Jargon busting: The bowel edition

In our Spring 2025 edition of Bridge Magazine, we touched on different medical terms that describe bladder control problems. For this edition we are focusing on bowel health.

Symptoms

Symptoms may indicate a medical condition, disease or disorder in the body.

Constipation infrequent (less than three a week), difficult to pass, painful or incomplete bowel movements. Can be acute (days) or chronic (weeks or months).

Diarrhoea loose or liquid stools (poo) more often than is normal for you.

Faecal incontinence involuntary loss of bowel control. Leaking poo or gas either because you can't feel yourself pooing (no sensation) or you can feel it but can't hold it.

Stress faecal incontinence not being able to control your bowel motion or gas when you laugh, cough, sneeze, jump, run or lift something heavy, resulting in leaking poo or gas.

Faecal urgency the strong and sudden feeling of needing to do a poo which can't be controlled and can result in leaking poo (urge incontinence).

Faeces retention not being able to fully empty the bowel, so some poo is left in the rectum after going to the toilet. This can lead to constipation or an impacted bowel as the remaining poo dries out and becomes hard to pass and/or results in overflow incontinence.

Impacted bowel/ faecal impaction

a large dry hard poo gets stuck in the colon due to chronic constipation. Dry poo is hard to pass and does not give a strong message to your brain that you need to poo. It often breaks into small pieces and makes it difficult to fully empty the rectum.

Overflow faecal incontinence losing control of your bowel due to constipation. Liquid poo leaks out around hard impacted poo when your bowel can't hold any more.

Syndromes

Syndromes are groups of symptoms that can be caused by a few different conditions.

Bowel dysfunction any problem with the part of your body that helps get rid of poo. It can include problems like constipation (having trouble pooing or not pooing often), diarrhoea (very watery poo), bowel incontinence (accidentally leaking poo), or urgency (feeling like you have to poo right away and might not make it to the toilet in time).

Functional incontinence leaking poo because you can't get to the toilet in time due to physical or cognitive impairment (rather than bowel dysfunction).

This is due to either not recognising the need to poo (mental capacity/cognition) or the physical ability to get to the toilet and perform the necessary steps for toileting such as removing clothes or locating the toilet.

Also in this edition: