How Often You Poop Reveals a Lot About Your Health, Study Shows

If we’re being totally honest here, most people are a little obsessed with poop. It makes sense. While talking about poop is considered taboo in pop culture, it’s a consistent activity in your life—that no one wants to talk about. With that, it’s fair to have questions about what is and isn’t considered normal.

Sure, you can talk to a few close friends about how often they poop to try to get a sense of what’s considered healthy. But whether you feel shy about having that conversation or want to base things off of cold, hard data, it’s nice to know that scientists have just done the work for you.

A study published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine details how often people poop along with what your pooping frequency suggests about your overall health. The results are fascinating. Here’s what it uncovered, plus what gastroenterologists want you to keep in mind when it comes to how often you poop.

The ideal poop frequency might surprise you.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from 1,425 people who participated in the Arivale Scientific Wellness program, a wellness company that delivered personalized health coaching based on data from genetic, blood, saliva, and microbiome testing. (The company closed in 2019.) That data included self reports on how often the participants pooped a day.

After crunching the data, the researchers discovered that the participants who were the healthiest said they pooped once or twice a day. But those who pooped more than that or who didn’t poop all that often had a higher risk of having several health issues.

Specifically, those who only pooped a few times a week had higher levels of uremic toxins in their blood (harmful metabolic waste products that build up in the blood when the kidneys don’t filter them out properly). Those were from protein fermenting in the participants’ guts, the researchers explained. That sounds dangerous, and it is: Those uremic toxins are linked to chronic kidney disease and other diseases, like neurodegeneration, the researchers pointed out.

Why is going once or twice a day ideal?

There are likely a few reasons behind this, Sean M. Gibbs, PhD, study co-author and associate professor at the Institute for Systems Biology and affiliate faculty in the department of bioengineering at University of Washington, tells SELF. “We all have this gut microbiome, but it’s a bit of a game of hot potato with the microbes,” he says. The microbes can be helpful for your health or harmful, he points out.