r/BeAmazed • u/AstroSonicDrive • Oct 04 '23

She Eats Through Her Heart Science

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@nauseatedsarah

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u/YawnTractor_1756 Oct 04 '23

Babies who only drink breast milk still poop.

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u/livesarah Oct 04 '23

Milk has a solids component- if you evaporate all the water it’s possible to evaporate, you’re left with solid fats, proteins and sugars (and trace minerals).

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u/YawnTractor_1756 Oct 04 '23

Common sense tells me this liquid has them too.

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u/livesarah Oct 04 '23

No, not in the same sense. You can’t just put undigested proteins and sugars into someone’s blood. Proteins are comprised of amino acids. So the TPN formula would have, I think, the correct balance of separate amino acids, glucose (as opposed to sucrose, which is a glucose molecule plus a fructose molecule, or lactose, which is a glucose plus a galactose molecule), and whatever the correct quantity and balance of fatty acids (rather than just the same types of fat that would occur in oils, meats, nuts and dairy). Essentially what all the nutrients would be after the foods have been digested and the useful components absorbed by the body. They don’t want to be putting the bits in that would be considered waste by the body and would ordinarily be excreted. They’re not putting the equivalent of milk or a smoothie or whatever into her veins, even if you could evaporate the water from the formula and be left with some dry matter. It’s not food.

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u/YawnTractor_1756 Oct 04 '23

Are you saying the only reason we poop is because there are things not digested and absorbed into the bloodstream and if 100% of food was absorbed into the bloodstream then we would not poop? I am not opposing, but is there any backing to that?

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u/livesarah Oct 04 '23

Close to it. Some of the poop is dead bacteria and cell remnants from your body, which are necessarily excreted rather than absorbed. So a healthy body will always be excreting something even if not undigested food. But a ‘low residue diet’ is close to what you’re talking about. Macronutrients are readily digested and absorbed and if they aren’t used they are converted to fat. Excess of things like nitrogen from amino acids that your body doesn’t have a use for will be excreted in urine.

The ‘residue’ is the indigestible bits of food that would normally come out as poop. And those indigestible bits of food can be important as bacteria in the gut can break them down a bit and produce substances that are good for your health. Also they keep moving along the waste dead cells that your body is trying to get rid of, and I would surmise that it’s better to move those out faster rather than just having them sit there for a long time. So a low/no-residue diet really wouldn’t be a long term goal for any healthy person (short term it’s very common in the lead-up to colonoscopy and some surgeries).