It’s hard to think about anything else when your bowel habits are off. But one doctor recommends giving yourself a break – and rethinking how you approach the way you poop going forward.

Gastroenterologist Dr. Trisha Pasricha, makes the case for changing up the way you poop in her upcoming book, You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong: How to Make Your Bowel Movements a Joy.

In fact, she swears that “pooping without judgment” is the way to go, noting that people – especially women – should think about their bowel habits less.

Data suggests that up to 20% of Americans have chronic constipation, meaning they regularly have trouble pooping, don’t poop often or feel like they don’t get everything out when they go. Women in particular face unique biological challenges that can make healthy bowel habits harder to achieve, Pasricha said.

That includes having more mast cells in the gut, which raises the odds of experiencing gut discomfort compared to men. Many women face GI symptoms like constipation, diarrhoea, and increased gas around their period, too.

“Progesterone levels rise and fall throughout the menstrual cycle every month, and this directly impacts how quickly the stomach empties and how sluggish the intestines feel,” Pasricha told HuffPost.

Prostaglandins, the compounds responsible for period cramps, also stimulate contractions in the gut, she points out. “That can cause diarrhoea at the most inopportune times,” Pasricha said.

If you’re dealing with bowel issues or if you simply feel a little concerned that your pooping habits aren’t up to snuff, Pasricha said it’s time for a change. Here’s what she suggests:

Pasricha’s philosophy on “pooping without judgment” means a few different things.

“I want people to define a normal bowel habit by what’s comfortable for them, rather than by measuring yourself against some imaginary standard of ‘normal’ that likely doesn’t exist,” Pasricha explained.

“In my clinic, I find people often spend a lot of energy worrying that they should be pooping once a day like clockwork, or that their stool should look a certain way, or that needing a laxative is some kind of personal failure.”

Research suggests that there is a wide range of normal when it comes to pooping habits. What’s considered healthy for bowel movements can mean anywhere from pooping three times a day to three times a week.

“The range of ‘normal’ is enormous,” Pasricha said. “It’s going to vary so much for each individual – and will likely fluctuate over time – because of your diet, exercise, stress and other lifestyle factors that influence the pattern.” What really matters is whether your bowel movements are comfortable and whether they’re interfering with your life, she added.

But there’s more to pooping without judgment than that. “Pooping without judgment also means feeling free to respond to the call of nature without shame,” Pasricha said.

“People are so mortified to use the bathroom at work or at a friend’s house. That leaves you with such a limited window in which to finish your business and your body isn’t always primed to go when you decide it’s the optimal moment from a social standpoint.”

She stressed the importance of removing judgment for yourself and others when you do what your body needs you to do. “Spritz a little bathroom spray, give a courtesy flush and move on,” Pasricha said.

Pasricha stressed that you can’t have comfortable, effortless bowel habits unless pooping is the least of your concerns – and that you just go when your body is ready.

“Suppose your body signals to you that you need to use the bathroom in the middle of the work day and you are worried about using the bathroom for fear of judgment,” she said. “Eventually, your colon may stop squeezing, which is what gives you that feeling of urgency, and you’ll feel like you can get back to normal so you can do your business at a more appropriate time later.”

Here’s the problem: Even though it may feel more socially appropriate to use the bathroom when you get home, it’s not necessarily best for your body.

“Once you get home from work, your colon is no longer offering you that extra ‘push,’ so you’re going to have to strain harder for the magic to happen,” Pasricha said.

Regularly avoiding the urge to go raises the odds you’ll end up dealing with constipation, too. This is because stool becomes drier and harder when it sits in your rectum, making it harder to push out than if you had simply gone to the bathroom when you had the urge to go, Pasricha explained.

In general, Pasricha said you should simply do your business when the need strikes and move on. But it’s understandable to check out what lands in the toilet bowl.

There is a range of consistency, patterns and colours that are considered normal, according to Pasricha. But if you’ve spied something that’s concerning, she recommends taking a picture to show to your doctor.

“Red, maroon or black stool has me worried for bleeding, and you should seek help immediately,” Pasricha said. But bowel movements that wake you up in the middle of the night or severe abdominal pain should also be checked out quickly.

“Outside of these bigger red flags, any symptom that bothers you or interferes with how you’re enjoying your daily life is worth discussing with your physician,” Pasricha said.

“Even if it seems like ‘no big deal,’ if any discomfort, bloating, or other pattern related to your bowels is keeping you from enjoying activities you love or causing you significant distress, talk to someone sooner rather than later.”

Additional comment provided by therapist and founder of Pash Co., Erin Pash.

There’s no denying romantic heartbreak is tough (as anyone who’s been through a situationship will know).

But friendship breakups can sting too, says therapist Erin Pash.

“Romantic breakups come with a script: breakup songs, therapy language, social permission to fall apart. Friendship loss has almost none of that,” she said.

Here, we spoke to Pash about when she sees the most friendship breakups, why they sting so much, how to move on from them, and when self-reflection might be needed.

When HuffPost UK asked Pash when she sees the most friendship breakups, she answered: “The late 20s/early 30s and midlife are the biggest hotspots”.

In your 30s, she explained, “life starts diverging fast – different relationship choices, kids or no kids, career paths, values. The friendship that worked at 22 doesn’t always survive who you’re becoming at 32”.

And at midlife, people might start reconsidering huge parts of their lives.

Maybe “someone gets sober, leaves a marriage, stops people-pleasing – and when you finally show up as your real self, some friendships can’t handle it.

“Both stages come down to the same thing: when you get clearer on who you are, relationships that required a smaller version of you start to crack.”

Part of the reason is that they’re not really as acknowledged as romantic separations, said Pash.

“There’s no ceremony, often no clean ending, and the world doesn’t really acknowledge the grief. But the intimacy in a close friendship can actually run deeper,” she said.

“Your best friend may have known you in ways a partner never did, without the performance of attraction or the weight of shared finances. When that’s gone, you lose both a person and the version of yourself they reflected back to you.”

It’s important not to try to ignore your pain, the therapist advised.

“Give it real grief. Don’t minimise the loss just because it wasn’t romantic.”

Then, consider what it is that’s actually upsetting you about their absence.

“Did that friend make you laugh harder than anyone? Hold your history? Challenge you?

“Naming what you’ve lost helps you heal it with precision instead of just sitting with a vague ache. And resist the urge to immediately fill the void. Rushed replacements rarely fix the real wound.”

It’s common to wonder what role you played in a friendship breakup. And provided you aren’t spiralling about whether the whole thing was your fault (Pash says that’s “just shame”), self-reflection can actually be healthy.

“Every ending has data in it,” the therapist stated.

“Ask: what patterns am I noticing? If the same dynamic keeps showing up across multiple friendships, that’s a signal worth paying attention to.

“Even simple journaling, like ‘What did I bring to this friendship that helped? What didn’t?’ can open real self-awareness without beating yourself up. The goal is growth, not guilt.”

Remember, she added, that friendship breakups can be healthy.

“Not every relationship is meant to last forever, and outgrowing a friendship isn’t a failure. It’s often a sign you’re evolving. The most honest thing you can do for yourself and someone else is stop maintaining a connection that’s become performative.

“Letting go with intention and care is an act of integrity, not abandonment.”

You may want to stand up and do a few stretches while reading this.

Research has already established that prolonged sitting is really harmful to our health. It’s linked to conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

But what if it’s also the reason for your back pain or that pesky knee pain that pops up every time you try to jog?

While there are multiple causes of back and knee pain, sitting all day at a desk job may be a major factor, too. Here’s what to know:

“A lot depends on how you sit, but essentially, prolonged sitting puts your iliopsoas, which is your primary hip flexor, into a shortened position,” said Dr. Michael Fredericson, a professor of sports medicine and the director of Stanford Lifestyle Medicine in California.

Your hip flexors are a group of muscles that allow you to raise your knee. You also use these muscles when you step up and bend forward.

“So if you’re staying in that position for seven, eight hours a day, then it becomes chronically tight into that position, and you get what we call passive muscle stiffness,” Fredericson said.

This isn’t only a problem for people who sit all day; it’s also common among runners and cyclists, said Brian Kracyla, a physical therapist and owner of Cloudline Physical Therapy in Philadelphia.

According to Melanie McNeal, physical and occupational therapy manager at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, men are often affected.

“Most everyone has tight hip flexors, because we’re a society that does a lot of sitting, so it is a huge issue,” McNeal said. However, it tends to be even more prevalent in men “because males tend to be tighter than females on the whole”.

Why does it matter if you have tight hip flexors? Well, it turns out this issue could be causing pain and mobility problems that you probably aren’t even connecting to tight hips.

One problem people with tight hips may experience is knee pain, McNeal said, “because if your hip flexor is tight … it compresses your kneecap, your patella, and that can cause knee pain, especially with activity like jogging or running or fast walking.”

If you have tight hip flexors, your stride length will be shorter when walking and running, Kracyla said. This contributes to the shuffling gait that’s often seen in older adults.

Having tight hip flexors can also lead to posture issues and back pain.

“You’re going to have a pelvic tilt in the front, which is going to increase the curve of your spine in the back,” Kracyla said, “and often that will manifest itself on our end with lumbar extension compensation, so you could feel more low-back stiffness with activity due to your tight hip flexors.”

“That’s why a lot of times when you stretch the hip flexors, people’s back pain feels better,” Fredericson said.

A lot of people have desk jobs and long commutes that require them to sit for many hours of the day, and there is no way around that reality. While sitting all day long isn’t ideal for your hip mobility (and many other systems in your body), there’s a way to adjust.

The problem with sitting all day is the slouching and slumping that most of us do when we’re on our computers, tablets or phones, Fredericson said, “instead of actively using your core and postural muscles to keep your pelvis in a more neutral position.”

“When you’re slouched all day, those hip flexors are in this chronically shortened position, but if you look at people who maintain better posture, their pelvis is not … going into a posterior pelvic tilt. It’s staying in a more neutral position,” Fredericson added. This way, you’re engaging your muscles and participating in more “active sitting.”

Beyond maintaining good posture while sitting, it’s important to stand and move around for at least five minutes every half hour, according to Fredericson. This can look like going on a walk, heading downstairs for a snack, stretching or switching to your walking pad for a low-stakes call.

“Not only is that going to be good for your hip flexors and your flexibility, but it’s just good for your whole metabolic system,” Fredericson said. “We know the people who do that, their blood pressure is lower. They have less cardiovascular risk factors.”

Exercise can also help, but going to the gym after sitting for eight hours a day, five days a week, isn’t going to counteract your inactivity.

“You might get this false belief that you’re still staying in great shape because you go to that gym, but then you still sit all day — but it doesn’t really work like that,” Fredericson said.

This doesn’t mean your exercise regimen isn’t helpful. For optimal body function, you should practice good sitting posture, get up for movement breaks and follow an exercise regimen. Movement, in general, helps with everything.

“The more active we can be, the fewer problems we have,” McNeal said.

Treating tight hip flexors comes down to a multi-pronged approach, Kracyla added, including stretching, mobility work and strength training. According to the Hospital for Special Surgery, helpful stretches for tight hip flexors include the half-kneeling stretch and the 90/90 stretch. Child’s pose and low-lunge stretch can be beneficial, too.

It’s not enough to hold a stretch for 15 seconds and move on, though. McNeal said you should aim to hold each stretch for 30 seconds and repeat it three times.

If you notice pain or difficulty with movement or stretching, it’s worth talking to a doctor to see if you could benefit from additional support from a physical therapist.

“There is some nuance to it,” Kracyla said, before adding that it often requires a clinical eye to prescribe treatment.

A cabinet minister has ruled out giving MPs a vote on UK military action in Iran.

Steve Reed said it would be “unprecedented” for the Commons to be given a say on operations “defending British people” in the area.

Opposition parties, and some Labour MPs, have demanded a vote in parliament after Keir Starmer gave the US the green light to use British bases for bombing raids to re-open the Strait of Hormuz.

On the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Reed was asked whether there would be a Commons vote.

He said: “It would be unprecedented to call a vote in parliament on defending British people and British assets. That is why we have security apparatus in place.

“The UK did not take part in the initial offensive action because we didn’t see there was a legal basis for the UK to participate.

“There is no precedent for a vote in parliament for defending British people.”

When it was pointed out to the minister that Keir Starmer had previously said MPs should be given a vote on any UK military action, he replied: “I don’t think at any point the prime minister has believed that there should be a vote on defending British people who are under attack from a hostile state.”

Green Party leader Zack Polanski accused Reed of “gaslighting the nation”.

He told HuffPost UK: “It’s very clearly not defensive action and their semantics this morning will never hide that a Labour government have learnt no lessons about getting involved in illegal Middle East wars that are truly deadly.

“The prime minister promised that military action would be subject to a binding vote in parliament and I’m sure he wouldn’t want to be telling lies to the whole country on such a crucial issue.

Meanwhile, Reed also rejected Israeli claims that Iranian missiles could reach London after Tehran unsuccessfully tried to hit Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

He said: “There is no specific assessment that the Iranians are targeting the UK or even could, if they wanted to.

“We have the finest military in the world. We are perfectly capable of protecting this country.”

When I was 14 years old, I wrote my first letter to My Future Husband. Over the course of six years, I wrote more than 100 similar letters, with the intent of one day sharing them with my God-ordained groom.

While perhaps an overachiever in this endeavour, I was certainly not alone. Many young women raised in evangelical Christianity in the 90s and 2000s were heavily influenced by “purity culture”, an evangelical movement promoting sexual abstinence until marriage, modesty and traditional gender roles.

Purity Culture mandated a shift away from casual dating and toward dating with the express intention of a swift and Christ-centred marriage, especially for girls.

I absorbed the high value placed on my role as a future bride, and I tasked myself with fulfilling that role as quickly and expertly as possible.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother sewed me a child-sized wedding dress. It was white with a train, lace trim, pearls and a veil with a blusher.

With the perfect costume, I spent hours playing Bride in the living room: walking down the aisle, standing by the hearth and kissing an imaginary man the way I secretly spied women kissing men on daytime soaps when my mum didn’t know I was looking.

I would run around in the back yard making up songs about being a woman, being a bride, having a wedding day. I even wore the dress as a Halloween costume a couple of times, much to my little brother’s dismay – what if people mistook him as the groom?!

It’s not out of the ordinary for a kid to engage in imaginary play, whether that’s dressing up as a princess or teaching math to a class of stuffed animals. But, for me, the fantasy was more than playing dress up. As the white polyblend zipped up over my shoulders, I felt I was accepting a mantle of great power.

In my imagination, being a bride was synonymous with being visible, honoured and adored. If I were a bride, I would have acrylic French tips like my mum, a 1.5-inch curling iron like my big sister and a man who would look at me the way Captain Von Trapp looks at Maria in the gazebo. (This is still the epitome of romance to me.)

On the wide spectrum of childhoods, I had a pretty good one. I had parents who loved me and did their best with the tools available to them. Some parts of my story are pretty standard-issue teen stuff. As a chubby preteen of the aughts, I shopped in the Dillard’s women’s section, mowed my unibrow with a disposable razor twice a week, and struggled against my naturally curly hair with a Wet 2 Straight hair straightener. I can still hear and smell the sizzle of the iron on my damp, Pantene-scented curls.

But other parts of my story, while also common, are less relatable to a lot of people. For instance, for the first 18 years of my life, I was at church no less than three days per week learning that it was my personal responsibility to rescue my non-Christian classmates from the jaws of hell due to an unseen spiritual war that was *literally* being waged all around me.

Still another part of my story is, thankfully, relatable to very few. When I was five years old, my little brother nearly died of liver failure, kickstarting a lifetime of physical, mental and emotional health crises that ricocheted throughout my family, shaped my childhood and still echo in the present.

I outgrew the little white dress, but not the fantasy of marriage. This fantasy was reinforced by religious teachings that emphasised the importance of marriage, purity and obedience to God and to one’s husband.

I was trying to manage many things that were fully out of my control, within the context of a high-control, patriarchal religion, which left me feeling powerless and afraid and in need of an escape. And in my world, marriage was power. Marriage was purpose. At least for girls, marriage was agency.

As far as fantasies go, this was an achievable one! Most of the adults I knew were married, so why not me? This was surely my calling. This would surely be the end to the chaos, the uncertainty, the victimhood.

So, when I was 14, I wrote my first letter to My Future Husband. It was intended to be read by the lucky man on our wedding night. Predictably, I waxed on about my virginal purity and the “special gift” I’d been saving for him. It is extremely cringeworthy.

The 14-year-old version of me then continued to write an obsessive amount of letters to her Future Husband over six years. Eventually, I stopped writing the letters, put them in storage, and largely forgot about them.

Until 16 years later when, married but no longer an Evangelical Christian, I started reading them out loud to my actual husband – along with an audience of strangers on the internet.

At 30 – after a decade of faith deconstruction and much-needed therapy – I am married to a great man. Though the 14-year-old version of myself would be disappointed to know that my actual wedding night with my husband, Zach, was spent counting the cash from our wedding cards, eating some chocolate strawberries and promptly passing out.

No one’s hymen was broken. No purity was “given”. We simply snuggled into the deep, dreamless sleep of two people who loved each other deeply and had already shared a bed together for years.

When Zach and I found the letters in an old box of my things at my parents’ home, I knew we had to do something with them. After reading one or two on our own, I had the idea to record myself reading one of the letters to Zach for the first time and post it on TikTok.

So far, I’ve read 38 letters online, which has been equal parts excruciating and liberating. The content ranges from salacious gossip about my friends, to opining about my lonely condition as a single 15-year-old, to writing veritable fanfiction about a young couple at my church.

Inspired by a particular scene of Cory and Topanga from one of the later seasons of Boy Meets World, I imagined a young couple at my church to be poverty-stricken but in love – reduced to “eating chicken salad sandwiches on the floor of their living room”.

I finish my story with the declaration: “Fast forward 10 years … that will be us.” This had Zach and I both doubled over and gasping for air.

I figured the goofy letters might resonate with some folks online, but I had no idea how much. Countless women in the comments of my videos have shared similar stories and experiences. I was shocked to find out just how many people burn their old journals and husband letters.

Burning seems excessive to me, but hey – your letters, your choice to perform a sacramental bonfire, am I right?

Many followers have thanked me for the “bravery” of sharing a bit of my story. While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t actually think reading the letters online is all that brave. I think the brave person in this story is the teenager who found a way to survive far more than she should have had to handle, and who survived deconstructing a belief system that supported her entire identity and worldview. The bravest thing I’ve ever done is heal.

And every time we share a letter online, a little bit more healing happens. We laugh until our stomachs hurt and we gasp at the melodramatic high school tales I’ve gifted myself from the past. The sweetest irony is that I originally meant these letters to be a way for me to connect with My Future Husband … and they are! Just not remotely in the way I imagined.

In retrospect, the letters were misguided, but this journey has given me deep compassion and empathy for the young woman who wrote them.

She grew from a teenage girl whose wildest fantasy for her future was having a husband to obey to a woman who knows that being a wife is the least interesting thing about her.

If you grew up anything like me, especially if you’re working to deconstruct your harmful internalised beliefs – I hope this series also reminds you that there’s so much more power, agency and purpose in life than being someone’s wife.

I initially shared my letters to My Future Husband online because I was hoping to make you laugh, but the best outcome I could hope for is to also help you heal.

Abigail Freshley is a writer, reader, podcast host and social media over-sharer based in Los Angeles. She reflects on her evangelical upbringing, love of books and obsession with her dog, Bonnie, on Instagram and TikTok.

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