(slow nonchalant music)
- Do you think you can be sexy
and have diarrhea at the same time?
- Not while you're having the diarrhea, no.
- I'm here today with Dr. Deleve, who is a poop expert,
also known as a gastroenterologist, right?
- Yes
- Okay, and what does that mean exactly?
- That's a doctor who takes care of people
who have problems with their swallowing,
their stomach, or their guts.
- Okay, so you see a lot of poop.
- See a lot of poop.
- I asked my coworkers to send me pictures of their poop.
And they did and it was so gross
that I could not show them to you.
(laughing)
I questioned my sanity, looking at my coworkers' poops.
Then what I had them do is describe them
to an artist who made some artist-renderings.
I was wondering if you could grade the poops.
- Absolutely.
- Here we have this one.
- Yeah, those are little pebble-like
stools and the reason they're like that
is because the poop is taking too long to get through
the gut so it's getting dried out.
That's a sign of constipation.
- That's one person who I guess was constipated.
- This is a poop that's not the ideal poop
but it's still within the normal range.
It's slightly constipated,
it's rocks kind of congregated into a sausage
and that's a little more on the constipated side
than a smooth sausage would be.
Ah, the perfect sausage.
That's a log.
If you want a stool that looks like the ideal poop,
this is the ideal poop.
- This is it, whoever gave me this one,
I think it was you (bleep), you got the perfect poop.
- That's a green poop.
- [Voiceover] So green is okay?
- [Voiceover] Green is a perfect poop.
- Yeah?
- Normal is brown, green, or yellow.
That's all normal.
- We got this one.
- That's a mushier stool, that looks like it's heading
towards diarrhea when you're getting these
little flakes that are kind of watery at the edges.
That suggests that you're developing
a looser stool if that's not your normal pattern.
Then you have to wonder about dietary things
you might be ingesting like lactose,
if you're lactose-intolerant,
or fructose, if you're fructose-intolerant.
- Too many dried fruits?
- Too many dried fruits, too much fruit juice.
- Alright, so...
- That's a very nicely shaped log with some corn in it.
That's perfectly normal.
- Why do we see it, why does it just come out as corn?
- It's not well digested.
It travels through you and that's probably a good thing,
it means your transit time from mouth
to the toilet bowl is fast.
- This is (bleep).
- I've not really seen a Mt. Everest-looking stool
but it looks to me like this came out more like
toothpaste and again it's a softer stool.
Some people have one loose stool a day.
If that's your normal pattern, that can be okay.
- How do you know when you're
having a poop that's problematic?
- You probably should see a doctor if
what you're normally doing suddenly changes.
You should see a doctor if your stools
are suddenly coming out pencil-thin.
Consistently, not one day,
but consistently coming out really thin.
If it's coming out really funny colors like
pitch-black or bloody or white.
- I'm not afraid to talk about poop,
you certainly are not afraid to talk about poop,
it's your career.
Why do you think people are so
uncomfortable discussing this?
- It's a mystery to me why people are
as jittery about talking about poop as they are.
I think it's because it stinks and people just don't
like talking about bodily functions that stink.