ReThinking: Can you trust your gut? with GI doctor Trisha Pasricha

Summary

Podcast Summary: WorkLife with Adam Grant

Episode: ReThinking: Can You Trust Your Gut? with GI Doctor Trisha Pasricha

Date: April 7, 2026
Host: Adam Grant (Organizational Psychologist, TED)
Guest: Dr. Trisha Pasricha (Gastroenterologist, Harvard/Washington Post Columnist, Author)

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Adam Grant welcomes Dr. Trisha Pasricha to explore the science and myths behind "gut feelings"—from the actual physiological gut-brain connection to decision-making, bodily disgust, and gastrointestinal (GI) advice. With humor and depth, they transcend common taboos around digestion, discuss the tendency to mystify gut instincts, and bust some pervasive GI health myths.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Brain-Gut Connection: Where Digestion Truly Begins

• Digestion begins in the brain ([03:40])
  • Dr. Trisha discusses how thoughts and emotions can trigger digestive processes.
  • The gut is unique among organs—thoughts alone (e.g., imagining chocolate cake) can physically activate digestive secretions.
  • This field, neurogastroenterology, examines this two-way brain-gut relationship.

Quote

"Digestion begins in the brain, and we've known that...the gut is unlike so many other organs...our brain and our thoughts and our feelings can so strongly influence what our gut is doing."
— Dr. Trisha ([03:40])

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2. The Physiology & Message of 'Gut Feelings'

• Adam questions the wisdom of "trusting your gut."
• Gut feelings have a basis—the gut reacts to emotional stimuli via hormones, especially during stress or deception ([05:23]).
• Dr. Trisha explains her lie detector invention: your gut's rhythmic contractions become disrupted (arrhythmia) when you’re anxious or lying, overseen by stress hormones.
• Key insight: A gut feeling is a physical alert, not an "oracle." It's a message, not a verdict—pause to interpret it within context.

Quote

"That change in your gut's rhythm is not an oracle, it's just a message. And that message is...you need to slow down, you shouldn't act on it immediately."
— Dr. Trisha ([07:25])

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3. Interpreting, Not Worshipping, the Gut

• Many over-value gut instincts as fortune-tellers ([05:23], [10:49]).
• Gut reactions may stem from novelty, safety, or even positive comfort—not just danger ([08:18]).
• The risk: misreading comfort as boredom or danger as attraction during key life moments (dating, business decisions).

Quote

"Maybe you didn't have that gut feeling because physiologically there was nothing unsettling...It might have actually just been a person with whom you felt very safe and comfortable. Is that such a bad thing?"
— Dr. Trisha ([08:18])

• Memory Bias: We remember when ignoring a gut feeling led to negative outcomes, reinforcing its importance, but forget when following it led us astray ([12:09]).

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4. When Can You Actually Trust Your Gut?

• Research cited by Adam Grant: expertise + domain predictability are prerequisites ([14:09]).
  • Experts can rely on gut intuition within their narrow fields.
  • In unfamiliar or rare, high-stakes situations, the gut is a poor guide; caution and reflection are necessary ([15:08]).

Quote

"A lot of our decisions aren't like that...A lot of our gut feelings happen in domains where we don't have a lot of experience or there's not a stable pattern. That's where I just want people to question: what is this signal coming from? Am I just uncomfortable because I'm in an unfamiliar environment?"
— Adam Grant ([14:38])

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5. Common GI Myths and Unfiltered Advice

Lightning Round ([18:13] onwards)

• Worst GI Advice: Probiotics for all

  • "We do not recommend probiotics for most conditions. The truth is that the data is far murkier..." — Dr. Trisha ([18:19])

• Best Gut Advice: Treat your gut like a brain

  • Protect, nourish, and maintain it as you would your brain—high-fiber diet, sleep, exercise, less processed food ([18:58]).

• Changing GI beliefs: Cancer can and does occur in younger people—new symptoms should be taken seriously regardless of age ([19:39]).

• Famous Dinner Guests: Ivan Pavlov, Michael Levitt (flatulence researcher), and her dad (a neurogastroenterologist with a great sense of humor) ([20:22]).

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6. Advocacy and Medical Bias

How to Advocate for Women's GI Pain in Medicine ([21:13])

• Adam recommends: Make pain specific and relatable—compare gut pain to universally understood pain (e.g., "This hurts more than when I broke my foot") to foster empathy and specificity in physician responses ([23:04]).
• Both agree: The onus should be on improving medical training, not just women's self-advocacy.

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7. Misinformation & Patient Communication

([24:49])

• Building trust and critical thinking with patients is key, not immediate debunking.
• Praise patients for seeking information, then offer to demonstrate how to evaluate sources, aiming to build a relationship over a single fact check.

Quote

"You want to do is establish a relationship whereby they trust your thought process, not just your conclusions."
— Adam Grant ([25:54])

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8. Busting More Poop Myths & Taboos

([26:51])

• Fart Smell Fixes: Most fart gas is odorless; bismuth subsalicylate (Pepto Bismol) can neutralize odor. For confidence during key events, consider it! ([26:59])
• How common is adult incontinence? 7% of adults regularly poop their pants—much more common and treatable than people realize ([27:59]).
• Colon cleanses/detox: Completely unnecessary; your liver is the best detoxifier ([29:13]).
  • "There is no celery juice you could sip that is going to do a better job than your liver." — Dr. Trisha ([29:13])

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9. Disgust, Curiosity, and the Cultural Treatment of Poop

([33:25])

• Adam invokes Paul Rozin's research: People are both disgusted and deeply curious about their own poop.
• Dr. Trisha: Many patients don't look, but those who do may help themselves detect early symptoms of problems.
• Cultural disgust prevents vital health conversations.

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10. Pooforia: The Physiology and Psychology of Bowel Movement Joy

([37:01])

• The concept of "pooforia": profound satisfaction during or after a successful bowel movement—a real, measurable peak of joy.
• For many, GI health is more central to well-being than even other symptoms of major diseases (e.g., Parkinson's patients preferring tremors to constipation).

Quote

"No matter how successful you are...if you cannot eat the food you love and you cannot poop it out properly, people just don't feel joy."
— Dr. Trisha ([38:28])

• Both relief (physical and emotional), and physiological relaxation (via vagus nerve) underlie the "high."

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11. Practical Tips for Bowel Wellness

([41:28])

• Posture: Squatting is ideal; if not possible, raise knees above waist with a stool for easier bowel movements.
• Smartphones: Avoid bringing them to the bathroom; distraction prolongs time on toilet, raising hemorrhoid risk.

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Notable Quotes

• "It’s not an oracle, it’s just a message." — Dr. Trisha, on gut feelings ([07:25])
• "We don't recommend probiotics for most conditions. The data is far murkier..." — Dr. Trisha ([18:19])
• "If you were an expert, this would be wonderful. You’d have all that background. But if you’re not...let’s pause and think." — Dr. Trisha ([15:08])
• "Joy equals sex plus shit." — Adam Grant recalling a professor ([38:09])

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Timestamps of Major Segments

| Time | Segment | |--------|-----------------------------------------------------| | 03:40 | Digestion begins in the brain & gut-brain science | | 05:23 | Gut feelings & physiological basis | | 07:25 | Gut feelings as messages, not verdicts | | 08:18 | Misinterpreting gut feelings in life situations | | 14:09 | When expertise makes gut instincts trustworthy | | 18:13 | Gut health: best/worst advice & GI myths | | 21:13 | Advocating for women’s GI healthcare | | 24:49 | Tackling health misinformation | | 26:59 | Poop myths: fart odor, incontinence, detox | | 33:25 | Disgust, curiosity, and looking at our poop | | 37:01 | Pooforia: the joy of bowel movements | | 41:28 | How to poop better: tips for bathroom success |

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Tone & Takeaways

The episode is candid, practical, and full of humor. Neither host nor guest shy away from bodily topics, instead making a compelling case for paying attention to these often-ignored signals (and dismissing cultural embarrassment). Their message is clear: gut instinct is real, but it’s a signal to interpret, not a mystical guide. Good GI health is central to happiness (yes, "pooforia" is real!), and science beats detox fads every time.

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In short:
Trust your gut to alert you, not to make your decisions. Rethink your embarrassment about digestion—good gut health is key to well-being, and poop is both a health signal and source of surprising joy.

Transcript

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[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

A gut feeling has a true physiological basis. I think the way we get it wrong, though, is that we take that gut feeling and then we say, okay, this gut feeling is good or this gut feeling is bad and we assign some value to it. But if you jump to label it too quickly, I think we can get this entirely backwards.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant.

[Podcast Host (Ted)]

Welcome back to Rethinking My Podcast with Ted on the Science of what Makes Us Tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm Taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Krisha Posrica is a gastroenterologist at Harvard and the writer behind the Washington post

[Adam Grant (Host)]

ask a doctor column. She's been interested in the gut since

[Podcast Host (Ted)]

she was a teenager. Now she has a new book out

[Adam Grant (Host)]

called you'd've been pooping all wrong. I have to admit, this isn't the kind of topic we usually cover on

[Podcast Host (Ted)]

this show, but Tricia and I had a fascinating conversation about the brain gut connection, understanding what butterflies in your stomach might actually mean, and yes, some things you didn't know. You wanted to know about bowel movements.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

So this is an unusual conversation for us and definitely for me. And I can't believe that we're doing it without children present because this is a topic that every kid loves. But I think there are some things that I need to rethink based on this conversation. So let me just ask you to start at the top, Tricia. Where does digestion actually begin? I've always thought about it as something that happens in the gut via the mouth.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah, I think that's how most people think about it. But digestion begins in the brain, and we've known that digestion begins in the brain for a very long time. And in a way, the gut is unlike so many other organs that our brain and our thoughts and our feelings can so strongly influence what our gut is doing. There's almost no other organ where the main thing, one of the main things it does can be completely controlled by your thoughts. Right. Like your heart is going to keep on beating. You might think about a scary movie and you can kind of get it to ramp up, but it's not going to fundamentally change what it does. Whereas, like, right now, if you or I picture this, like, nice, warm, gooey chocolate cake, and you can picture that chocolate sliding down the plate, like, soon you might start salivating, and actually your pancreas is going to start secreting insulin and your whole gut starts to rev up purely because of your thoughts. And that is something that we had observed even as far back as, like, Ivan Pavlov and that famous experiment with his dogs. But it really is those set of experiments that birthed this whole field called neurogastroenterology, which is the study of the gut brain connection. And that's what I study, and that's what I am now. And it's an exciting field because we now know how deep that connection is between the gut and the brain.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Okay, so this bothers me as a Psychologist. Because whenever people say, trust your gut, I have a few reactions. The first one is, no, test your gut, because I don't know where you got your gut instincts and whether they're valid in the situation you're in or not. But secondly, I prefer to trust my brain. That's where I do my cognitive processing. And I'm afraid you're gonna tell me it's a little more complicated than that.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Well, I'm with you that I don't necessarily jump to trust my gut either, which may also be surprising. As a gastroenterologist, I'm sure all my GI colleagues are like, how dare she? The gut is the superior organ. And, you know, let me just say that I think what we consider to be gut feelings in pop culture has taken on almost the role of, like, an oracle. Like, your gut can predict the future. It can tell you the way things really are in a way that your brain may not be able to tell you. And this is something I've studied really, really closely for more than 20. And a gut feeling has a true physiological basis. And this is something that I studied when I was in high school, and I developed a lie detector that could use your stomach to detect when somebody's telling the truth versus telling a lie. And physiologically, what I found is actually a little bit boring and a little bit simple, and that is this. Your gut actually contracts at a predictable cycle. Just the way your heart contracts at around 60 beats per minute, give or take, is for your heart, for your stomach, it's about three cycles per minute. And when you tell a lie, that cycle gets completely disrupted. It goes into this chaotic rhythm called arrhythmia. And physiologically, that rhythm. And that rhythm disturbance which starts in the brain is being driven by this molecule called corticotrophin, releasing hormones, and it comes through the bloodstream, and it immediately tells your stomach to halt and stops it from emptying. And if you think about it that way, what's cool is that it means that your gut is often quickly responding to some change, some threat, some excitement that your amygdala is processing, sometimes maybe before your conscious brain in your head has pieced together why. And so your stomach can be this first herald of, like, wait, there's something off about this environment. It can be like, for example, I used to be a theater kid. If I blew my lines on stage, I would get this, like, sink feeling in the pit of my stomach, right? Or maybe it's butterflies and you're on a date. We know. We all intuitively know What I'm talking about, when we talk about that gut kind of feeling, I think the way we get it wrong though is that we take that gut feeling and then we assign some value to it. And I usually tell people, like, if we just think about what is happening physiologically, that change in your gut's rhythm which is giving you that gut feeling, that true gut feeling, it's not an oracle, it's just a message. And that message is just that. You need to slow down, you shouldn't act on it immediately. But just think, what is it about my environment that my conscious brain may not have perceived yet, but that I understand?

[Adam Grant (Host)]

I love that. I mean, that's a really elegant physiological explanation of why I don't want people to blindly trust their gut instincts. Because you're right, there is a message, but the message has to be deciphered.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah, exactly. And it has to be translated in the context of everything. You know, I mean, the amygdala, I think in popular science it gets a little bit dumbed down into saying like, oh, this is the fear processing hub. And it's really like a more of an emotional processing hub. And sometimes what you're reacting to is not some fear or some deep feeded concern, but it actually might just be the novelty of a situation that you're not used to. And then conversely, I've seen the other thing happen. And this is very classic. You say you go on a date and you're with someone new and then you don't get that butterflies in your stomach with that person, you know, and then I have, I've had girlfriends come to me and be like, oh, we didn't have that spark, you know, like my gut was telling me, like, I didn't get, I didn't have it. And like, sure, maybe this person is not the right person for you. Very valid. However, I don't think you should make that decision based on whether you had butterflies in your stomach, whether you had a gut feeling about it right then and there without understanding the bigger context of why. Because maybe you didn't have that gut feeling. Because again, physiologically there was nothing unsettling about this experience. Like it might have actually just been a person with whom you felt very safe and comfortable. Is that such a bad thing? You know, and I think maybe you need another date or two to know, is he really boring or is he really just like a nice person that you feel happy with?

[Adam Grant (Host)]

And your next date should be structured more like the bachelor bachelorette. You're going bungee jumping, right?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Obviously God, only if only.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

This reminds me of something that happened in grad school. I invited a bunch of people to. I think it was a Valentine's Day gathering.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Nice. Bold.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Afterward, one of the attendees gave me feedback that a guy there had creeped her out.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Oh, gosh.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

And I was really. I was surprised and disappointed. And I asked her why, and she said, you know, I can't locate it. But there was something about his eyes that just gave me a bad feeling. I knew I couldn't trust him. And I said, you know he's gay, right? And she was shocked because she thought he was hitting on every woman there. And it turned out that there was

[Podcast Host (Ted)]

something about his eyes that reminded her

[Adam Grant (Host)]

of a creepy guy that she'd known. And the dots hadn't connected until that moment.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Ugh. That is a classic example. And obviously, you know, they weren't meant for each other anyway. But, like, that is exactly what can happen, I think, when we just. We jump to a conclusion.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Yeah, you know, it's. It's interesting to me when we talk about the role of the gut in decision making. I just want to. I want to build on your oracle observation a little bit. Why do you think people are so eager to trust their gut?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah, I think it's for a couple reasons. Like, one, it is the first place that we respond emotionally in a lot of places. And that's something that we've known intuitively since we were kids. Like children, when they're feeling sick or where they're feeling nervous, they feel it in their stomach. They'll say, I have a tummy ache. That's often the first place they feel. And that, again, very physiologically valid. We know how stress, how different kinds of emotional triggers can cause these real changes. And so it does feel like you. You might put this all together and say, yeah, my gut is this oracle, like, it knows. And I also think that in some ways, the gut is a little mysterious. Right. And. And I do love it for that. And I think the more I learn about the gut, the more I know. We don't know, but historically, people have thought that the gut. This was Hippocrates who said, all disease begins in the gut. A lot of people think that a lot of our problems in health and in life can begin and end in the gut. So it does take on this, like, meaning greater than the organ that it is. And again, I'm not downplaying the gut. I'm, like, on Team Gut here. But I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding and maybe even oversimplification about what the gut does.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Yeah, that. That resonates. And I wonder if there's also a memory bias at play here where it really eats at us when we had a bad gut feeling about something and we ignored it. Whereas.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

No pun intended. No pun intended.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

I mean, I think it's unforgettable when you have this gut instinct, do not trust this person. And then they end up screwing you over because you didn't listen to your gut or interrogate. Where is that feeling coming from? And that sends a very strong message to change the next time. But the message is not, I should always trust my gut. It's that I should do something with that information as opposed to just disregarding it as we were talking about a moment ago. And I wonder if the times when we trust our gut and things don't work out are more easily dismissed or don't stick out in our memory as much.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

This is human nature. We're always gonna remember a little bit of the times we got burned more than, I think, a little bit of, like, the factors surrounding how we ended up as happy as we did. You know, like, when they do these studies, they look back and they say, like, yeah, people tend to remember the past with a rosier lens, and that's often the case. But I think when it comes to moments of trauma, trauma can really reshape and rewire us, especially if that trauma occurs earlier on in our lives.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

The other piece of this that I'm curious about is there's this seductive appeal of, well, I don't have to do the analysis. I don't have to reason my way through this decision because my body will know and it will tell me, yeah,

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

you're getting this immediate feedback in the moment. And I do think that what is causing that physiologic change in the gut that changed the electrical rhythm? It's often discomfort. And again, I often tell people, discomfort is not inherently bad. Sometimes what pushes you, what makes you uncomfortable, can be an incredibly good thing. It can be a really good challenge. And just reframing that feeling of discomfort, being bad to discomfort is novel. Discomfort is, why do I feel this way? Can really open up your mind to say, maybe what I'm experiencing right now is not a bad sign. There's actually no prior memory that is resembling this moment. But I'm adding that layer on and I'm imagining that and putting all this stuff that's actually not there.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Yep. I think that tracks. It reminds me of a paper by Eric Dane and Mike Pratt. They study Gut feelings in terms of intuitions. And they look at whether you can trust your intuition or not when you're making decisions and predictions. And it turns out you can if you're either an expert or somebody with a lot of experience in a predictable domain. So if you, for example, are an avid shopper, you can trust your gut about whether a handbag is counterfeit or not. Whereas if you're a novice, you can, because you don't have the years of experience informing that subconscious pattern recognition process. But a lot of our decisions aren't like that. A lot of our gut feelings happen in domains where we don't have a lot of experience or there's not a stable pattern. And that's where I just want people to question, like, what is this signal coming from? And am I just uncomfortable because I'm in an unfamiliar environment?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

I often find that people put a lot of value on gut feelings during big life moments for which, like, none of us have a ton of experience. And so then we're like, we are looking for other signs from the universe telling us this is good or bad. And maybe that is things like romantic encounters. Maybe it's like taking a leap in a business venture, like situations that you might only do a couple times in your whole lifetime. And that's absolutely the moment where if you were an expert, like, this would be wonderful. You'd have all of that background. But if you're not the expert, the message is, let's pause and let's think about what this situation is telling me.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Yeah, I guess I want to put then like blindly trusting your gut in the same category as looking for answers in the stars. It seems very objective, but it's not valid.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

It's coming from a place of like, you do want to pay attention. Like what you want to pay attention to what's happening, what's triggering that feeling. And sometimes the cue to that feeling is not fully external. Like, it's important to even understand. Am I being internally triggered too from something that is playing out in my mind that's causing these thoughts for which there's nothing about the environment or the risks or the stakes that are actually the issue? The issue is my own biases that I'm bringing to the table. So there is something that's pulling this reaction to your gut. But I agree it's like, not quite as bad as astrology maybe, but it's like it's getting there.

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[Adam Grant (Host)]

Okay, Lightning round time. Are you ready?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

I'm so ready.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Okay, worst GI advice you see given

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

regularly, it would have to be probiotics. And this comes as a surprise because I think most people assume, based on the marketing, that gastroenterologists everywhere love probiotics. But we do not recommend probiotics for most conditions. The truth is that the data is far murkier, far less profound than you would be led to believe. And I find it really concerning. When people are spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on these probiotics, they're probably not getting the benefit they think they're getting, and they're focusing their attention on that rather than on the interventions that we know are better studied. So probiotics are like my big thing.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Wow. All right, what's your best advice? GI Wise?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Best advice would be to treat your gut like a brain. Like if you were going to go Bike riding. There's no way that your mom would let you do that without a helmet, right? We protect our brain so aggressively, but we throw any old thing in our stomachs that if like we wouldn't want to cross the blood brain barrier, you know, but it actually is hitting that brain. So you would want to eat a high fiber diet, you would want to prioritize sleep, you would want to prioritize exercise, eating fewer ultra processed foods, eating more whole foods. Those things are great for your brain, but they're also the same things that help protect your gut. So it's not, it doesn't have to be over complicated once you start to think about it that way.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

What's something you've changed your mind about recently?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Well, I will say this is like the biggest frame shift in all of gi. I used to think of cancer as a disease of older people. And if like a young person came to me and they were like, I've started having new diarrhea, even if I've seen blood in my stool, I would have said okay, let's you know, like look, maybe is this irritable bowel syndrome? Are these hemorrhoids? I wouldn't be thinking about cancer in a 20, 30 year old. Today I'm thinking about it. You know, most likely it is not what is happening, but it is a huge change in how I think and I think about how all of us

[Adam Grant (Host)]

have been practicing and you get to organize the world's greatest GI dinner party to talk about the gut with anyone alive or dead. Who are you inviting?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Oh, this is so good. Ivan Pavlov is making that cut. He's getting on the list. Michael Levitt. Dr. Michael Levitt was the father of flatulence research. If you don't know anything about him, you gotta google him. And not just google him, PubMed him. If you read the methods of his studies, you'll have so much respect for the scientific process. And you can understand why anyone who loved fart jokes as a kid should become a gastroenterology researcher. So he would totally make the list. And then I'd probably include my dad. He's just the funniest guy I know. He's a neurogastroenterologist, he's a researcher and he's just a very keen way of like pulling the threads together.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

So those three sounds like fun. All right, office hours, time. Do you have a puzzle, problem or question for me?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yes, thank you, I have two. Okay. This first one is really relevant to my world. In studying disorders of gut brain Interaction. And so one of the main things I. I study is something like irritable bowel syndrome or diseases that don't even really have a name. They're just characterized by pain, by cr, chronic pain, and situations where the testing is normal. And most often, these diseases happen more often in women and women's pain. This is true in my field. It's true in all of medicine. It's just, it's statistically under treated. It's disbelieved more often than men's. And so from a psychology standpoint, what I would love you to tell me is how to give women more of a concrete toolkit to advocate for themselves and being taken seriously by their doctor. I think a lot of people in the medical, medical community are quick to tell women to just not believe them and tell them this is all in their heads. Like, how do we convince someone that someone's suffering is real?

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Wow. Well, I have two reactions. The first one is, this should not be on women. This should be on medical professionals.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Right? Yes.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Period. Right. So let's, like, let's change medical education to do a better job recognizing this bias and then counteracting it. I don't think that helps the average female patient overnight. So I think in the meantime, you're talking about a fundamental gap in empathy. Right. A failure to be able to imagine somebody else's experience. And one of the ways that we close those gaps in psychology is we try to give people a more concrete look or direct sense of what the other person is experiencing. And so I think comparisons could be really helpful there. This hurts more than when I broke my foot or when I delivered a baby.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Like, if you can put this on a relative scale and calibrate it against something that the provider can relate to, maybe it's a little harder to dismiss if you make it concrete that way. So maybe, maybe we need better pain scales that say, okay, zero is, you know, this is somebody poking you in the arm. A 10 is this is somebody amputating your arm.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

You know, and then let's anchor each number on an imaginable form of pain that people have really lived. If you then give a 7, and the 7 is anchored to, I don't know, stepping on a Lego.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Oh, that is really bad.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

That really hurts. If somebody says to a physician, this hurts more than if I just stepped on a Lego, I think it's hard not to pay attention.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

I love this because pain scales is, like, so embedded in our culture. Like, if a patient comes in with pain, we're like, okay, where is it on a 0 to 10, and they'll give a number. And the problem is that, yeah, we have our own subjective bias of what a 10 is. It's different from this person's 10. But if you were to say it's a 7, and my 7 is this, and then you give this concrete example, I've actually never heard it portrayed that way. And, like, I think that would be helpful. You know, when I talk to my residents and they're like, oh, this person said they're 10 out of 10. But, like, they were sitting on their bed relaxed, like, I'm not worried. And I say, no, that if someone's saying it's 10 out of 10, then we have to take that at face value and we have to act on it. But I think it's adding a little more nuance to that so that someone else can say, this is really what that feels like.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

This is relevant to something we talked about when we talked about taste last year, which is when I tell people that I don't like chocolate, they don't get it. When I tell them, I would rather eat dirt than eat chocolate. Oh, okay. You must really hate it. And I think we need to do the same thing for pain. Okay, what's your other question?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Okay, my other question, something I've seen, we've all seen since the pandemic and even before that, is that health misinformation, it really sticks with people, and it spreads in a way that selling facts just don't seem to do. And so doctors often struggle when they're just seeing one on one. A patient who believes something is false. What are the tools that you think actually help change somebody's mind about health information? And if you have, like, five minutes to do that.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Yeah, it's.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

That's a big question, right? Yeah.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

It's not easy. David McRaney wrote a great book that covers a lot of the relevant research. It's called How Minds Change. I also love Switch by the Heath brothers. And those would be my two go to resources on this topic. I think in terms of specific recommendations, one thing is, I think, you know, not immediately trying to make the other person feel like an idiot is always helpful.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah, that feels like a good foundation.

[Podcast Host (Ted)]

Yes.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Love it.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

And saying, hey, you know, I really appreciate the fact that you came in here with a lot of information and you're clearly doing a lot of research.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

And then, you know, trying to make it a dialogue and say, hey, my job is to help you separate signal from noise and really Vet the rigor of these studies. So, you know, if, if you're open to it. Can I walk you through what kind of study I would find credible versus not? And I think you're not going to change their mind in five minutes, right? By debunking the particular conspiracy or piece of misinformation they're buying into. What you want to do is establish a relationship whereby they trust your thought process, not just your conclusions. And they want to come to you to learn how to get better at critical thinking in your domain.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

I really like that you have time, I think, to get them to believe that your way of thinking has some validity to it, even if you can't debunk that precise question. I like that a lot.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Well, let me know how it goes for you.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

All right, I'm going to try it.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

So in our last few minutes here, I want to ask you a few more lightning questions if you're up for it. Because they're just so fun.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

One is I did not know until I read your book that it's possible to fight the smell of a fart. How?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah, a lot of people think it's an inevitability, but actually 99% of the gas that you release is odorless. It's only that 1% that contains sulfur. That's the problem. Not surprising. It's the simplest solution. Bismuth subsalicylate found in products like Pepto Bismol. It can neutralize the odors. So I don't think that we need to be like taking this every day the rest of our lives, because I actually don't think we need to live with that level of embarrassment. Once you know that people on average fart 10 to 20 times per day, you might realize you're not so different from everyone else. But I think if you have like a high risk social event, like you're visiting your in laws for Thanksgiving or you're like, you know, in this like intimate work and you just, you, you need that for your confidence. Like go ahead and take it like a day or two beforehand and you actually will be able to neutralize it. You have to work a little bit harder about the sounds, but you can definitely get rid of the odor.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Speaking of reassuring information, what percent of adults poop their pants?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Gosh, 7%. Like that's a big number. If you think about the activity we're talking about. We don't talk about it. What it does tell me is that you're not alone. If that's you, 7% poop their pants, like, regularly. The kind of, again, encouraging part of that is that for a lot of the reasons why this happens, we have really good treatments. This, we call it fecal incontinence is one of the things that of everything we've talked about today, that people listening are like, oh, this is so embarrassing. It is so embarrassing that we know because we've done these studies in gi, if the doctor doesn't ask the patient very specifically, do you have this? Do you poop your pants? Patients do not bring it up on their own. Like, that is very rare. Even though they'll come to that visit. That is the most distressing. It is this thing that makes them say, I can't leave my house. So if anyone hears this, it's common. Talk to your doctor if your doctor has forgotten to ask you about it. Because the good news is that we can actually treat it. It's not inevitable.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Great. Okay. One other myth to bust here. A lot of people have, I think, become fans of doing a colon cleanse or a detox ritual because they think there's poop or toxins lurking in their gut. Yeah, not true.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Not true. There is this cult of detoxification around us. Like, detox culture is everywhere. And I actually, I kind of get where it comes from. Like both in our current moment, which is like, you know, we think they're chemicals in the environment and our foods and pesticides and toxins. And I think it can feel really overwhelming, like we're putting poison in our bodies. And that's not the case. Like, the awesome news is that everything that comes through your gut, it gets filtered first by your liver before it hits the rest of your circulation. Your liver is the cleanse that you need. Like, there is no celery juice you could sip that is going to do a better job than your liver. And so I wouldn't worry so much about detoxing with, like a quick fix. What I would worry about is, like, what is my long term dietary habits? What are the patterns that will over time stress my liver? And that is things like alcohol and ultra processed foods and things that your doctor has been beating you on the head over for like, the last 50 years of your life that you kind of already knew?

[Adam Grant (Host)]

That's actually really encouraging.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah, cancel that colon cleanse.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Yeah, I wasn't planning to do one, but I'm glad to know that that was not a bad.

[Podcast Host (Ted)]

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[Adam Grant (Host)]

I have to tell you, I was not sure what I was going to make of this book that you wrote, because I think people are disgusted and grossed out by poop, period.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

But then I was reminded of this research that Paul Rosin did on disgust. So Paul's basic argument was that, you know, disgust evolved to keep us safe, and we're disgusted by things that are toxic, and yet some things that disgust us also intrigue us. He said, and I'm gonna paraphrase here, but it stopped me in my tracks when he said, okay, so most people are grossed out by poop in all forms.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

And yet most people are also curious about poop to the point that after they take a dump, they will look in the toilet and observe the shape and the color. And so this is kind of my long preamble to say, I think I've come around to the idea that this thing you study that people are disgusted by, they're also sort of intrigued by as adults, not just kids. Why? Why? What's going on here?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah. And you're asking someone who does this for a living. So we're in their, like, right Space. But now I'm intrigued, too. I mean, were you surprised because you are one of those people who takes a look or because you're one of those people who absolutely says, like, no, I don't look. I just flush and I move on with my day.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

I'd never even thought about it, and I didn't want to think about it. And it was so. It was so weird to me that somebody thought about it.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Well, there's like, a serious answer, and then there's like, maybe the more real answer for, like, why people study this. And I would say the serious answer is that your gut and your gut health is so important to your overall health. And when we take a bigger step back and we look at what's happening in the world today, where a big conversation is about these early onset cases of colorectal cancer that we're missing, and we're missing them because people aren't bringing to their doctor's attention the symptoms about their guts because they're so embarrassed by it, people aren't even looking. They're not even looking before they flush. And, like, honestly, when I hear that, and I hear that from a lot of my patients are like, oh, I don't look. Because my first question is, well, what does your poop look like, you know, then I, I, I find that bizarre because I think, like, how can you not look? And so then that takes me to the, like, lighter side of this whole equation, which is, you know, in my world of Neurogi, it's kind of a relatively new subspecialty, but it's also the coolest subspecialty. Like, the science is so exciting and emerging that I just think the way we've thought about our poop and about our bowels in a lot of ways, has been proven so wrong over the last decades. And that's because I think for centuries, if not longer, we thought of our digestive tract as just this plumbing system, right? And it's like, you eat, you poop it out, and that's like, kind of the end of the story. And then the microbiome entered the chat like, you know, 20, 30 years ago, and the whole world changed. And then we realized, and we kind of had hints that this was true earlier, that your gut is not just a set of pipes. It's a brain. It has this thing called an enteric nervous system. And if you shift that way of thinking, as I have, instead of thinking about your gut as this holding cell for your poop, and you think about it as a brain in and of itself, then, one, you're not disgusted by it, you are fascinated by it. But then you also come to learn about all of the different ways that not just your brain influences your gut, but also how your gut is influencing your brain. And the science of it is so exciting.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Okay, so I have to ask you a bunch of things. Now. The first one is, I remember in grad school, we were in a seminar talking about the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness being more of a typically cognitive evaluation of how satisfied are you with your life, and joy being the momentary exuberance that you get when you have a peak experience and you know where this is going. Some psychologists had done.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

I, I am.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

So it was an experience sampling study where you get at joy by instead of just asking people, how happy are you? And then trying to figure out, what did you do that day? Basically what they did was they texted or pinged you at different times throughout the day, and they said, right now, how much joy do you feel? And what do you do?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

And the conclusion from my colleague was, we're really just animals. Because the two highest moments of joy consistently in the data were having sex and sitting on the toilet.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yep, that tracks.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

And I remember our professor saying, joy equals sex plus shit.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

This is like an amazing Class.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

I mean, it was a weird class in a lot of ways. But I think that that foreshadowed something that you write about in your book, which is the idea that people feel some degree of extreme joy when they are having a bowel movement. Explain this to me.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah, that is a concept that I call pooforia. And for example, right now I. I see a lot of patients with Parkinson's because that's what I study in my laboratory, the GI symptoms of Parkinson's. And as everyone knows, when you have something like Parkinson's disease, you have a lot of other very severe symptoms, things like tremors, difficulty walking, difficulty speaking. And yet, when you talk to. To these patients, people will tell me if they could trade away one thing, whether it's the tremors or the constipation or difficulty sleeping, it would be the constipation. Like, they would rather live with tremors than they would live with the severity of their GI symptoms. And I find that to be true almost across the spectrum that no matter how successful you are in life, no matter what else is going on, what other diseases you have, if you cannot eat the food that you love and you cannot poop it out properly, people just don't feel joy. They don't feel like they have achieved, like, a high quality of life. And what I talk about when I'm talking about pooforia is like two stages, right? And one is long term satisfaction with your bowel habits. And for me, maybe that's actually where having a bowel movement is the absolute least of your daily concerns. And 40% of Americans, this is something that disrupts their daily lives. It's a huge number for something that we actually may or may not have a diagnosis attached to. We may not be talking about enough. But that's a lot of people who are not happy because they're not pooping well. But then there's also this, like, interesting phenomena, which, again, we don't talk about that much, probably out loud on a podcast or with friends, which is that, like, people feel such immense joy when they have a good bowel movement. And I actually do think that there's two reasons why this happens. One, it can be hard work for a lot of people. Like, it's not effortless, it's not easy. And so, like, sometimes people having, like, a nice, good bowel movement really feels like a relief because they know now the rest of my day is not. I'm not going to be thinking about this and worried about where the bathroom is and feeling that heaviness. So it's like a big sense of relief. And also there is this surge through your vagus nerve in order to have a bowel movement that's very relaxing. That's like, you have to have that in order to have a good bowel movement. So there's both this physiological basis and this sense of, like, achievement and relief that comes with having one.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Is that related to dopamine? Because you've also shattered one of my assumptions about where dopamine lives.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah. So most of your body's dopamine comes from the gut. And I mentioned that my laboratory studies Parkinson's disease. But what we really study is dopamine signaling in the gut. And this is true. You'll hear this of a lot of other neurotransmitters that we think of as predominantly being brain centric neurotransmitters, like serotonin, that too is mostly produced by the gut. With dopamine, though the dopamine produced by your gut actually doesn't cross the blood brain barrier. So it's not necessarily as though the dopamine produced by your gut is the thing that's immediately giving you that hit of, like, satisfaction. I think you get that, but I think that's predominantly coming from the experience in your mind playing out about that, like, genuine sense of relief.

[Podcast Host (Ted)]

Got it.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Okay. So what's your advice on how to get to Pooforia?

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah, well, sometimes I start with just the basics of what modern life has taken from us. And sometimes that conversation starts with me just saying, how are you sitting when you have a bowel movement? Right. And everyone's like, that's a weird question. I just. I just sit on the toilet, as one would. And actually, that's not the best or most natural way to have a bowel movement. And when you sit in this, like, 90 degree angle, like you're sitting on a chair, there's a kink in your colon. That tube is not all the way open when you squat, as many people used to do in the past, when far fewer are doing that today. For all the reasons I understand that actually the tube straightens up and you're able to pass stool a lot more easily. And of course, the next point is like, nobody wants to squat. I get that. But what you can do to achieve that, to open up that angle again, is just to raise your knees above the level of the waist. You can use a stool. You could use a stack of books. You could use a pair of stilettos. As long as you raise your knees above your waist, even Healthy people will say, oh, my gosh, I had no idea. This is way easier than it was. Another thing I talk about often is bringing our smartphones into the bathroom. That is like a big problem with our modern life. Speaking of dopamine. But when you bring your smartphone into your bathroom, you're getting distracted by design. And, you know, we did this study in my laboratory where we found that people who bring their smartphone in the bathroom, which is everybody. Okay, there's no shame in that. But those people, about half of them said they spent longer in the bathroom than they intended because they were distracted by their phone. That's not so surprising. There's no way we can expect you to focus on the job at hand in the bathroom if you have your smartphone and you're like, in the middle of doom scrolling. And it's not so much like, oh, this is just going to waste your time. We're worried that this is what's driving hemorrhoids in a lot of people because the longer you sit on this open commode without any pelvic floor support, the more those hemorrhoidal veins they fill. Over time, that connective tissue weakens. So this is a habit that. But it's probably simpler to say we should break than it actually is because we're all so addicted to our phones. But it's like one of those things, like, just like we don't bring our smartphone to the dinner table, to the bedroom. We probably shouldn't be bringing it to the bathroom either.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

Ooh, good advice. Well, Tricia, this has been every bit as fun and enlightening as I hoped. And also less gross.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

Yeah, I hope you feel that way. And I hope you take a look next time.

[Adam Grant (Host)]

I can't say I plan to, but thank you for joining us and at least inviting me to rethink that. Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant.

[Podcast Host (Ted)]

The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team include includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hylash, Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong, and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown.

[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

You know, I wash my hands after I poop like everybody else. You know, I'm a poop positive person, but, like, I have a reasonable distance too.

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[Dr. Tricia (Gastroenterologist)]

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