A Top to Bottom Guide to Gut Health (and Butt Health!)
A Top to Bottom Guide to Gut Health (and Butt Health!)
We’ve joined forces with our friends at Wype, who have designed the #1 fully flushable toilet wipe alternative in the UK and are veritable tushy experts, to bring you the ultimate gut to butt health cheat sheet! We both share the mission to break down the taboos about digestive health by opening the conversation and spreading awareness, because having the facts empowers you and many others with the knowledge to live your best gut life! No taboo is off-limits!
Want to know more about the mystical mechanics of the gut and the butt and how to treat them right? Keep on reading!
Gut Health 101
Unfortunately, there isn’t (and probably never will be) a magic bullet for good gut health, mainly because it’s so personalised. But there are a number of small, sustainable changes to both our lifestyles and diets we can all introduce to look after our gut.
Now you might be thinking why is this relevant to your bum? But the gut is in fact not just your stomach, it is everything from mouth to bottom, hence why we’ve partnered with our friends at Wype to ‘clean up’ any confusion! Read more on the anatomy of the gut here!
The Famous Gut Microbiome
This sounds more confusing than it is, it’s all about those clever little microbes that live in your gut. We have well over a trillion microbes made up of bacteria viruses, fungi and other organisms just chillin’ in and around our body, mostly in our large intestine (also known as our gut “microbiota”). All of these microbes are exceptionally clever and which help to control your blood sugar, produce vitamins, manage cholesterol and hormonal balance, prevent you from getting infections, control the calories that you absorb and store, communicate with your nervous system and brain, influence your bone strength and so much more! In a nut shell, that's why we have to look after these guys!
Know your normal and check your poo.
Did you know your poo can tell you a lot about your gut health! Here’s a handy tool for you to use to note what your stools are like. Take a look to assess which matches yours. This will help you understand what is your ‘normal’ and may be useful if you have gut issues and need to speak to your doctor. Get to know more about your gut health here! Plus Wype is the perfect thing to use once you’ve done your gut check…
Fighting the poo taboo
Something The Gut Stuff and Wype have in common is the mission to break down the stigma around poop, so we can have open and healthy conversations when we find things straying from our normal. We do this through education and awareness because, at the end of the day, knowledge is poo-wer!
The taboos around poop can often make their way into our personal lives, not just in public or social settings. With this, it generally becomes more difficult to confront certain topics with ourselves in private, which can negatively impact our health and wellbeing. For example, up to 75% of people with IBS may be undiagnosed!
We should all be aiming to keep a healthy relationship with our guts so that we can put our health & wellbeing first! Read more on poo taboos here.
In a cubicle of isolation
Toilet time taboo can lead to people suffering in silence, and nobody deserves to be left on the toilet seat with the lights turned off.
The problem lies in the fact that there simply isn’t enough information on gut and butt health readily available. Considering that 1 in 5 people are too embarrassed to talk to a doctor about constipation, it’s clear that there’s plenty of work to be done!
This type of social thinking means that people are isolated, not knowing how to properly look after something that they’ll carry with them their entire lives. Their butts. That’s why education and awareness is so important to both The Gut Stuff & Wype.
There’s no butt health without gut health
And vice versa! It makes sense that the way we treat our gut links to what happens to our butt. What we eat, how much we move about, our natural microbiome, and even how we drop some pebbles can all effect the state of our bottoms.
When we start thinking about the link between what goes in us and how it comes out, we open ourselves up to understanding how to look after our bottoms when life gets a little messy. Afterall, what goes in, must always come out.
How is your poop affecting your bum?
When we’re not reaching that desirable type 3 or 4 poop, we can start to see the cracks in our toilet time routine. For example, type 6 or 7 can have us running to the loo more often than usual. It can also mean we’re wiping more to get as clean as possible.
However, wiping more with dry toilet paper won’t do your chocolate starfish any good! It can cause tiny tears, called micro-dermabrasions, that lead to itchiness and soreness. Not how we want our precious peaches to feel, is it?
If we’re taking on the battle of a type 1 or 2 poo, we can often find ourselves gripping the toilet seat and straining. Straining is not your friend, as tempting as it may be to get the job done. Making a habit of it can lead to haemorrhoids, which 80% of people will experience at least once in their lifetime!
When we find ourselves turning a blind eye on how we treat our guts, we could well be stabbing ourselves in the back(side).
Be kind to your behind (but also the planet!)
Now that we know how hard our bums work for us on the daily, wanting to treat them a little better comes naturally.
However, in a world with little open conversation on bottom health and wellness, many make the mistake of turning to wet wipes (or as we like to call them, dirty little ghosts) after all, it’s not a far stretch to look at how babies stay clean and soothed, and think that might be a good way to upgrade toilet time even in adulthood. That would be a mistake! See, there’s a problem with these poopy petticoats, and it’s that they leave our sewers, rivers, and ocean in disaster, and they’re not so kind to your skin, either.
The naughty napkins we use to wipe usually contain plastic, which can take up to 100 years to break down. Think biodegradable/flushable wipes are any better? They’re 100 times more likely to cause a sewer blockage than your bog-standard loo roll. We know, yikes!
These little sheets get caught up in fat and all types of stuff that shouldn’t be going down the drain, clogging up our sewers. Our water waste system is designed to overflow when we experience heavy rainfall or flooding, pushing raw sewage (yes, raw poop) into our oceans and rivers. Thinking of a trip to the beach this summer? Check out whether you’ll be able to swim with the Safer Rivers & Oceans app!
Not only are wet wipes bad for the environment, but they also contain fragrances and chemical preservatives that can further irritate any existing soreness. If we want to treat our planet and our full moon right, we should keep away from the wipes!
In conc-loo-sion
We know that there’s no magic pill we can take to get that glowing gut and blessed butt, but we can make small changes to get things on the right track. More importantly, we can ensure we know how to look after our wondrous vessel.
Here are a few tips and takeaway to keep your gut and your butt in tip top condition!
- Don't strain on the toilet
- Eat plenty of fibre
- Keep hydrated
- Cut down on the martinis
- Try to reduce stress levels where possible
- Be gentle when wiping
- Don’t strain too hard on the toilet
- Don’t hold it in for too long (yes public toilet phobics, we’re talking to you)
- Know your normal
- Check your poo
If you’re really looking to pamper your posterior, why not try Wype? Our natural and organic gel glides onto your toilet paper, allowing you to wipe like a pro, without clogging your pipes or polluting the planet. With nurturing botanicals, Wype soothes, moisturises, and cleans even the most sensitive of bums!
Try the Starter Kit today!
I tried the wype starter kit first. I was extremely pleased with the performance and packaging of wype. Even washing, with wet loo roll, isn’t healthy. wype is a great product. The gel is so smooth and you feel so much fresher after using. I have also now got a mini in my handbag, just in case!
I found this information very useful and have started using Wype