Doc's Book Makes Much Ado About Poo
Books like “What’s My Pee Telling Me” and “What’s Your Poo Telling You” answer health questions
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Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)in toilet, low angle view
We might pretend that we don’t find potty humor funny, but there is something funny about bathroom jokes and there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
There’s actually a lot you can learn about your health from what you’re flushing down the toilet, which is why Dr. Anish Sheth, a gastroenterologist from the Yale School of Medicine, co-authored books that use humor to teach about body science.
He and co-author Josh Richman, a San Francisco Bay Area writer, collaborated on “What’s Your Poo Telling You,” and the daily calendar, and “What’s My Pee Telling Me” the New Haven Register reports.
They are also behind the “Poo Log,” a poo record keeper that includes a glossary and checklist to make each trip to the bathroom an educational experience. There are also iPhone apps from Dr.Stool.com, so you can learn on the go as you go.
They mix humor with health tips, all in an effort to provide answers to questions you might be too embarrassed to grill your doctor about, the Register reports. They also answer the questions with a lot of detail.
“We wanted to walk a line ... embracing the humor of it all, but we didn’t want it to be just a gross-out potty type of humor,” Sheth told the Register.
The main message is that you can tell a lot about your health by what you excrete, Sheth told the Register. And the publisher, Chronicle Books, calls it “the ultimate bathroom reader.”
If you pass a lot of gas – more than 14 times per day -- you could be doing something good, like eating a lot of fiber, or bad, like drinking too much soda or beer.
When Sheth is out at book signings or on radio, people often ask one question: why does my stool float. He tells them it could be that it’s full of gas, which is fine, or fat, which could indicate a problem with the liver or pancreas, he tells the newspaper.
It’s a service we can all benefit from. After all, Everyone Poops, which, by the way, is by a different author.
Posted Tuesday, Nov 17, 2009 - 10:18 AM EST
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