very quick studying this information on health and nutrition that Cap'n Crunch and Pop Tarts isn't real food, go figure, right?  And that's what I grew up on like anyone else.

Fast forward about 20 years later, I realized that I was gluten-intolerant, and I didn't even get that sorted out until recently.  And it's funny, we're talking about poop, but a lot of my studies and further studies really revolved around my own constipation.  I was travelling extensively as a model, and some of the same cultural issues that we deal with, not wanting to take a poop in a public restroom and or you're feeling rushed all the time and you're feeling stressed, and so I had my own constipation issues.  And so I started studying internal purification, really how to get the bowels moving, how to clean out the old impacted stuff.  Then I had a very successful part of my career, and I started living like a rockstar and I was using a lot of drugs and alcohol.  I was partying extensively.

I sobered up, and when I sobered up, I realized I had to deal with all my mental and emotional demons, my shadow self, and that's how I got into meditation and working with indigenous cultures and shamanic healing, and I continue to study that today.  Most recently, I took a lot of my stuff to YouTube, so I had 20 some odd years of career in front of the camera.  When I moved to LA, I started acting and started doing a lot of TV commercials.  I worked on Discovery, and so I went to the Amazon and I had a vision for my on-camera career.  I was doing a lot of stand-up comedy at the time, my comedy career, and my natural medicine background, and so the idea popped in my head in the middle of the Amazon for the Certified Health Nut, it was a vision that I had.  And when I came out of the jungle, YouTube was a reality.  So this was 2006, and so I started posting my materials up there, and it was a small community early on.  Sean Croxton was there and Paul Chek was there, and so I started watching Paul's stuff and was really intrigued with his information.  And two years ago, I clicked on one of his blog links, and I read his blog.  By this time, I'd been working in the Amazon for about four or five years, working to save the rain forest through the use of sustainably harvesting the herbs, the plants down there.  Instead of clear cutting it for oil, lumber and agribusiness, you harvest leaf, root, bark, and it grows back and it empowers the Indians to stand their ancestral lands and watch the rain forest.  And so I was very passionate about that, I was very passionate about turning people on to our symbiotic relationship with Mother Earth, with nature and how nature interfaces with our own human biochemistry.

So when I read Paul Chek's blog, I think it was March 21^st or 22^nd, 2011, it's a great blog, you can look it up.  He talks about our own responsibility for the earth, and I ended up in tears and I was like look man, this guys a master, and I've got to meet him.  He's a master and he's a brother, and so I got to meet him and so I went through all these prerequisites, HLC and some of his course design programs.  In the meantime, I put him in a movie.  One of my friends is a producer, and he filmed “The Cure Is U”.  I said you got to put Paul in that movie, and I went down and film the pick-ups on it and did an interview myself with Paul on the raw milk fiasco, with the FBI that busted our food coop down here in Venice, California, and he gave me a great interview and I made it into an awesome video, and he loved my work in video production and just my message and how I really brought it through.

He likes people that are motivated, and they're into action in really sharing this information, and so he asked me to film at the Chek Conference and interview all the people that were there, and we became friends.  And later on that year, I took his course HLC2 which is Holistic Lifestyle Coaching Two, and I didn't really initially get into it, to become a Chek-trained professional.  However, what it did for me was compartmentalized, synthesized and to instill all the information I'd studied for a very long time, and it made it into practical applications to where I can actually help people, just plugging them into Paul's systems and also help myself 'cause Paul's a master and his application is excellent.  His training is all about becoming healthy and strong, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually yourself first, and that's a natural attractor for attracting clients.

So I've trained with Paul now, I took his HLC3 as well, and so I consult.  I consult companies, I consult individuals, I put up information on YouTube, I do lectures, I do retreats.  I lecture all over the world, I do podcasts for other people.  Because I have two young children, my tech hasn't been as advanced as the Shawn Croxton's.  It looks like you, Ben, have got some really good internet marketing down, and so in the meantime, I continue to shoot videos, I continue to take people down to the rain forest to drink ayahuasca, to work with plant medicine, and I shoot a lot of my adventures and my information and I offer a lot of that to people for free on YouTube.  And so I also work with the Amazon Herb Company which is the largest importer of rain forest botanicals in the world.  So I have a product line, an herbal line that I work with, and that's how some of my business is monetized.  So consulting, coaching and working with the Amazon Herb Company are my main fortes right now, and that kind of brings you up to date.

Ben:  Sounds like you're a real slacker.  Now seriously though, this ayahuasca thing intrigues me.  Actually we were just talking before we started recording, it was something I had looked into a long time ago, and I didn't put two and two together but you were a guy that I had emailed a while ago and I was looking into what this ayahuasca beverage was all about and how something like that could be used.  And so I find that intriguing, and perhaps at some point, we'll have to get you back on the podcast to talk about that, or people can go over the certifiedhealthnut.com and see some more of your resources on stuff like that.

But today as I promised folks, we'll go ahead and talk a little bit about poop, and I think your story is interesting, Troy, because I myself with extensive travel going to things like Ironman triathlons around the globe and also speaking at and attending conferences, I find that things tend to get gummed up when I'm personally travelling and have certainly tried out a lot of different things for constipation, have always felt like maybe things aren't working quite as smoothly as they should down there, and certainly went through my own struggles growing up on a typical Western diet and drinking milk all my life, even though I was lactose intolerant, eating gluten most of my life even though that kind of gums up the works as well.  And I know that a lot of people listening in right now may struggle with some of those same issues.  So let's start here, I guess we'll just dive right into the nitty gritty here, and I want to ask you.  What is the best way to take a poop?

Troy:  Okay, well that I guess is a little multifaceted.  I would say, what comes into my mind right off the bat is make sure that you're hydrated because that's going to help lubricate the fecal matter through the colon, and the colon has a natural ability to actually extract water from the intestines.  So if you are not hydrated properly, it is going to extract that water from the intestines, and it is going to be harder to move that material outside of your body, outside of your colon, get rid of that waste.  So I would say number one, make sure that you're hydrated.

Ben:  Now when you say hydrated, you know it seems like a lot of people are aware these days that they need to stay hydrated, Troy.  You know like bringing Nalgene water bottles to work or drinking some extra water on the plane when they're travelling and things like that.  Let's talk about water, electrolytes, minerals, I mean do you just drink any old water?  Does the amount matter, and if you're drinking water and you're staying hydrated and still constipated, what should you be looking at in terms of ways that you might be going wrong with your actual water intake?

Troy:  Yes, good question.  So let me get to a couple of points right off the bat, definitely you want to be drinking the purest water that you possibly can.  Artesian Spring is the best, straight from the spring, and then you work your way backwards.  Some of the top companies out there are Evian, Vitel, Volvic, and so also a good filtration system in your house because the chlorine, it kills bacteria, so guess what?  It's going to kill your good bacteria in your gut, too.  So tap water is a big no-no, and so the quality is definitely very important.  Also a good marker is half your body weight in ounces of water a day, and if you're exercising, then you definitely want to do more and it's not all about just chugging a gallon in one sitting because that can also weaken the body.  So you want to be drinking water throughout the day, the best source that you can, and also I recommend drinking about 16 ounces of water before you eat, to make sure that you have enough hydration while you're there and a good pinch of sea salt or some type of mineral solution, some algae to make sure that the water actually absorbs into your body.

So these are all good little techniques for hydration, and once you're hydrated, then I think the next best way to take a poop is I like to climb right up on a toilet bowl.  I know that there's a Squatty Potty out there, and I just learned this from being in the Amazon, man.  I love just going out in the jungle and just squat that.

Ben:  That's so funny 'cause when I'm travelling and I don't have my Squatty Potties that I have in all of my bathrooms here in my house, I've started doing the same thing. Literally like climbing right up onto the toilet bowl to where when you're in a stall at the airport, people can't even tell that you're in there 'cause they can't see your feet.

Troy:  Yeah, you got to watch that, especially if there's nobody in there.  I mean I like a little peace and quiet when I'm in the stall as well, and so I try and find the most empty bathrooms sometimes.  I climb up right there, and sometimes if you hear somebody coming in, I got to make some kind of noise to let them know because I'm climbing up on top of the bowl.

Ben:  Exactly.  That's interesting, I'm glad somebody else is doing that.  Okay, why is it that climbing up on the bowl versus just sitting down on the bowl, like most people do, is helpful when it comes to constipation or having a good poop?

Troy:  So this is the natural way we have pooped back from Paleolithic Man.  We squatted down, and we took a poop.  Also there wasn't chairs to make us sedentary, I think there's some scientific research and Shawn Croxton covered this is in his Poop 2.0 video, but if you just sit in a regular toilet, I think it turns of the ileocecal valve or something like that and it atrophies the muscles that are down there for release in your colon.  Something to that effect, and so squatting is our natural propensity to release fecal matter from our colon, and so that's the way they do it in nature, in the Amazon, in most indigenous cultures.  My wife's Korean, I know all the Asian cultures.  When they're in the street just hanging out with their friends, they squat down.  Also doing that squat is a good stretch, and it's a good preparation to make sure that you can climb up in a toilet bowl, or if you prefer, get that Squatty Potty thing, it's going to cost you a little bit of money.  Or like Shawn Croxton did, he got the box and you could just put the box 'cause this is also going to put pressure on your colon, and it's going to open the valve and so that you will have a good release.  Did that answer your question?

Ben:  Yeah, definitely.  So basically you're unkinking, so to speak?

Troy:  Yeah, you're preparing it for just a clean release, a clean dump, a straight shot right into the toilet bowl.

Ben:  I've certainly noticed a huge difference when doing that, and it's kind of strange.  I remember the first time that I started using that technique.  You basically poo a lot more volume, it seems, than what you do when you're sitting down in the toilet.  It's almost like your body purges a lot of that waste much more efficiently and smoothly, so I go the bathroom once a day now.  In the morning when I get up, and that's it.  For the next twenty-four hours, I don't think about going to the bathroom or pooping anymore. Interesting.

Okay, so we've got hydration, we've got the position that you actually poop in.  Anything else that you wanted to mention in terms of optimizing poop before we talk about what to do if you're actually constipated?

Troy:  Well optimization, let's see.  So clean nutrition, organic food at this point in time in human history, most of the farm and the chemical surface run off in the commercial form is contaminating water.  There's so much toxicity out there, you can't afford to purchase more toxicity and shove it into your pie hole because it's going to affect your digestion which is ultimately, your colon is part of your digestion, and it's a great way to see how your digestion is working is to observe what is coming out.  So eating organic food, at this point in time in human history, nutrient dense foods that have the ability to get into the body.  The body organism and the cells themselves, ultimately, are only doing two things.  Fat is taking in nutrition, I've got somebody hammering on my ceiling.

Ben:  I know, you warned me about that before you started recording, so hopefully folks, if you're listening in, Troy is not getting angry and pounding on his desk.  He's not that passionate about poop.  Troy, you talk about eating healthy and stuff like that, and this is where I just want to call you out and ask you if there’s actual evidence for that? Like that say, me eating an organic apple versus a non-organic apple is going to affect my constipation or how smooth stuff moves in my large intestine?

Troy:  Well, there's been a lot of research on the nutritional density, and actually what's called the negative redox potential and the biophotonic light.  The energy that's coming from the food, it's just not something that is very commercial because as you know, the big agribusiness companies are intertwined with the chemical companies and the oil companies and the drug companies, and so these multinational conglomerates own the media and so this information doesn't come out.  However, if you go onto the British Soil Organization, I do believe, google something like that.  The British Soil Organization, they have done a lot of research on the benefits and the nutritional content of organic food versus commercially grown pesticide, rodenticide and herbicide-latent food, and so Paul Chek also has a book called “Under The Veil of Deception”.  You can order it on chekinstitute.com that goes through everything I just said in the last couple of sentences.

Lord Balfour also, I do believe, did a lot of study on organic food and nutrition, and then of course, you can read the whole body of research from Rudolf Steiner, who is a master in his own right in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds.  He was the father of organic farming and biodynamic farming.  Hold on a second…

Ben:  I'll have to decide whether or not I'm going to edit this out for you folks.  While Troy is talking to the folks who are out there, I can hear him shouting.  Quick thing I wanted to run you by because I don't want you to get scared of when Troy is talking about stuff like biophotonic energy, and I was hoping actually that he would mentioned that when I asked him this about organic foods because what happens is that you can actually measure the amount of what's called biophotonic energy that food puts off, and organic crops tend to actually put off more biophotonic energy than non-organic crops and organic crops grown in the wild will emit even more biophotons than organic food that is cultivated, and all this stuff tends to fly under the radar.  Be sure that you check it out, hit rewind if you want or go to the show notes for this episode at bengreenfieldfitness.com, but it turns out that the actual energy of your food is extremely important when it comes to adequate absorption and the way that your body breaks it down and moves it smoothly through the digestive tracks, so I'm glad Troy brought that back.  Troy, are you back with us?

Troy:  Yes I am.

Ben:  Alright cool, I was just kind of explaining to people the idea behind biophotons 'cause we actually haven't talked about that too much  on the podcast before, but I wanted to make sure we didn't totally brush over that and scare people away thinking it was just woo-woo stuff.

Troy:  Yes, that's cutting edge research right there.

Ben:  Yeah, it is.  I actually wrote a big book about it on my Kindle like two weeks ago. So let's talk about constipation and actual things that you would recommend that go above and beyond hydration and the biomechanics of your pooping and eating good, healthy, organic, preferably wild food sources.  Once you've tried all that stuff out or maybe you're travelling, you don't have access to some stuff, what are some supplements or some specific food sources that you've found to help if you are constipated?  Or movements, I know that there are some yoga movements and things like that out there that can help with stuff like this?

Troy:  So the best relief I have found, ultimately if you're locked up, you want to get it moving.  You do not want autoxification going on, you don't want that waste getting back into your bloodstream.

Ben:  Wait, could you back up?  Why is that a problem, what happens?

Troy:  Because that's toxicity, that's waste.  It needs to go out of your body, it's designed to go out of your body, and it's going back into your body and it's going into your bloodstream.  And so that can make you extremely sick and toxic, and so ultimately, you want it getting out of your body, and as much as possible, you've got to remember that anything that sits in the garbage can for X amount of days begins to putrefy and build microbes and, from there, parasites and all sorts of other junk.  Once that overloads your system, then you can get very sick, and you're seeing that today with people.  We've got a lot of constipation in society, a lot of it has to do with stress and hydration and processed foods and all these things and then you're seeing it in a lot of people that are sick.  Their colons impacted.  I believe, and everyone in holistic health has different philosophies.  You know Paul Chek's big on getting people on organic food and to sleep in bed on a certain time, but hey…

If you've got a client that's not pooping, I recommend getting him some herbs to get their colon moving.  It's very important to get the waste out is my personal opinion, and so I have become an expert on what herbs ultimately work and how to get the peristalsis function moving, and there's ultimately some products that I like that are very solid.  Dr. Schulze was one of my major mentors in wild herbs, and he's out of Marina Del Ray, California, and you could find him online.  He has a formula, Intestinal Formula Number One which is Drano.  It will get you moving no matter what.  It has cayenne pepper in it, garlic, senna, cascara sagrada.

Ben:  Is that harsh on the digestive tract at all?  Because I know that's some of the concern.  You know for example, we had an article, a guest article posted a few weeks ago by a doctor who was talking about high fiber supplements for constipation and how they tend to, in the long run, irritate the digestive tract or cause bulking and what's called an impacted colon where you get all this bulk, just building up in the colon.  Does this fall into the category of being like a high fiber supplement or is it more like an herbal?

Troy:  This particular one is an herbal, and so there's two trains of thought on it.  Yes, and everyone's got their studies and opinions, and I agree.  Everyone has application at certain points.  That's why I like to pay attention to my innate intelligence and see what I need in the present moment today, and I rotate all my herbs as well and different colon cleanses or liver flushes or kidney flushes or intermittent fasting or my extensive meat eating.  You know I rotate everything to keep my body fresh and alive, and I try not to stay rigid on my thought patterns around diet or even any herbs that I'm using.  So I agree that if people are using fibrous material and it's not coming out of their waste, out of their colon, then it can get impacted and start causing other problems, and it can irritate the gut over time, and that's why I do recommend rotating everything, including your herbs, and everyone's different.  What I'm talking about, the Drano from Dr. Schulze, the Intestinal Formula Number One can be very irritating and too intense for people.

For me, it works like a charm, it works very good.  For years, I used cascara sagrada for that, and I did become used to that, and it didn't work as well.  However, because of my travel schedule and because of the way I felt not pooping, it was better for me.  I determined for myself to poop no matter what, and so I used the tools that I had at the time.  Since then, I had many more tools, and metabolic typing is another tool that worked really well for me to keep my digestive tract moving without herbs, but that doesn't always work.  Sometimes I'm travelling, sometimes I'm stressed, sometimes the kids need more attention than I have time to take a poop and take the time to relax, to climb up on top of the bowl.  So every day is different, however in my tool bag, in my repertoire, I have a whole host of methodologies that I use for myself and for my clients, for people who want a little bit more of a gentle cleanse.  We have one in the company that I work with, the Fibres Plus which has rhubarb in it which stimulates peristalsis function, but it's very mild.  It's much more mild than the Dr. Schulze.  Then there's also bulking agents that you can use, the flax seeds and the psyllium husk, and some people don't like psyllium husk.  We have to try what works for us.  Another good thing that I like to use to clean my colon out and to get toxicity out is the clay.  Native Americans use clay, and a lot of animals use clay.

Ben:  What do you do?  Just chew on it, or is it like in a capsule form?

Troy:  You can get it in capsule form, I'm sponsored by Real Salt and Redmond Clay. It's a mine out of Utah.  It's a great company, I do recommend their salt and I recommend their clay, and their clay is montmorillonite clay.  It's a very fine bentonite, and so I take a tablespoon of so and put that in a quart of water.  I drink that and it tastes like a little bit of a malty, chalky type of milkshake, it's like a water milkshake, and it resonates with me.  I really like it, it loads you up with good minerals, and it has that negative redox potential as well.  Free radicals are positively charged, and negative redox potential just knocks that out.

Ben:  Well that's something I wanted to ask you about, it was the minerals 'cause a lot of people use magnesium.  I was talking with Drew Canole, the juicing guy a couple of weeks ago, and he recommended this oxygenated magnesium stuff which actually I ordered.  I haven't had the chance to try it yet, but I've used like the natural calm magnesium.  I've used trace liquid minerals from the same company.  Do you find that any mineral supplementation helps people, and is there any caution when it comes to that kind of stuff?  Like can you get too alkalinic or use too many minerals?

Troy:  Well, I think when you're using stuff that's in its natural state.  I mean balance is always the key, but with something like clay, the body, it's going to use what it needs to use, it's going to get rid of what it doesn't need to, and it's going to bind to any kind of toxic materials.  So good thing about clay is its absorbent as well as it's magnetic, and so you know clay is very natural, so it's going to be expelled by the body.  I guess you don't have to.  Main line, I wouldn't try and do a pound of it in a day or something like that, and with the oxy mag and the ozonated magnesium, I know that there's some products out there.

Again, another great product, it works like Drano for a lot of people, for me it didn't work, and so you know that's why I fall back on the fibers on plus or the Dr. Schulze Number Ones.  Those are good formulas, and the reason I like to use formulas is because master herbalists study with other master herbalists, and they know how to work with plants.  And instead of you becoming a chemist and trying to figure it out, these guys who walked before us have done it.  So my advice is go out there and try things out, as long as they are all natural.  Organic, wild, most herbal companies you have to make sure that they don't irradiate or fumigate or chemically alter, and so you want to vet the company.  You want to make sure that they are legit and that they can guarantee purity as seen in integrity.

So as long as you're getting that from the companies that you're working with.  I recommend that you can try anything.  For example, a lot of people like colonics.  I don't think that the design of the human body was to have something injected into it.

Ben:  Yeah, I actually wanted to ask you about that, about whether it's worth people who really just want to like reboot their system.  Go in and get one of these enemas or colonics or something along those lines.

Troy:  I do recommend it, once in a while or if you really need it or if you're obese and you're impacted.  Sure a series of colonics or coffee enemas, definitely try it.  Do your research first, and definitely try it?  Coffee is an irritant to the intestinal lining, so it's going to help evacuate the bowels as well as if you put coffee enema, there's a valve that goes straight up into the liver that goes down into the colon.  When that gets activated, the liver dumps as well, and so these are excellent tools.  However, there's also a whole series of people, especially I live in LA and it's all about this beauty element, by any means necessary, and so they get addicted to colonics.

Ben:  Interesting, and I could see how that would be a pretty irritating scenario, huh?

Troy:  And that starts to disrupt your flora.  Well yeah, it's good.  I definitely recommend it, it's good to try out and get things moving.  However, you don't want to upset your bacteria in your gut.  You should have 85% good bacteria and 15% bad bacteria.  Most people are dealing with dysbiosis which is the opposite.  Most people have about 85% bad bacteria, and so you want to keep that in check.  There's probiotics, there's clay.  That's another reason why I like the clay because the clay remineralizes the gut, it remineralizes the body.  It allows the body to self-regulate itself.  These are natural tools and tools that have been used for so long and used by ancient cultures.  You know a lot of the Paleolithic mentalities that have been brought into consciousness of recent have a grand applicability because look, this is the way the human being developed over thousands and thousands of years.  So we might want to pay attention to that, especially when you look at current human genome studies.  It takes a hundred thousand years to change the human genome, one-tenth of one percent, so we might want to look at our ancestors and look at the way they function because industrialization of society has only happened in the last two hundred years.

Ben:  Now is there any way that one could know if they actually have an impacted colon, if they've got poop inside them that's been in there for a while, if they're not moving stuff through properly?  Is there any way that you can actually quantify or qualify something like that?

Troy:  Well sure, I would definitely say, in my personal observation, my personal opinion and if somebody's overweight, if you have a distended stomach, a lot of the distended stomach is coming from eating foods that you're intolerant of, foods that have phytic acids that break down digestive enzymes, and so you're not digesting properly. So thing are putrefying in the gut that can end up putting poisons in the gut if you're not pooping properly, if you've got extra weight, if you've got a distended stomach.  How about the way you smell?  How about the way your urine and feces and your underarm smell?  I mean of course we should definitely have a certain animalistic smell to us, and I don't recommend using deodorants and chemicals like that.  However, we should have a bit of an earthy smell to us.  If we smell terrible or if we smell like a fungal infection, then yeah.  You might want to look into that and start moving some of that toxicity out of your body.  Again, that's why I like herbal medicine because look at Paleolithic Man, used to hunt and gather.  What would they gather?  And the missus was out there gathering fruits, roots, berries, barks, greens, stuff like that, and these things naturally target the organs and help the organs detoxify.

So especially in this world where we're dealing with a lot of environmental toxicity, I think it's imperative that we look into detoxifying the body often.  Intermittent fasting is a great way for cellular detox, however if you're looking for organ detox, you want to specifically target the organs, especially if you live in this world or have ever been toxic.  Then you might want to start looking into internal purification, fasting, juice fasting and using herbs.  Herbs are as old as man.  Man's use of plants, it's one of the biggest relationships on earth.  We've used plants for clothing, housings, medicines, foods.  We use plants for everything.

Ben:  Yeah, and by the way, you mentioned a lot of herbs and kind of compounds.  You know we've gone over your Amazon Herb program and this Dr. Schulze Drano and the clay.  I'll be sure that I put a lot of these resources in the show notes for folks, but Troy. Once stuff is working right, what's a normal poop actually look like?

Troy:  Normal?

Ben:  What should you be looking for?

Troy:  Good poop, normal poop, you're looking at, I would say diameter.  You're looking at two inches or so.  You know healthy, round poop, you're looking at light brown in color and you’re looking at six to twelve inches.  You should be passing about twelve inches of fecal matter a day.  So for some people, that's a poop after each meal. For you and me, it's a good poop in the morning.  You know I'm happiest when I take that poop.  In fact, that's kind of the beginning of my day, and I can go out and get a great workout in.  If I don't have a good poop, man, that limits my workout.  I don't feel as good, I don't feel as energetic.  So twelve inches I would say a day, light brown and thick and pretty connected.

Ben:  Yeah, that's another thing I noticed quite a bit when I started focusing on kind of a combination of minerals, eating really, really alkalinic, using this squatting method of going to the bathroom was just really, really long poop.  Like anywhere from one to one-and-a-half feet in length in many cases where it comes out and comes out and comes out, and then you're done.  So it's pretty interesting.

Troy:  S-curves as Dr. Oz, I've heard him say.  Ben, I do want to give a couple of notes that I have written down.  Some good things to do before you eat is to drink sixteen ounces of water, avoid coffee and alcohol before you eat, limit the dehydrated foods, avoid foods that you're intolerant to, I think we discussed that quite a bit.  People should be off the four white devils, if they wanted to be healthy, pasteurized dairy, white table salt which is sodium chloride.  Eat as much natural salts as you want, but the sodium chloride, stay away from.  White table sugar and white flour, just stay away from them. Chew well, you know the digestion ultimately starts, yes, mastication, but it actually starts before.  It starts in your mind when you choose your meals at the store.  But once you're at the table, you want to chew as well, and this is a message to myself because I live in the modern world and I'm rushed as well sometimes.  And so you want to take the time to chew well, you can eat small meals and just eat more often every three to four hours every three hours or so, and never suppress the urge to go poop.  If you feel it coming on, find somewhere to poop.  The other thing, also, eating towards your metabolic type, finding out if you're a high oxidizer, getting good animal fats into your body, not eating grain-fed animals that have microtoxins in them.  These type of things also help.  Definitely stay away from poor quality fats.

Ben:  Yeah, you know you mentioned a lot of stuff just now, and there are things that we've talked about on the show before.  I know that a lot of our listeners are aware of things like eating organically, we've even done interviews on metabolic typing.  We've done interview on alkalinic diets.  I think what's really important for people to know is that a lot of what you just mentioned, Troy, about healthy living, that stuff is the stuff that makes the biggest difference versus like living unhealthy and then trying to pop a heavy cleanse supplement everyday to help move stuff along, which is what a lot of people would do.  So you're dumping gasoline on the fire on one end and trying to spray water on it on the other end, and that's just a really bad and stressful way to go.

Troy:  Yeah, and I definitely want to clarify.  I'm into herbs and moving by any means necessary, but yes, you just made a great point, man.  If people are doing all he dumb stuff and then popping the pill to rectify it, well that's not health at all.  That's not going to help you in the long run at all, and I think that's why a lot of holistic health practitioners are much more into getting people into the foundation principles of health.  I agree, however if you're not moving, let's get you moving, and then let's get you sleeping, hydrating and getting the proper nutrition in as well.  And ultimately, one of the major points I wanted to touch on was stress management, stress reduction because the stress, the mental stress is what has a big play on our colon.  Do we have enough time to actually sit down, be comfortable enough and take a good poop, man, a good bowel movement?

You know, we got the kids.  Sometimes you're trying to get out of the door, they take a poop, you don't get time to take a poop, so it's like finding time to do that, training our lives so that we have enough relaxation time.  We have enough time to take care of our business needs, our relationship needs and our spiritual needs.  Whatever that feeds us because ultimately, if we're in our sympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system, you can just look at the lion chasing you.  Basically if the lion's chasing you, you're not getting ready to take a poop although you might crap your pants.  Ultimately, it's going to shut down digestion, and the blood is going to the extremities, and you're going to ready to fight or flight, and that's what stress does to us.  And so that doesn't make it optimal for a good, twelve-inch bowel movement, and so you want to look at our whole lifestyle and that's what holistic health is all about and that's what I teach and advocate.  We want to look at our whole complete lifestyle instead of just popping an herbal supplement to take a poop.  You want to look at everything, and stress is a major factor of that.

Ben:  Yeah, I should have mentioned, by the way, you know as you're talking about all this, I've mentioned how I've been able to overcome a lot of my constipation issues.  It's interesting, a lot of the techniques that we use overlap.  I haven't done a lot of these herbal remedies that you've talked about today, and I haven't done the clay.  But one thing that I have noticed makes a difference is every single morning, I take my heart rate variability.  I lie there in bed for five minutes, and I've been experimenting with a bunch of different devices like the Omega Wave and the Sweet Beat System and I'm using this one now that sticks from my iPhone called the Tinkie, but basically by focusing on getting really, really good heart rate variability and destressing every single morning for about five minutes.  I noticed a big difference in my bowel movement between when I do that versus when I just pop out of bed and go straight to whatever, the computer or go straight to making coffee or anything like that.  So taking those few minutes in the morning, I think to destress, especially for like a morning bowel movement seems to work really well, especially in combination with a lot of this stuff you've talked about today.

Troy:  Oh man, you're talking to myself, Ben.  I mean you're absolutely right, and I think one of the worst things is, and this is the next frontier for the Certified Health Nut is really managing his online and digital communications because it is a major, major stress, and when I pop up in the morning and go oh, just let me do this one Instagram picture on my juices or let me just get online and check my Facebook before the kids are awake.  Next thing you know, I'm glued to the thing, and it becomes another stress.  I'm not taking the time to either eat, hydrate or take a bowel movement and so yeah.  That's another aspect of the stress management, and I just did a video today, it'll be out tonight on meditation.  I spend many years doing extensive silent meditation courses and practicing a couple of hours a day.  I'm recently back into meditation practice in the morning, and that has helped me.  You're basically doing that, monitoring your heart rate for five minutes, being quiet with yourself, and so meditation is key.  Anyway, you can ground into self, I think.

Ben:  Yeah, well you know what?  We could go on and on and on, and I know we're running up against time here.  I totally did not intend for anything about running on and on and on, to be a pun.  Anyways though, you know I'm going to put a link to a lot of this stuff in the show notes, Troy.

Folks, if you're listening in, and you have questions, just leave them as a comment, and I'll try and address them because I know that we kind of scratched the surface on pooping but hopefully gave you at least some good tips to point you in the right direction.  And Troy, himself, is a wealth of knowledge.  I'd encourage you to go check out his website.  I'll link to it in the show notes over at certifiedhealthnut.com.  Hopefully we can get him back on at some point to talk about some of the other really cool cutting edge stuff that he has going on, and Troy, I want to thank you for your time today and for coming on the call.

Troy:  Thank you so much, Ben.  I really appreciate that, and I want to encourage everyone out there to connect with me on Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and really just share the message.  It's important for humanity, it's a great time of waking up and we're only as healthy as the environment is, and so I encourage everyone to share as much information out there with the brothers and sisters and get this planet and our species healthy again.

 

 

In lieu of Ben's recent Thailand Poomergencies, which you'll learn all about in an upcoming post this Friday – and the fact that Ben is currently presenting LIVE at CreativeLIVE (click here to tune in now for free) we bring to you one of our most popular pooping episodes from the podcast archives. Enjoy!

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I have a confession: I poop once per day.

One smooth, silky, glorious morning movement, and then I'm done. And I don't really think about number 2 at all until the next day. It's quite convenient, actually – especially compared to my old days of hitting the head a handful of times during the day, occasionally straining, always feeling like I had something “still inside”, and having to deal with a bit of bloating to boot.

Not anymore, baby.

One key to this pooping revolution is revealed in a popular article I wrote last year called “How I Ate A High Fat Diet, Pooped 8 Pounds, And Then Won A Sprint Triathlon“.

In that article, I tell you about the shocking results of my switch to proper pooping mechanics (squatting to poop instead of sitting to poop), using something called a “Squatty Potty“. As a matter of fact, one of these Squatty Potty devices now resides in every bathroom in my house – I own a white wooden model, a white plastic model and a quite fashionable bamboo model.

The gist of that whole squatting discussion was that your body is meant to be in a squatting position to properly eliminate stuff from your colon, and when you’re sitting (as most Westerners mistakenly do), you put upward pressure on your rectum, creating a “kink” that keeps much of your poop inside (or at least makes you strain a lot harder as you try to push it out).

But when it comes to learning how to poop the right way, there are some tricks that go way above and beyond simply squatting to poop.

So today, in my discussion with certified health nut and former male model Troy Casey, you're going to learn exactly what those tricks are, and ensure smooth bowel movements and banished constipation forever (and I have a hilarious video for you at the end of this post)…

During my discussion with Troy (pictured right), I ask him:

Troy Casey is a certified health nut, former male model, and knows a little bit about poop

-What is the best way to take a poop?

-How do minerals and hydration play a role in healthy pooping action?

-What are some ways to get you pooping if you're constipated?

-How do you “clean the poop shoot”?

-Are colonics good?

-How does what you eat affect your poop?

-What does a healthy poop look like?

-How does an impacted colon affect the whole system?

-Why is pooping properly so important for overall performance?

-Why is pooping properly so important for overall health?

It turns out even though we both squat to poop, and we both avoid intestinal irritants like wheat, soy and commercial dairy, it turns out that Troy and I actually have two different approaches when it comes to supplements or herbs for taking a good poop.

Here's a synopsis of our two different approaches:

Troy's Better Pooping Regimen

1. Dr. Schultz's Intestinal Formula – Troy refers to this as “drain-o for your digestive tract”. It apparently stimulates and strengthens the muscular movement of the colon. The ingredients include aloe, senna and cascara sagrada. I've personally never used it.
2. Clay – yes, literally edible earth. It is supposed to have a detoxifying effect, and is also a rich sources of minerals. And you just eat the stuff. Once again, something I haven't personally used, but Troy swears by it.
3. Fiberzon Herbal Colon Cleansers from the rainforest – OK, this one is a high fiber supplement. I tend to side with Dr. Konstantin Monastyrsky when it comes to high fiber (he wrote this article on BenGreenfieldFitness about why too much fiber is bad), and I feel the long term health effects may outweigh the short term pooping benefits. But Troy mentioned it, so I wanted to give you a link in case you want to try it!

Ben's Better Pooping Regimen

1. Colorectal Recovery Program – In the article I wrote about how to limit the damage from antibiotics, you learn how use of antibiotics can completely nuke the healthy bacterial terroir in your digestive tract. It turns out that in my fight with MRSA last year, during which I was forced into a high antibiotic dosing regimen, I did some pretty good damage to the good bacteria in my colon – to the point where I could barely even fart because there was really no bacteria “down there”. I was severely constipated for weeks and I searched desperately for a solution. With just 30 days of this Colorectal Recovery Program (designed by Dr. Konstantin Monastyrsky, who wrote the article about why too much fiber is bad) I was right as rain. I don't use this stuff any more, but successfully “jump-started” my pooping system with a month of it.
2. MagO7 – This is a blend of elemental magnesium from ozonated magnesium oxides, mixed with elemental potassium. Two months ago, my friend Drew Canole told me about it, I ordered some, and it's turned out to be quite successful for my pooping experience. This stuff has a potent stool softening effect, and I've been taking 5 capsules a night with a glass of water. So that I'm no overdoing the magnesium, I have switched my normal nightly dose of Natural Calm magnesium to about half as much, only taken as pre-afternoon nap relaxation dose.
3. CapraCleanse – Even though I'm not a huge fan of the high amounts of fiber in CapraCleanse, and hence do not use it on a daily basis (click here to see why I limit high fiber supplements), this is the one supplement that I've found to make a big difference if I happen to be consuming moderately high amounts of alcohol – which typically happens to me in party situations about once every month or so. I just pop 3-4 before drinking and 3-4 after drinking, and it not only has a good liver cleansing effect, but also eliminates the inevitable constipation that can occur with high alcohol consumption (click here for more of my natural hangover cures).

Summary

Well, there you have it.

Those are quite obviously two different approaches to getting stuff moving smoothly – and I'll bet both would work for you (but with all due respect to Troy, I happen to be partial to my own personal pooping approach).

Ultimately, nothing beats combining “squatting to poop” with a healthy diet that eliminates common digestive irritants and unhealthy processed foods. But I'm all about better living through science too, and if you struggle with constipation, bloating, or many, many toilet trips, you may want to consider implementing the supplement advice in this article and the practical stuff in the audio too.

Questions, comments or feedback about how to poop the right way? Leave them below this post!

Remember to check out AudiblePodcast.com/Ben to get an audiobook of your choice, free, with a 30-day trial. In the spirit of today's topic, I recommend picking up Clean Gut: The Breakthrough Plan for Eliminating the Root Cause of Disease and Revolutionizing Your Health by Alejandro Junger.

Finally, lest we take ourselves too seriously about this stuff, here's a hilarious video from a guy who was at my Become Superhuman event, where we talked about pooping properly, living a non-toxic lifestyle, fasting, cold thermogenesis, grounding, mycotoxins in cheese and more…and he apparently is implementing WAY too much too soon…