American Poop Study Shows Detroit Has A Problem

DETROIT, MI — We could delicately dance around this, but everybody poops, your own mother may have told you to take a look at your poop to detect changes that can indicate health problems and you may have given your children a copy of author Taro Gomi's “Everyone Poops” to get them comfortable with the daily routine. Still, in the category of we’re-glad-this-isn’t-our-job, a study of Detroiters’ poop shows the city to be No. 1 in America for “tummy pain.”

Yes, really, the folks at the food and tracker app Cara teamed with a gastroenterologist on its advisory board, Stefan Lueth, a professor of internal medicine at Brandenburg Clinic in Germany, for the study on how often Americans poop and when they don’t, its consistency, what they eat and their gastrointestinal symptoms.Researchers analyzed 1.2 million data points from 30,000 Americans who were using the app.

When compared with the problems in other top cities noted in the study, Detroit may be able to burp and move on. Atlanta is the top city for constipation, diarrhea is a big problem in Dallas, Boston bloats and Nashville is nauseous. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, like us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

They noted a load of regional differences in digestive health. Detroit is No. 1 for “tummy pain,” but people in West Virginia, Missouri, Louisiana, Texas and Maine are the states with the most severe gastrointestinal complaints such as stomach pain, diarrhea, constipation and bloating, the latter an affliction that both men and women suffer.

The study showed that women have more severe symptoms overall, and in a bathroom battle of the sexes, found that while women suffer more from constipation, men suffer more from diarrhea.

Also, Americans tend to have favorite pooping times, typically before and after work, though “fearless poopers” can do it whenever the urge strikes, the study said. And this is surely good news, a sign that Americans are flushing priggish attitudes about normal bodily functions: Only a few people had a problem pooping in public, according to the analysis.

Photo by Jessica Merz via Flickr Commons