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Comment by smithcoin | Hacker News Reader

The article didn't answer the one question I had. Which is more indicative of a healthier gut biome - a floater or a sinker?

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It's likely that a sinker is indicative of healthy stool. The actual article notes that floating stool is correlated to increased presence of B. ovatus which is "an anaerobic commensal bacteria linked with flatulence and intestinal bowel diseases" [1].

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-22626-x

A stinker. No seriously my wife and I were just talking about this a few days ago. The floaters indicate you're not processing fats very well. So the sinkers.

They are all stinkers.

But the article says that floating vs non-floating has little to do with fat content. It's the gases generated by bacteria that cause the stool to float, not the fat.

> The floaters indicate you're not processing fats very well.

No. As a cited article concludes: "Thus, stools float because of an increased content of gas or water (or both); the floating stool should not be considered a sign of [excess fat in feces]." [1].

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197205042861804

They reject your argument in the article, just into the 2nd paragraph.

> Prior to the 1970s, scientists believed that fecal matter either sank or floated depending on the amount of fat it contained. Experiments showed that not to be the case.

Not sure of the healthier gut biome, but that of health, it's the sinker

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