How to tell if you'd make a good poop donor

It's easier to get into Harvard than to qualify as a poop donor, says Dr. Zain Kassam, chief medical officer of OpenBiome, a stool donation clinic. Only 4% of people who apply to be donors qualify.

When both the New Yorker and Washington Post published stories on the rise in stool donation, the Internet erupted with incredulity (and the occasional off-color joke). In reality, the donations are crucial for life-saving transplants to patients with serious intestinal conditions, such as Crohn's disease

See also: 26 Foods You've Been Eating All Wrong

Clinics like OpenBiome in Boston test, collect, store and distribute healthy stool to clinicians who need it. With those samples, doctors conduct fecal matter transplants (FMTs), transferring healthy bacteria into their patients' digestive systems Read more...

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from Mashable http://mashable.com/2015/02/03/poop-donation-survey/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss

​Drink Hot Liquids to Make Yourself Poop

If you want to avoid pooping at a bad time, you'll probably try to plan ahead and visit the bathroom before that long meeting. But how do you make yourself poop on command? Try a hot beverage—coffee works, but so does tea or even hot water.

This advice comes to us from Runner's World, because there are few worse times to hear the call of nature than when you're in the middle of a race—and running is notorious for loosening your bowels. Dr. Felice Schnoll-Sussman, a gastroenterologist, explains why hot beverages work:

"The warm liquid acts as a vasodilator," she says. "It widens blood vessels in the digestive system and helps increase blood flow and GI activity."

Schnoll-Sussman advises runners to drink a hot beverage in the morning and then sit on the toilet for a while. "Just the act of sitting there for few minutes can bring on the urge to go, even if you don't feel like you have to right away."

Read the full article for more of Dr. Schnoll-Sussman's advice, including why exercise helps but glycerin suppositories could backfire.

How to Make Yourself Poop | Runner's World

Photo by Selina .

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Vitals is a new blog from Lifehacker all about health and fitness. Follow us on Twitter here .



from Lifehacker http://vitals.lifehacker.com/drink-hot-liquids-to-make-yourself-poop-1687773601

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