Hard stools, please help

[Matan1262]

Hi,

I feel great but its been a few months of dry black hard stools, really not pleasant to sit on the toilet to say the least.

 

I eat 1kg of ground beef 25/75 and 6 eggs a day.

I use home made beef tallow to cook everything.

I cook the ground beef in paddies then put scrambled eggs on all the fat thats left and it soacks everything.

Yet im still really struggling.

2 meals a day, 500g ground beef + 3 eggs each meal

Please help...

[butterfly]

Are you getting enough fluids, and enough electrolytes? If you're dehydrated, it's going to make things tough. A Magnesium supplement works for a lot of people to get your bowel moving, but maybe the best way would be to make up a big pot of bone broth and make sure you end the day with a large bowl of it. Doesn't have to be anything fancy - if you can get beef bones that's great, but a couple of packets of chicken wings covered with water in the Instant Pot - pressure cook for a couple of hours until the bones crumble, and you'll have a great broth. 

I do think fluids are probably the answer, but maybe you also need to eat more fat. I've noticed that eggs will definitely constipate if you're cooking them quite firm and not incorporating enough fat to, uhh, lubricate the internal machinery. Good luck! I know digestive problems are horrible. 

[Geezy]

I cook everything in tallow or bacon grease and eat fatty meat. If the meat is lean such as chicken I’ll drown it in butter. I drink one cup of bulletproof tea in the morning. I say all of this to show that I’m ingesting a lot of fat and the only way I could consume more would be to drink it straight. The conventional wisdom among the carnivore community is to increase your fat intake but in my case it just hasn’t worked to ease my constipation.
I don’t have a gall bladder but I don’t know if that makes a difference or not.
I take the recommended electrolytes but still no help.
So I started taking a magnesium citrate supplement. Well that ended to constipation but now I had movements like peanut butter. Better but far from ideal.
So now a take a magnesium complex supplement that has loosened things up considerably but just a little too much as it’s about a 5 in the Bristol Stool Chart.
But hey, it certainly beats the alternative.


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[Matan1262]

@butterfly @Bob @Geezy
I will eliminate eggs for this week, I will try to drink more water but Im almost sure I drink enough, I will add some beef fat triminigs in each meal.
Maybe only eating ground beef is my problem... or eating 6 eggs a day.
I will try to add butter as Im not eating butter at all.
I just hope to find a solution soon...

[Bob]

So eggs is a possiblity. They don't phase me and I eat eggs all the time. Dehydration and electrolytes I think would be bigger culprits, since you are not consuming carbohydrates you retain less water than you did before you changed your diet. I understand how unpleasant it is to feel like you are giving birth sitting on the toilet.

If you don't take a magnesium supplement, this would help. Certain forms of magnesium aren't very bioavailable and go straight through you and help clean you out. 

If you don't move alot, try moving more. Go for walks, etc. 

 

[Matan1262]

@Bob @Geezy @butterfly

- I started taking electrolytes 

- I ate much more fat: fat trimmings in every meal, a good piece of frozen tallow each meal, a good piece of butter before and after a meal.

- I stopped with the eggs.

My stool is steal dry hard and black, only difference is that now it comes with the fat but seperated, like oil.

Its like the fat does not combine witht the protein when its digested.

I hope it will change or else I dont know what to do, I ate absurd amount of fat...

Maybe a problem with the ground beef? Its fresh from the local butcher without any additives and it comes in paddies, thats what I eat every day.

[Orweller]

How about replacing some of that beef with bacon? Also, I would consider at least a fiber supplement. This diet doesn't have to be perfect. 

[Geezy]

Have you tried taking a magnesium citrate supplement or a magnesium complex that includes the citrate?
It’s the only thing that works for me. I don’t have a gallbladder so I don’t know if that’s part of my issue or not. I don’t know if I’m producing too much bile or not enough.
In my constipation my stools are light in color. That’s generally an indicator of excessive bile production. A black stool may be an indication of blood in the stool or too much iron.
Here’s an article you may find useful.

https://www.healthline.com/health/bloody-or-tarry-stools


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[Bob]

10 hours ago, Matan1262 said:

My stool is steal dry hard and black, only difference is that now it comes with the fat but seperated, like oil.

I don't understand what you are saying here. Are you saying that now you have a mixed stool of hard rocklike chunks and runny oily fat?

This actually could be working, getting the hard stuff out of you. The fat WILL go right through you when you increase it dramatically, because at the time you consume it you have more fat than you do bile to deal with it, so it passes through you. 

You mentioned black stools in your previous thread and I mentioned like Geoff just did above that this could be sign of blood in your stool. You may have something else going on that is not diet related at all, and it might be time to see a doctor.

Fat + Magnesium can flush you out, or high doses of Miralax taken with plenty of fluid.

[Matan1262]

@Bob @Geezy @butterfly

I started eating butter before and after each meal.
I'm adding cooked fat trimmings to each meal.
The sh*t is still rock hard and black, it causes problems and damage.
the only difference now is that sometimes I have runny stools before the rock-hard ones come.
I'm at a loss, I can deal with all the challenges this style of eating brings, but this problem can't be dealt with
I thought this was the way we used to eat naturally, I don't get why it has come to this.
This is what I eat:
70/30 ground beef is a fatty mix + cooked fat trimmings + butter + frozen beef tallow from rendered fat + scrambled eggs inside all the rendered fat of the burgers to pick it up.
In the first two weeks, I had soft/runny stools, I don't know what changed.
I have some electrolyte pills that I started using as per your recommendation, but I didn't notice any change(https://iherb.co/ojaQjca)

One thing I have taken notice of is that although I drink a lot, I almost always have yellow pee, and I pee a lot.
Peeing a lot is not new to me, but almost always having yellow pee is weird.

I tried adding fruits and It made it worse.
I don't want to give up on this diet because my body feels great, but Its on the point of doing damage to my body...

I pray to find a solution, If not I will return to eating rice and sweet potatoes, when I was eating this each day with chicken breast I didn't have this problem

[butterfly]

9 minutes ago, Matan1262 said:

@Bob @Geezy @butterfly

I started eating butter before and after each meal.
I'm adding cooked fat trimmings to each meal.
The sh*t is still rock hard and black, it causes problems and damage.
the only difference now is that sometimes I have runny stools before the rock-hard ones come.
I'm at a loss, I can deal with all the challenges this style of eating brings, but this problem can't be dealt with
I thought this was the way we used to eat naturally, I don't get why it has come to this.
This is what I eat:
70/30 ground beef is a fatty mix + cooked fat trimmings + butter + frozen beef tallow from rendered fat + scrambled eggs inside all the rendered fat of the burgers to pick it up.
In the first two weeks, I had soft/runny stools, I don't know what changed.
I have some electrolyte pills that I started using as per your recommendation, but I didn't notice any change(https://iherb.co/ojaQjca)

One thing I have taken notice of is that although I drink a lot, I almost always have yellow pee, and I pee a lot.
Peeing a lot is not new to me, but almost always having yellow pee is weird.

I tried adding fruits and It made it worse.
I don't want to give up on this diet because my body feels great, but Its on the point of doing damage to my body...

I pray to find a solution, If not I will return to eating rice and sweet potatoes, when I was eating this each day with chicken breast I didn't have this problem

I feel your pain. Sincerely, I do. I've had some horrible issues like yours, except it's total constipation on my part. I've gone for a month with absolutely nothing happening. In my case, it's low thyroid I think, and even Ben Bikman admits that keto diets lead to lower levels of active thyroid hormone (T3), he maintains this is nothing to worry about, it's just like lower levels of insulin, he says, but I think that's a pretty poor argument. If your thyroid is already sluggish, you need to be aware that a keto diet of any sort will probably not do it any favours. Your thyroid does seem to require insulin in order to function optimally.

Something which ties in circularly with low thyroid is low Ferritin levels. I was shocked that after a year eating red meat and organs, my bloodwork showed third world level iron storage. That in itself can cause constipation - I don't know if it's the chicken or the egg, you know, if the iron deficiency down-regulates the thyroid at least initially, or if the low thyroid prevents absorption of all nutrients due to depleted stomach acid and bile production, amongst other things. Both, I think. The really sad part is that iron supplements, even the very gentle liposomol ferrous sulphate I'm taking each day, constipates you even further.

Have you had bloodwork done? Might be an idea just so you can see if you have a malabsorption problem. If you're getting thyroid numbers, you'll want to see TSH - thyroid stimulating hormone levels (the level of hormone in your blood sent by the pituitary gland to tell your thyroid how much hormone to produce; when it's very high, that would indicate that your thyroid is misbehaving), you'll want to see both T3 and T4 levels, but also TPO antibodies that might indicate Hashimoto's - an autoimmune condition (very common in women with low thyroid) where your body is basically attacking your thyroid.

I had great success initially using Betaine HCL with pepsin, it's basically artificial stomach acid and digestive enzyme, and you use it if your stomach acid is low. There's YouTube videos on how to find the correct dosage for you, but I think it might be worth a try. The Best Naturals brand is a good one, the capsules are 648mg and they come with pepsin. Just start by taking one with your main meal (must contain protein - don't take the capsules with snacks.) You build up your dosage by one capsule every other day until you feel heartburn or discomfort. I was on 10 capsules with each meal while they worked for me, but I guess they're a bit of a band aid, and my body slowly adjusted to the dosage. For a while they really helped with constipation, though, so you might be lucky and find that just one or two capsules does the job for you. This is Very Important, though: take the Betaine capsule(s) in the middle of your meal. Follow them down with food. If they get stuck on the way down and empty their acidic cargo, you'll be in for an extremely painful few minutes, so don't take them after a meal.

I'm currently taking ox bile, Tudca bile salts, and lipase enzymes, without much progress. The iron supplements are hard going. To be honest, I've had to hit the laxatives a few times. I'd prefer not to use them so I'm thinking of reintroducing some fibre. Depending on how well you tolerate vegetables, that might be a tool of last resort. I don't think it's the end of the world if you find that a portion of rice or sweet potatoes gets your digestion back to normal. No point being a zealot if it's making you ill.

It doesn't sound like ground beef is working for you. Maybe your body is just tired of it and trying to tell you something. My first couple of weeks on carnivore, I ate mainly ground beef and eggs. I started feeling really tired, lethargic, and I couldn't understand why. I did a bit of reading on ground beef and a few sources talked about how the grinding process introduces higher levels of histamine into the meat and leeches out some of the nutrients. So I switched to whole meat - steak, oxtail, ox tongue etc. and the tiredness stopped. Maybe it's just time to try different meats? I'd definitely recommend giving ox liver a go if you can handle it. Packed full of nutrients and it's delicious once your palate adjusts.

Really hope you find a solution. Digestive problems are seriously depressing.

 

 

[Geezy]

Matan I still say to try the magnesium citrate. It certainly helped me. It’s not a perfect solution but it does soften things up.  If that doesn’t appeal to you then a natural herbal laxative tea taken every few days may be necessary. 
I also think butterflies extremely well written post is a very good place to look for solutions and I will be checking these points out myself. 
 

[Matan1262]

3 minutes ago, Geezy said:

Matan I still say to try the magnesium citrate. It certainly helped me. It’s not a perfect solution but it does soften things up.  If that doesn’t appeal to you then a natural herbal laxative tea taken every few days may be necessary. 
I also think butterflies extremely well written post is a very good place to look for solutions and I will be checking these points out myself. 
 

Dont you think its a bit weird that I have to take a supplement to take a stool normally?

Something is wrong here and I try to understand what

[Matan1262]

10 minutes ago, Geezy said:

Matan I still say to try the magnesium citrate. It certainly helped me. It’s not a perfect solution but it does soften things up.  If that doesn’t appeal to you then a natural herbal laxative tea taken every few days may be necessary. 
I also think butterflies extremely well written post is a very good place to look for solutions and I will be checking these points out myself. 
 

Which brand do you recommend?
I can buy this localy:
https://shop.super-pharm.co.il/health/supplements/minerals/magnesium/טבליות-מגנזיום-ציטראט-ספיגה-אופטימלית/p/168014

If its not good I would appreciate a recommendation of a product listed on Iherb

[Geezy]

1 hour ago, Matan1262 said:

Which brand do you recommend?
I can buy this localy:
https://shop.super-pharm.co.il/health/supplements/minerals/magnesium/טבליות-מגנזיום-ציטראט-ספיגה-אופטימלית/p/168014

If its not good I would appreciate a recommendation of a product listed on Iherb

This the one I use. 

I don’t know if one brand is better than another but I chose this one because it had the cleanest ingredients I could find. Still not perfect though. 
I know this has been a hard (no pun intended) for you as it has been for me as well. I can truly empathize with what you’re going through. This how I’ve learned to deal with it and maybe someday my system will sort itself out but until then magnesium is my friend. 
I am presently experimenting with only taking a dose every other day and so far it’s working ok. 

[Matan1262]

44 minutes ago, Geezy said:

This the one I use. 

I don’t know if one brand is better than another but I chose this one because it had the cleanest ingredients I could find. Still not perfect though. 
I know this has been a hard (no pun intended) for you as it has been for me as well. I can truly empathize with what you’re going through. This how I’ve learned to deal with it and maybe someday my system will sort itself out but until then magnesium is my friend. 
I am presently experimenting with only taking a dose every other day and so far it’s working ok. 

Do you think 4 of those a day will do the trick?
I bought them when I started Carnivore but have not used them that much

[Geezy]

9 hours ago, Matan1262 said:

Do you think 4 of those a day will do the trick?
I bought them when I started Carnivore but have not used them that much

I think that looks like a good mineral supplement to take.  Bob will no better than I do but that magnesium is not citrate. 
That’s important in that the citrate version softens the stool. The magnesium in your supplements may not. 

[Bob]

16 hours ago, Matan1262 said:

The sh*t is still rock hard and black

Again, this is abnormal. The black color could be concerning. Have you considered consulting your physician or gastroenterologist, or getting some blood work done? The advice that we are giving works for the majority of people, namely, increase fat, try magnesium citrate, and for some, add a little fiber. There is a little fiber in things like organs and bone broth if you want to stay true carnivore.

16 hours ago, Matan1262 said:

I thought this was the way we used to eat naturally, I don't get why it has come to this.

A proper human diet is a spectrum from low carb (100g a day or less) on the one end all the way to carnivore (0 carb) on the other end. You have to find where at on the spectrum works best for you. Your DNA may play a part in this. A natural human diet is definitely meat-centric, but depending on where you come from on this earth, you may be able to have more plants than another person. For example, if your lineage comes from areas around the equator, you can probably tolerate more carbs than someone who lives in much colder climates. 

Are carbs essential to human health and survival? No. But we DO have a cecum, albeit a small one, which shows that we are designed to deal with some plant food sources as well, just as much as our gall bladder shows we are designed to eat fatty meat. BUT, that is neither here nor there. You should be able to function just fine on a strict carnivore diet. 

17 hours ago, Matan1262 said:

I pray to find a solution, If not I will return to eating rice and sweet potatoes, when I was eating this each day with chicken breast I didn't have this problem

So let's think this through. Have you tried @butterfly's suggestion to try different kinds of meat? Eliminate eggs for a while and try only beef. If you think it's the beef (which I DO know some who cannot eat beef) then eliminate beef for awhile and eat chicken, pork, and fatty fish instead. Do you keep hydrated? 

White rice has trace fiber and brown rice has even more fiber. While I personally would avoid all grains, of them, rice is probably the least bad. Sweet potatoes also have high fiber, and a sweet potato could still be part of a low carb or animal based diet. At 20 carbs per 3.5 ounce (100g), it's not going to be keto or ketovore per se, but that is alright. You are lean, and don't necessarily have to be strict for managing your weight.

37 minutes ago, Geezy said:

I think that looks like a good mineral supplement to take.  Bob will no better than I do but that magnesium is not citrate. 

Magnesium Chloride is very bioavailable and easily absorbed. It's great to treat magnesium deficiency but not so great for the laxative effect you are looking for. The best choice is Magnesium Citrate. It's not very biavailable and goes right through you. Same with Magnesium Oxide, but I have heard health coaches say to avoid anything that's an oxide. Probably because we don't want anything in our body oxidizing. 

[Matan1262]

On 3/14/2024 at 4:49 AM, Bob said:

Again, this is abnormal. The black color could be concerning. Have you considered consulting your physician or gastroenterologist, or getting some blood work done? The advice that we are giving works for the majority of people, namely, increase fat, try magnesium citrate, and for some, add a little fiber. There is a little fiber in things like organs and bone broth if you want to stay true carnivore.

A proper human diet is a spectrum from low carb (100g a day or less) on the one end all the way to carnivore (0 carb) on the other end. You have to find where at on the spectrum works best for you. Your DNA may play a part in this. A natural human diet is definitely meat-centric, but depending on where you come from on this earth, you may be able to have more plants than another person. For example, if your lineage comes from areas around the equator, you can probably tolerate more carbs than someone who lives in much colder climates. 

Are carbs essential to human health and survival? No. But we DO have a cecum, albeit a small one, which shows that we are designed to deal with some plant food sources as well, just as much as our gall bladder shows we are designed to eat fatty meat. BUT, that is neither here nor there. You should be able to function just fine on a strict carnivore diet. 

So let's think this through. Have you tried @butterfly's suggestion to try different kinds of meat? Eliminate eggs for a while and try only beef. If you think it's the beef (which I DO know some who cannot eat beef) then eliminate beef for awhile and eat chicken, pork, and fatty fish instead. Do you keep hydrated? 

White rice has trace fiber and brown rice has even more fiber. While I personally would avoid all grains, of them, rice is probably the least bad. Sweet potatoes also have high fiber, and a sweet potato could still be part of a low carb or animal based diet. At 20 carbs per 3.5 ounce (100g), it's not going to be keto or ketovore per se, but that is alright. You are lean, and don't necessarily have to be strict for managing your weight.

Magnesium Chloride is very bioavailable and easily absorbed. It's great to treat magnesium deficiency but not so great for the laxative effect you are looking for. The best choice is Magnesium Citrate. It's not very biavailable and goes right through you. Same with Magnesium Oxide, but I have heard health coaches say to avoid anything that's an oxide. Probably because we don't want anything in our body oxidizing. 

I started taking 4 pills a day of keto electrolytes and my stools became softer and less dark, so this is a middle solution but it does not treat the root cause which I still don't know what it is - I started eating more fat trimmings in each meal together with butter so Im not sure what is helping

- stopping with eggs didn't seem to be it although I still not eating them currently - I will be sure when I re-introduce them.
- I think adding fruits made it worse but Im not sure.
- I can't eat cuts of meat because they are too expensive - I eat prime cuts on the charcoal grill about once a week - wish I could eat like that every day. 
- I don't have blood in my stools, sometimes because the sh*t is hard it opens a cut and a bit of fresh blood comes out, but the sh*t itself is not bloody.
- I can say for sure that before starting the carnivore diet I was visiting the bathroom a lot for peeing, way more then a normal person and that is still the case, my sister is the same, maybe this is effecting the way my gut handle this diet.

Should I continue with keto electrolytes?
@Bob @butterfly @Geezy

[Bob]

7 hours ago, Matan1262 said:

I started taking 4 pills a day of keto electrolytes and my stools became softer and less dark.

Should I continue with keto electrolytes?

This sounds like a big "Yes" to me.

I don't think either the eggs or the fruit would have been a problem with regard to stools. Cheese can be if it is eaten in abundance. 

Quite a few people who do carnivore end up with electrolyte deficiencies in time. Since electrolytes seem to be helping, this may be true in your case also.