By Betty Zou If you’ve ever listened to a group of preschoolers or elementary-school kids bantering on the playground, chances are you will have heard the word “poop” — and various creative iterations of it — more times than you can count. But somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we stop talking about poop. We’re taughtContinue reading “The Power of”
Author Archives: Roberta
By Erin Howe Illustration by Jud Haynes “No one with depression would volunteer for a colonoscopy they don’t need.” Valerie Taylor remembers a colleague expressing their skepticism nearly a decade ago when she began to wonder whether fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs) could help people with treatment-resistant bipolar depression (BPD). But once Taylor began to recruitContinue reading “Mind Your Gut”
By Betty Zou I have taken Toronto transit for years. What I have not done is carry my own poop in a plastic tube on the subway, but we’ll get to that later. I’m a senior research communications officer at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. When my editor asked if I wanted to have myContinue reading “Mystery in a Bottle”
By Sadaf Ahsan It was summer 2019. I was running errands. It wasn’t a particularly warm day, but I felt so overheated and exhausted I was forced to take slower and slower steps, pausing to sit on a benchevery few blocks to rest. My stomach, too, had started to cramp so painfully that I stoppedContinue reading “Mistaken Identity”
By Heidi Singer Sharmistha Mishra never imagined her career as an infectious diseases physician would see her metaphorically peering into the depths of a toilet bowl. The Temerty Medicine’s researcher has found herself fascinated with the contents of sewers because of the insights they provide into the waxing and waning levels of disease in Canada. Continue reading “Flush with Insight”
Akhtari uses a machine called a Stomacher (top left) to blend the solid waste into a thick slurry (top right), which she later dilutes and transfers into an enema bag (bottom left). She then packs the sample in a cooler bag to transport across the street to UHN’s Toronto General Hospital, where the FMTs areContinue reading “Using Poop to Improve Lives”
The Bristol Stool Chart Type 1 Separate hard lumps(Severe constipation) Type 2 Lumpy and sausage-like(Mild constipation) Type 3 A sausage shape with cracks in the surface(Normal) Type 4 Like a smooth, soft sausage or snake(Normal) Type 5 Soft blobs with clear-cut edges(Lacking fibre) Type 6 Mushy consistency with ragged edges(Mild diarrhea) Type 7 Liquid consistencyContinue reading “Let’s Talk About Poop”
By Blake Eligh The video opens with a young woman — slender, with flawless skin and a flat belly — spooning green powder into a mug and stirring in hot water. She tells her 19,600 followers that this five-minute morning routine reversed 10 years of gut damage: the inflammation, the puffy face, all of itContinue reading “Science Versusthe Sales Pitch”