Alright, I've got some questions/concerns about regularity and such.
First let me describe a little here...
Sometimes I have bowel movements once a day. Other times every other day, and a bit less frequently a few days inbetween. When I do poop, it is always hard (and the "logs" or small pieces are made up of small balls packed tightly together). Sometimes I poop a lot, very large pieces/large amount, and other times barely any comes out, small balls of the even smaller balls packed together.
I drink a LOT of soda (and I mean A LOT) and eat TONS of cereal (1+ bowl per day). When it comes to water... to me it's just bleh! I just can't stand drinking water. Gatorade and such is fine, but as for water I just can't stand to drink it. The reason I'm posting is.. is there any kind of health hazard in the regularity and consistency of how I have bowel movements? I mean, should I be taking fiver supplements or something? My mom is always telling me just to go and sit on the toilet when I haven't crapped for a day or two, and it kind of works, but not enough as I don't "have to poop." (I dunno, it's weird)
Well, normally I wouldn't think twice about it and would just think that this is the way I have bowel movements, to each his own, yadayada. But I was just reading another thread in the bowel forums, and was reading about how if you get backups your colon can rupture/leak and you can die. And that kind of freaked me out thinking about how I have BMs, so I decided I would post. I'm 17 and I don't want to be worrying about this, and I certainly don't want to die from crap pileup (lol). Any info is appreciated. Thanks.
This is unrelated, but I figured I should mention it:
when on vacation staying hotels and going camping and such I get constipated, dunno it's just something about me where I find it hard to go to crap.
Also... is it normal to have a small amount of blood in your stool once in a while when it is hard, very large, or hard/somewhat painful to get out? I mean, does this sometimes damage the tissue a bit inside and cause a little blood to come out with the stool? This happens to me sometimes. But after doing some reading around on here I'm not so sure anymore if it's normal, and I'm thinking I might want to see my doctor about it next time it happens?
Okay now I'm like updating this post every so often as I read this stuff... and I just read the "color & texture" section under bowel movements about blood in the stool... and this stuff is starting to scare the crap out of me. I probably shouldn't be so worried, but reading about all of this stuff... Seeing a little bright red blood on toilet paper after you wipe could mean hemorrhoids, alright not that bad.. but it could be: bleeding ulcers, dead sections of bowels, cancers!? Is it possible to die worrying about this stuff after you read about it!? lol. But seriously... this stuff is starting to scare me. Dead section of bowels.... that sounds death-inducing! I'm going to become a hypochondriac.... I'm going to end up like calling my doctor 10 times a day and having like 2 checkups a month or some crap!!! Any info is appreciated before I die(of nervousness :-S)!
Okay... I continued to read some things, and I'm a little more calmed down now. I think what I'm talking about are anal fissures, most likely caused by the passing of my waste, because it is always of a very hard consistency and can some times be pretty damn large.
Wow... I'm surprised how embarrassing it is just to post this on an online forum to people who don't even know me in real life! But anyway, there it is.