652: A guide to healthy pooping | Trisha Pasricha, MD, MPH
31 May 2026

652: A guide to healthy pooping | Trisha Pasricha, MD, MPH

The mindbodygreen Podcast

About
"You shouldn't be spending more than five minutes in there at a time,” says Trisha Pasricha, MD, MPH.

A graduate of Harvard College, Pasricha earned her medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her training includes an internal medicine residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and gastroenterology and motility fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital. Currently, Pasricha is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Institute for Gut-Brain Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an NIH-funded research laboratory at the forefront of gut-brain science. Her book, You've Been Pooping All Wrong, is out now. 



00:00 - What actually makes a bowel movement healthy

07:55 - The Bristol Stool Chart explained

10:50 - The case for bidets

14:49 - What hemorrhoids actually are

17:44 - The smartphone-hemorrhoid study

20:33 - Fiber timing & psyllium husk

24:03 - The rise in early-onset colorectal cancer

27:43 - Microbiome testing

30:03 - The future of gut health

32:33 - Why we can't poop when traveling

35:40 - How much gas is actually normal

38:01 - Runners with the runs

41:10 - How to overhaul your gut in 30 days



Referenced in the episode: 

For more about Pasricha, visit her website: https://www.trishapasricha.com/ 

Buy Pasricha’s book here: https://a.co/d/0gZZImBR 

Smartphone usage on the toilet study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12407481/ We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: podcast@mindbodygreen.com.
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