‘A fascination with faeces’: How stool-gazing became a social media trend

One day, someone will look back on these strange times as the age of maxxing — the phenomenon driven by an obsession with maximizing some aspect of one’s life or body. There’s looksmaxxing, ballmaxxing... and now fibermaxxing, which has turned fiber into the new protein amid growing interest in gut health.

There is even a device that analyzes your stool, prompting some content creators who once shared sleep metrics to now proudly post the analyses this gadget generates after a trip to the bathroom. There is even a hashtag, #hotgirlshaveibs, in reference to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

“POV [Point of View]: you’re a hot girl with IBS about to crush your colonoscopy,” one woman writes in a video in which she enters the clinic in slow motion, as if filming her arrival at a beauty center for a cosmetic treatment. If anyone ever joked that influencers would eventually show us even how they go to the toilet, that joke has now become reality.

The device in question is called Dekoda, and it provides information about gut health, hydration and the presence of blood in the toilet bowl.

“The bathroom stands as an untapped hub of vital health data and information. Every day, we flush away insights that could help us better understand our bodies and our health,” the company says.

Dekoda is installed inside the toilet and, for $449 — plus $70 per year for the Kohler Health app — it records every use of the toilet and uses artificial intelligence to analyze the contents. Until recently, celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian shared data about their sleep through the Oura Ring, a smart ring that tracks biometrics such as sleep quality, heart rate, stress levels, body temperature, and physical activity. Now, some influencers are sharing data about their bathroom habits thanks to devices like Dekoda or Throne, a smart sensor that attaches to a toilet and automatically monitors gut health, hydration, and urinary health. There are even toilets on the market that include systems for monitoring stool and logging the results in an app.

“In an optimization-obsessed world, stool-gazing has become nearly as popular as sleep-tracking or counting steps,” Alaina Demopoulos writes in The Guardian.

Hannah Marriott, also writing in The Guardian, says “a fascination with faeces — or stool-gazing as it is sometimes known — is burgeoning on the internet."

Dr. Karina Cuiñas, author of Tripas en acción: Vence el estreñimiento y mejora tu salud intestinal (Guts in Action: Beat Constipation and Improve Your Gut Health), believes it is very positive that people are starting to pay more attention to their stools, but she warns that the devices and apps currently gaining popularity are not infallible.

“Consistency is useful for knowing how our intestinal transit is doing and rectal bleeding is a sign that should never be ignored, but gut health goes far beyond that,” she explains. “If what we want is to record our bowel habits, it would also be important to assess the time we spend sitting on the toilet, the straining required to evacuate, pain during defecation and the feeling of complete emptying afterward.”

“Constipation is not only having hard stool,” she continues. “These smart cameras can tell you your consistency is optimal when in reality every visit to the bathroom is torture. Frequency is not a good indicator of gut health either: you can go every day and still be constipated. And stool volume depends largely on diet: without knowing what each person eats, that isolated data point tells you little. I also see a bias problem. It’s more likely that people already worried about their bowel habits will buy this type of device, and in my clinic I often see that this kind of monitoring increases hypervigilance about digestive symptoms, which can be counterproductive.”

Dr. Malena García Arredondo, founder and director of MGA Healthy Digest, believes that for the vast majority of people, simply learning to look is enough.

“The human eye can detect the really relevant changes: blood, black stool, very pale stool, persistent diarrhea, prolonged constipation or a major change in bowel habits,” she says. “Artificial intelligence can be an interesting tool for research or for very specific patients who need objective follow-up, but at the moment there is not enough evidence to recommend this kind of device as part of routine care for a healthy person.”

She concludes: “My message is simple: it’s useful to know which aspects of stool are important and which changes should prompt a consultation, but we shouldn’t obsess over them every day.”

“It’s a wellness product; it’s not a diagnostic,” warns Kash Kapadia, CEO of Kohler Health, the company that owns Dekoda. “This is another frontier of insights they didn’t have access to, which they now do.”

Dr. Arredondo welcomes the fact that, for whatever reason, people are beginning to talk about fiber, the microbiome, fermented foods, and exercise as pillars of digestive health.

“That shift in mindset has enormous preventive potential,” she says. “What worries me is that, alongside scientific interest, an industry has emerged that conveys the idea we must constantly monitor our gut. And that is not supported by the evidence. The goal is not to have perfect stool every day. It is to have a gut that functions well, without warning symptoms, within each person’s normal variability. Technology will be welcomed as long as it provides useful, proven information.”

“I think we’re losing focus and chasing one fad after another: from anti-inflammatory diets to blaming SIBO [Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth] for all our digestive problems,” Dr. Cuiñas adds. “We need to return to basics — what we know works for gut health: a diet based on plant foods, regular physical activity, stress management and seeking help when something is wrong.”

In principle, it seems as simple as going to the bathroom.

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