Trouble Pooping? Here Are 5 Ways Gardening Can Help

If you have trouble pooping, then you need a garden. Yes, we are, in fact, going there. Hello, my name is Nicole Burke. I'm the owner of Gardenary, and we're on a mission to get everyone into the garden, especially if you're having trouble pooping. I know, I know. Not the video you were expecting to see, but we gotta go there. We gotta go there because we're all having trouble going. You know what I mean? I recently saw a video all about constipation, and the comments on the video just were hilarious and also appalling. It was just amazing to see how many people chiming in, saying, yes, that is me. I have some serious trouble pooping. And reading the comments brought me back, back to my high school, college, young 20s days when I was indeed super constipated. And how now I don't have that problem at all. And I literally can attribute almost all of it to gardening. So today's episode is dedicated to the White Throne. We're going to be talking about how to make pooping easier, better, healthier, and to do it all while growing your own garden. Don't worry, I'm going to try to keep this as clean as possible. All right, so here's the deal. The stats are terrible right now, especially for Americans when it comes to going to the bathroom. Most of us are not going as regularly as we should be. We associate pain with the bathroom. We associate lots of anxiety, and we're just not. It's just not smooth, if you know what I mean. I've been there, too. I can remember when I was in high school. Suddenly I went to my mom. I think I might have been a sophomore or junior. And I said, like, I'm having some trouble, you know, down there. Like, this is not. It's just not flowing. And she told me I' kinds of hacks and tricks and, you know, there's a little, like, fiber. You can take fiber pills. And I started eating some fiber cereal that gave me, like, the worst gas ever. I had to, like, excuse myself from every cool circle from then on for the rest of high school. I ended up getting prescription drugs from a doctor to figure out things with my stomach. My stomach gave me trouble all through the rest of high school, all through college, and deep into my 20s. And I really can see the difference in my stomach and my gut health when we finally started a family garden. And I didn't know the science behind it then, but I do now. And so if you're in any of those scenarios where you've got what is it called? Ibs. That's what I had. I don't know. It's like a syndrome. It's not fun. It hurts. If you've got anything related to your gut or your stomach that hurts or. Or makes pooping and just going through your whole digestive system troublesome or painful, then you might wanna consider adding a garden to your life, especially after you watch this video. So number one is the dirt. So we now live in a super clean world. At least here in the United States. We're all about cleanliness. We're all about everything being completely sanitized, especially after 2020. Like, everything needs a good Lysol rub down every five seconds, right? And I mean, that can be good in terms of germs and, you know, things like viruses that we don't want to catch. But it's really not good in terms of our gut because our gut actually thrives off of microorganisms. And we are losing and missing a lot of that in our stomachs all across the United States. And we're also all spending way more time indoors. So instead of being outside playing on a playground or running or rolling around in the grass, we're laying on a couch with a phone and watching Netflix. We're missing those opportunities to interact with nature and for our bodies to just be around natural things. And those natural things just naturally end up inside of our body. We breathe them through our nose and our mouth. We might swallow a couple of little particles. They might enter into our fingers or our fingernails. And then later when we're eating, those things come into our bodies. So the less time that we spend outdoors, the less time that we spend in nature, the less opportunity all those little microorganisms have to enter our body. Now, if you're a typical American these days, you're probably like, ew, I don't want stuff entering my body, you know, from my fingernails and from nature and from, like, the air, dirty air, I can't even imagine. But the reality is, like, our bodies evolved. Our bodies have become the strong, amazing, healthy things that they are because of that whole circumstance. The reason why we are here today is because humans learned how to interact with nature, how to pull nature into the body and how to turn it into health. And so it's not that gross. It's actually necessary. Like, being inside and being in a fully sanitized environment all the time isn't helping you, it's hurting you. And so that's the first thing is a garden puts you around dirt. A garden actually Puts your hands in the soil and you actually need to get dirty. So if you're not pooping, if you're having trouble pooping, it could just be because you're too clean. Ironic, I know. So just putting your hands in some soil and planting, putting seeds in the ground, being out around nature, having your hands on top of plants, around plants, around soil, around compost, those little touches add up and they come slowly and get mixed up inside your gut, in your microbiome, and they start to move things along. And a recent fact I saw is that studies are showing that gardeners have a much more diverse gut than. Than non gardeners. So I don't know how they did this research, but basically they found that people who are in the dirt, people who've got their hands on plants, their guts, have a lot more diversity than the people who aren't. So that is, number one reason you need a garden to help you start pooping. The second reason you need a garden to help you start pooping is because garden vegetables just hit differently. So you may be saying, nicole, I know I need to eat fiber, I know I need more water, I know I need more vegetables. Like, that's the answer to pooping more. And so I buy those things from the grocery store. I don't need to grow them myself. But wait, so those things at the grocery store, they do count, but they count differently than the ones that you grow in your garden. And I'm going to tell you how. So first off, you're going to be eating food when you eat it from your garden, that is so much fresher. And there's no way you can compare the two. Right. So fresher vegetables is going to change the way your body interacts with those vegetables. The vegetables at the grocery store, they were harvested about two or three weeks ago. They were then packaged and treated so that they will last through the journey to get to the grocery store. Then they take the journey, which is probably thousands of miles, to get to the grocery. Then they sit on the grocery store shelves for one or two weeks, Then they come home to your refrigerator, where they then sit on the shelf for one or two weeks. And then they go into the trash. Just kidding. Hopefully not. And then they get eaten. Right? So you've got probably a 4, 5, 6 week lead time from that vegetable leaving the field to going into your body versus from the garden. You are literally picking it, bringing it inside and making a dish right then and there. Literally. This morning I picked kale, Swiss chard and green onions, went upstairs and Made an omelet. I ate my breakfast. It was garden to table in five minutes. That kale, Swiss chard, and green onion is going to hit my body so differently than if I had bought those from the grocery store. And let's talk about how. So first is water content. We know that to poop better, we need more water. Water is what moves all the food down through our system and gets the. The bad stuff exiting on time, right? And so the foods that we eat, the vegetables, we need to be eating foods that have higher water concentration. Now, the vegetables you buy from the grocery, they're going to have some water in them, but nothing compared to the vegetable you harvest right out of the garden and eat, right that day. Those plants, those leaves, those fruits, they are going to have a much higher water concentration because they didn't have time to lose it, right? These plants, they know transpiration. They know how to take water out of a plant, send it into the atmosphere and pull it back in. So as soon as those plants get harvested, they're in the process of losing water. So the faster you can eat a plant right after it came off the plant, the better, the higher water concentration. So that's reason number one. Way more water in garden vegetables. Reason number two is more food fiber. Same thing. The plants that you're eating from the grocery store, they've been dead for a long time. They are in the process, like it or not, of decomposing. They are on their way to the compost pile, right? We're just kind of catching them right out of the fridge five seconds before they do that. So they've been dead for four, five, six weeks, and their fibers have been slowly breaking down that entire time. Whereas the kale, the Swiss chard, the whatever you pull from the garden that day, those fibers are all still very much intact. Those fibers are all very much still tight. Which means when you ingest those two different kinds of vegetables, the grocery ones, they're going to break down really fast. They're not going to take nearly the amount of energy and effort to break them down in your digestive system, which means they're not doing nearly the work that the garden fresh vegetables will do because their fibers are tough and tight. Because they came right out of the garden. Yes, they're dead, too, but they're this far along in their decomposition versus the grocery store ones, which are this far along. So you're not just going to get way more water from a garden fresh vegetable, but way more fiber, too. Next up, you're going to get Way more diversity. So the grocery store can only carry certain kinds of vegetables that travel well and store well. So this means there are only certain kinds of bell peppers, certain kinds of celery, certain kinds of lettuces and kales and Swiss chard, certain kinds of fruits. They can only have the things that store well, that stay on a shelf for weeks at a time in your garden. You don't have to worry about that. You can grow all different kinds of things. You can grow white carrots and purple carrots and yellow carrots. You can grow big fat carrots and short skinny carrots. And you can grow five different kinds of kale. You can grow six different kinds of Basils. You can grow 20 different kinds of tomatoes. You have no limit as to the diversity that you can grow in your garden. But the grocery store, they're limited. So what they figured out is in our guts. It's not that we need just one kind of microorganism, it's that we need a ton. And they found that certain plants have certain microorganisms in them. And so that the more diverse your diet can be, the more diverse the plants that you eat, the. The more diverse your gut microbiome can be, which means it'll digest your food better, get it through your system, and help you poop. So we need more diversity, not less. We don't need just the things that store well. We need all these different colors and shapes and sizes and flavors. Things we can only get if we grow them ourselves and get them fresh from the garden. So we know we need to eat more vegetables in order to heal our gut, in order to poop. But it's so different if you get those vegetables, vegetables from the garden versus the grocery store. So if you've been trying to eat more celeries and peppers and tomatoes and things from the grocery and your gut is still not feeling good, then you want to switch over to getting some more garden fresh varieties in there. The water is going to go up, the fiber is going to go up, and the diversity is going to go up, too. And you'll see a major shift in the way that your body works with food. And this isn't just something I made up because I love a garden and I want to convince you to have one, too. Studies have actually shown that gardeners have more variety and more fiber in their diets. And those things show up in their digestive tract as well. So gardeners really do have more fun because our food is way more fresh. It's got lots more water Lots more fiber, and it's so much more full of variety than the stuff at the grocery. The next reason that you need a garden to help you start pooping is because you need more of a routine. So I found this out the hard way in my teens and my twenties when my body was all messed up and all stopped up. A lot of it was due to my lack of a daily routine. So I didn't have this same time that I would wake up in the morning. I didn't have a similar time. I would go to bed at night. I didn't have a morning routine. I didn't have a shutdown routine. So my body never knew when to get comfortable and just let loose, if you know what I mean. So I would find myself going a few days and being so stopped up and feeling terrible because I never gave my body that message, like, hey, I'm just sitting here for quite a long time. You're free to do your thing. The garden gets us into a routine. Why? Because it needs you. It's going to need you to come out and do a little something every single day. And that little bit of routine is enough to trigger your body to say, hey, she's in a place of rest right now, so we're safe to do our thing. I found that working the garden into my morning and my nighttime routine has made a huge difference in my body's system. It's like telling my body, hey, Nicole is in a resting period right now, so you are absolutely free to just do your thing and get rid of all that. Know what I mean? Okay, so how does this help? Well, the garden is going to need your attention in the early morning. So heading out there to water before things heat up is essential to having a thriving garden through the summer. And there's nothing more exciting to get you out of bed than knowing that the plant babies that you planted yesterday or the seeds you put in last week might have just popped up and be ready to grow. So you can work this into your early morning routine. It doesn't take long, but just four or five minutes outside with a watering can or a hose, or if you've got a formal irrigation system, just getting yourself out and around plants early in the morning can make a huge difference to just tell your body, hey, you've got time. You got time to do your thing, to take care of business, because she's so with it that she's out here with her garden before her workday starts. Then another wonderful time to give that same kind of message to your Body is after dinner. So this is a time when your body is already working on digesting dinner. And it can be a time when things start to get stopped up. So you can send your body a totally different message where instead of sitting scrolling on your phone, you head out to the garden to walk around your plants. Now, you don't have to do any work with the garden at this point if you don't want to, but it is a great time to just prune a little bit, maybe add a little bit of seeds around your garden space. And this again tells your body, sends a message to your mind and to your gut. She's in a point of rest again. She's moving her body, she's helping her food digest. And this is also a great time for us to let the trash exit the building. So I found some of my best times for pooping. I can't believe I'm saying this with a microphone is literally after dinner, when I'm out in the garden, I will be out there just like living my best life, having my best time with my plants. And suddenly nature literally calls. And so I head inside, take care of business, come back out to the garden, and man, do I feel good. I'm like there with my plants, the garden's looking lovely, and my body just feels completely free of all that trash. Know what I'm saying? I almost said the other word, but I didn't. All right, so gardening puts you into routine. And believe it or not, routine is a huge part of gut health. It's a huge reason why you're not pooping well. Why you're constipated is because your brain never gets a chance to tell your stomach, hey, she's at rest. Right now. We are safe to do our business. The final reason why you need a garden to help you poop is for the feelings. So we are in a place, we're in a time where stress is just thrown at us all day long. And if you use this thing for any regularity with your phone, if you're on your phone, if you're on a computer, if you're on a screen for any amount of the day, you are hit pretty much consistently with drops of quick cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone and it is what tightens us up in our mind, in our shoulders, and especially in our stomach. And so we're all living right now in a fast paced, always on, information filled society. And that kind of pace is exhausting to your head, but it is also constricting to your Gut. So every time you feel stress, your stomach is responding. Your stomach feels it too. You may think you're only feeling it in your head or your heart, but your stomach is feeling it as well. And it tightens up and holds in because it thinks, like, we're not in a safe place right now. Right? Things are not easy and peaceful. So there is no way we're going to just let loose here. You know what I'm saying? At least I know that's how my body feels. But the garden is a place of relaxation. The garden is literally the opposite of. Of the current world we live in. So while the world we sign on to, we log into every morning when we wake up or when we sign on to work, that's just like stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. When you step into that garden and you see green instead, it literally sends the opposite message. And I'm not exaggerating, it says to you, calm, peace, take a breath. And that's why I go straight to the bathroom after a walk in the garden. Because those are the messages that our guts are literally waiting to hear. They're waiting to get that little drop of serotonin. They're waiting to get that little drop of dopamine. When our eyes register green things, it sends messages. It pulls in the happy feelings, the happy hormones and the relaxing hormones. And that is what our body has to feel to feel safe, to just let the trash leave. Okay, so if you are constipated, if you are having trouble pooping, it really isn't a laughing matter. I laugh because it's embarrassing, but it sucks to not be able to poop. Let's just be honest. I've been there, and it is debilitating. It's hard to function. It's hard to think. You feel full all the time. You feel bloated. I felt fat and I just felt gross. And it would just totally take over my mind for the day. It would take over my interactions because all I was thinking about is, how can I get all of this out of my body? So if you've ever felt those feelings, if you can raise your hand and be like, I've been there, then I hope that you will consider gardening. And if you already have a garden, I hope that you'll go more into gardening, that you'll commit to it more fully. Everybody's trying to sell you something right now. When it comes to your gut, I see so many fiber pills and teas that you can drink and all these products that are all about your gut and healing your Gut. And I don't see anybody talking about the fact that the reason we have this problem in the first place is. Is because we left the garden. If you go back 100 years, nobody's talking about gut health and microbiome because they just had it. They had it figured out because every day they were outside, they had their hands in the dirt and they were pulling plants and bringing them directly into the kitchen and making a meal with them. They knew how to keep a healthy gut, and now you do, too. All you need is a little space. It doesn't have to be big, but a place you can go every morning and every evening. You need a place to get your hands into the dirt. A place to grow real food, and a place where you can cut leafy greens and herbs and spices and a couple of fruit to bring inside and to turn into a meal every single day. It doesn't have to be a lot. Even just a few sprigs of kale or thyme or oregano from the garden straight into the kitchen can make a huge difference. So let's solve the problem of not pooping together. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell your mom and dad, Tell your sister. The answer to the poop problem is more gardens. And I hope I've convinced you today that a garden is absolutely worth it. Of course it's beautiful. Of course it's productive. But it also helps you go poop. If you think this is absolutely weird and terrible, please tell me in the comments if this was helpful to you. Please share it with a friend or family member so that they don't suffer from constipation either. You can learn more about growing your own garden and when to plant all these things we're talking about in Today's episode@gardenary.com Poop Just kidding. Calendar. This is where you can get the Gardenary calendar for free. You put in two dates and we give you all the rest of the dates so you know when to plant everything in your garden. And then you and me will be planting. We'll be growing. We'll be going out to our garden in the morning and the evening. And then we're just going to feel so, like, empty of all the bad stuff and so full of all the good. Thank you for bearing with me through this episode. I know it was awkward and weird and potty language field, but we had to go there. You know what I mean? We just had to go there. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I'll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You can keep listening anywhere you like. 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