I read an article a few days ago. A lot of my posts start that way. I read something that makes me think and then I have to write about it. I take no credit for the title of this post. My husband suggested it after I told him what I had read.

The article title (I don’t remember the title of it anymore) was worded in such a way that I expected it was a spoof. Basically, it said that people are smarter after pooping (and it said “pooping,” not “defecating” as you might expect a scientific research paper to say).

I decided to read it. I thought that at least it might be good for a chuckle. As I got into it, I realized they were serious. So my second thought was “how and, more importantly, why did someone think this up?”

Well, apparently it has been established that there is a connection between the intestines and the brain. So I guess someone got to wondering.

They did studies with fMRI before and after the subjects pooped and found greater brain activity when solving problems after pooping than before.

They gave the volunteers magnesium oxide as a laxative. So I wondered if the magnesium might have something to do with it. But they also had volunteers that did not get a laxative and they also showed improvement after pooping.

They administered a test wherein they showed people printed words for colors and the type was in a color other than the word and they had to say the color of the type. They measured accuracy and reaction times and they both improved after pooping.

It occurred to me that when I am feeling the need to poop, I tend to lose my focus a bit on whatever I am doing and so that might be all that was being measured. The author of the article never mentioned that this variable was eliminated in any way.

I like to put jigsaw puzzles together. I’m working on one at the moment. I was having trouble finding a particular piece. There were maybe 400 pieces of a 750 piece puzzle left to sort through to find it. While I was searching for it, the need to poop increased. I gave up the search. I pooped. I went back to the puzzle and found the piece within seconds.

Coincidence?

Images courtesy of Mladiinfo and BrainyQuote respectively