Free Republic

A study reveals that bowel movement frequency significantly influences physiology and long-term health, with the best outcomes linked with passing stools once or twice a day. Previous research has suggested associations between constipation and diarrhea with higher risks of infections and neurodegenerative conditions, respectively. Gibbons and his team collected clinical, lifestyle, and biological data—including blood chemistry, gut microbiome, genetics and more—from over 1,400 healthy adult volunteers with no signs of active disease. When stools linger too long in the gut, microbes exhaust the available fiber—which they ferment into beneficial short-chain fatty acids—and instead ferment proteins, producing toxins like p-cresol sulfate...

The American Cancer Society reports lower overall cancer death rates, yet incidence is increasing for many common cancers, including 6 of the top 10. ... What might be most striking about the rising incidence is that it’s affecting increasingly younger people. Cancer patients are getting younger. Cancer risk increases with age, and people most likely to be diagnosed with cancer are adults age 65 and older. But this trend is beginning to change. People age 65 and older (sometimes referred to as older adults) represent a growing proportion of the overall population, but their numbers are shrinking in the proportion...