 Today we're talking about poop. Besides being a very taboo concept, a taboo aspect of society and something that my patients have a lot of discomfort around sharing, it's very important from a Chinese medicine perspective and I thought I would use this video to explain some fundamental Chinese medicine concepts that can help you understand what's going on with your body as well as just understand it in a general sense. So your natural tendency towards certain bowel movements reflects certain things about your genetic or constitutional makeup as well as diet and lifestyle. So let's talk about this more. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hein, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and author of the health book Master of the Day. So before we jump in, I have two very important links below this video. The first is for a free download which is four daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. The second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in my private practice or virtually via telemedicine, the info from my clinic is right below this video. So let's revisit the fundamental question here. Is this person on the more yin or yang side of the spectrum? Now remember these are not just Taoists, people doing Tai Chi, monks with their top knots. This is also a clinically very useful concept. Understanding if this person is their natural body type more on the cold side of the spectrum, the warm side of the spectrum. So that also applies to a person's bowels. So do they run more cold? Most of my patients that run more cold are generally prone towards more sluggish bowel movements. And if they have constipation, the stools are not ordinarily very dry and pellet like. Some are like that, but most are on the colder, weak digestive function side that have more of like an anemic look, pale face. These types are often prone to softer or wetter stools. Alright, now on the other side of the spectrum, you have people that often have good color on their face, probably even redness in their face or their chest, sometimes more prone to acne. In general, these people can sometimes tend towards manifesting harder or drier stools, but lifestyle plays a big role in that as well. So what do these mean? Alright, if you are manifesting more wetter stools or incomplete bowel movements, but if you experience constipation, the stools are still on the wetter side, they're stickier, they're not hard and dry and cracked. Often this means if it's wet that there is too much moisture and not enough warmth from a Chinese medicine perspective. Alright, now on the other side, if stools are hard and dry, there's too much dryness, too much heat, and not enough moisture. But these can each show up in many different ways. You know, some people, you take two people, they eat a huge pizza the night before. One person gets explosive diarrhea the next day, the other is constipated for three days. So those differences are also very telling as to how the body manifests a response to let's just say discomfort, something unbalances it, something that is problematic. So in the same way, a person who's ordinarily prone to wet stools, confusingly enough, can also manifest dry stools. Let's say you're ordinarily that person who has a little bit of digestive problems, specifically with bowel movements, the stools are usually on the softer side. And then you eat a huge footlong sub, it's a ton of bread, you don't ordinarily have that much bread. And now you don't have a bowel movement for maybe two or three days. And now the stool comes out in the beginning is actually hard, because it's been sitting in there for too long of a period of time. But after that, the stool is more soft. So sometimes these mixed kind of manifestations can happen as well. Sometimes it's because the person has experienced constipation, so the stool is drying out itself, it's been in there too long. Sometimes it's because there's a specific dietary factor, like having overeating, for example. So let's talk about a few simple dietary suggestions that can help. If stools are more on the dry side, this kind of person, if that is your general tendency, you have more redness in the face, more moderate or bigger body type. Typically these people do better on a more temperature neutral diet, meaning things like rice, things like more sauteed vegetables, this person could even do some salads, avoiding things like coffee and alcohol and a lot of heavy spicy food, avoiding heavy food, things like that. So more temperature neutral diet, where vegetables, green tea, a lot of fruits are more on the cool side and things like meat, coffee, alcohol, many of the things we associate with being like heavy or rich things, but not all, but most of those can be on the warming side. So if you're experiencing more wetter or softer stools, moving more towards a more warming diet, more temperature warm, temperature warm meaning animal proteins, meaning more spices like using more ginger, using more cinnamon like cinnamon in your oatmeal, as well as this person, you know, coffee actually may help them, really depends on the person and their constitution and what's showing up, but in general, the more warm side, the more drier stools, the more cool side, the wetter stools. And so understanding this diet needs more temperature neutral, this one needs more temperature warm. So the problem is a lot of the people that I see who have these wetter or softer stools are often tending towards diets like vegetarianism or veganism or raw veganism, even worse, or they're doing the medical mediums, celery cleanse drink. That's one of the most cold substances you could consume from a Chinese medicine perspective. And so people will experience very often an exacerbation of their symptoms on specifically raw vegetables or some of the coldest things that are the hardest, if you already have weak digestive function. So on the cold wet side, no raw vegetables, cooked vegetables, add more meat back in there. That's very important because I often see that this constitutional type is prone towards, for some reason, wanting to eat raw vegetables and salads and things like that, which can be problematic. So that is what these two things, these two symptoms mean in a very, very general sense, not taking into account your diet or your lifestyle or what you ate yesterday, or if you drink one cup of coffee or six cups of coffee a day, but in a general sense, that's what these imply about your body. All right, so that's what I have today for you guys. Again, two very important links below this video. One is a free download for four daily rituals that can add years to your life with Chinese medicine. The other is if you'd like to become a patient of mine in my private practice, there's a link below to contact my clinic, as well as a full number there for you. All right, before you go, I have two related videos right here as well.