India, March 21 -- A new study in Cell Reports Medicine revealed that how often a person uses the bathroom may have a large impact on their long-term health.
Previous research linked constipation to higher infection risks and diarrhea to neurodegenerative diseases. However, it remained unclear whether irregular bowel movements caused these issues or were simply symptoms of other health conditions.
"I do hope that this work will kind of open clinicians' minds a bit to the potential risks of not managing bowel movement frequencies," noted senior author Sean Gibbons at the Institute for Systems Biology, Sciencealert reports.
To investigate, researchers analyzed over 1,400 healthy adults, examining their gut microbiome, blood chemistry, gene...