unmentionables - part 1

After listening the presidental debates, then touching on similar things in an ethics course I’m taking and furhtermore talking to a coworker about their elderly parents, I realized yet again that there are a few things we never talk about. Things I don’t really even talk about with my friends either. Maybe not only things as salary increase development over years, politics and ethics like abortions, death penalty but in this context I was thinking about bodily functions.

Everyone who has had a baby seemingly are talking about bowel movements and food intake, sleep patterns and such all the time. When you care for an elderly parent or grandparent, the bowel movements come back up on the table since a lot of medications do affect BMs. There are diaper weighing for both young and old. Or you can watch american commercials since there are a lot of "opioid constipation" and related medications for that. Similar thought on periods, it seems like not being about the talking part (especially not with males). There was the collective gasp when the female swimmer in the Olympics stated “I swam slower today since I was in pain, I got my period yesterday”. Since “talking about periods in context of female sports” is not super common, unless of course you mean (over)training and losing body fat can lead to you losing your period (often discussed in gymnasts). I personally felt a little odd wanting to talk about periods when I was starting my long distance training a few years back since I was not too hot on running with a pad, nor a tampon… plus the fact that my body sometimes felt horrid running (hello achy nipples during PMS) but didn't expand on it since I didn't find a good space to talk about it. Maybe something to take up here later on?

Coming back to bowel movements, or like I like to call it: “the pooping”. It didn’t really occur to me that what I grew up with (a fairly liberal view on body in general) that is was odd to have an idea that you should keep notice of how often you poop, or if everything looked ok, and that this was an important fact in how you were feeling in general. Or that your family made comments about it and noted when you went to the toilet (or not). This was especially obvious in the summer times when my family went on vacation. We’d go hiking in the mountains, sometimes where there were no toilets but rather you dug a hole in the dirt, or we went to the summer house where we had an old school outhouse. Same thing happened in winter times with longer ski trips where you are out all day (sometimes days) with less access to toilets and you don’t want to take off the warm clothes to expose the booty. All instances made it on the “have you pooped today/before we leave” discussions prevalent. It was another one of those things that came up in scout/military training since especially when you are out walking with teams and with backpacks, you can’t afford someone getting sick due to not having regular BM. And trust me, if you ‘hold it in’ for a few days, you probably will experience cramping and sometimes fever and illness. Not a pleasant experience, for you or the people around you.

Part of why I think about this now? With my current job I’ve read up on cancer, a lot of cancer stats that I didn’t know before. (I’m not sure that I want to know all this either tbh, hello hypochondriac.)  Colon cancer is an interesting thing, 3^rd most common cancer and comparing international stats and incidences. And in the USA, the variance between states is pretty high. 

The highest incidence of that type of cancer is in Korea (45/100,000), although looking at the state stats you can easily see that the southern states beat that with an average of 42-49/100,000 (yey for USA being so large and diverse that their overall average* is lower than you would think, depending on which state you live in.)

One of the ‘obvious’ but not evidence based ideas is that obese people have a larger incidence of colorectal cancer. It’s also been linked to sedentary lifestyle, and less fibers. You see where I am going with this? After having had the opportunity to listen to a bunch of people who have been ill through my volunteering, where people have opened up about their own and their relative’s ailments, I’d very very tempted to say that a lot of it seemed to be linked to how they were pooping, and how the poop looked. Not that they seem to have thought about it too much. (Again, I’m damaged from my upbringing where all of this was discussed – also in terms of outdoors long distance skiing.)

There is a lot to be said about being open about "what poop should look like", "how many times do you go" and note what a healthy bowel movement looks like for you. (they are not the same for everyone, although I would argue that if you eat average fiber and mixed foods, going to the toilet about once every 24-48 hours seem like a regular thing to do.) I also think this is one of the things that if your whole family has somewhat of a non-regular bm, how would you know what's "normal"? I've met people, through my volunteering, who think having diarrhea/very loose stool is normal since "they've never had anything else". And others who need to take laxatives all the time to be able to even go to the toilet. All of them make me sad since I really think this is an important issue and something that indicates that your body isn't all in balance.

My point with this blog post? (I became a little unfocused here in the end...) That there are a few "unmentionables" that I would've like to talk about and I wonder why I haven't talked about even with my close friends. After all, a lot of these things are something that we all do, every day or at least every month, and it affect our lives.

Next time, maybe periods when running/training for a race? Or erectile dysfuncion/lack of interest for sexual intimacy? Or less bodily functions as retirement benefits, the thoughts on taking care of your elderly parents or dealing with anxiety/lack of positive thoughts?

*I’ve had this conversation as in trying to link the disease averages etc with life style and cultural things, which is much easier to do in Europe (we have different countries) although looking at the USA there are some quite striking ‘cultural’ differences between states (sweet tea is an obvious food choice to symbolize it).