Why People Are Using Muffins to Turn Their Poop Blue

Health can be a pain in the gut, right?

For people who live with Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis or irritable bowel syndrome, taking care of our gut health is a daily job. But the truth is, taking care of gut health is important for everyone. Our gut affects us more than you make think. For example, researchers found evidence that gut bacteria may play a role in fibromyalgia. That is why healthcare science company ZOE wants you to participate in the #BluePoopChallenge.

 

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Scientists working with ZOE recently had a study published in the Gut journal, which looked at the relationship between gut transit time and gut health. Participants ate muffins with blue dye and reported when their poo was a blue or green-ish color.

The researchers found that gut transit time is a very informative marker of gut function. “Notably, gut transit time explained more variation in the gut microbiome, in terms of both relative abundance and alpha diversity, than stool consistency and stool frequency,” they wrote. “This indicates that gut transit time, measured via the blue dye method, may be a more informative marker of gut function in large cohorts of healthy people than stool consistency and frequency.”

Participating in the #BluePoopChallenge is easy, and you only need to do three things:

1. Eat two blue muffins for breakfast (note the date and time).
2. Look out for blue-green poop when you go to the toilet (note the date and time when you spot it).
3. Enter your time and answer a few questions here, and discover interesting things about your gut!

You can visit ZOE’s Blue Poop page to learn about which dyes you could use when participating in this challenge. If you want to bring more awareness about this challenge, post pictures of your muffin using the hashtag #BluePoopChallenge (including on The Mighty!) ZOE also encourages participants to tag them on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.