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The sinking feeling when you're out and about and realise you need the toilet is real. You may be desperately holding it in, determined to wait until you get home, because you'd only planned to be out for another hour, and it's embarrassing to do a number two in public, right?

Wrong. Dr Nighat Arif has shared "the importance of responding to your toilet urge," rather than ignoring it, regardless of what you're up to. Over the top of her video, she wrote: "Don't ignore your urge to poo. It can wreak havoc on your insides," as she went on to explain the healthimpacts it can have.

Dr Nighat said: "You have to have a poo when you get the urge. I mean it. When your body says go, actually go. My son does this annoying thing where if he's out of the house, he will hold on to his poo until he gets into the comfort of his own home.

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"He won't go [to the toilet] in school, he won't go [to the toilet] anywhere else, even public toilets. And he will literally be next door to my parents' house, and their bathroom is exactly the same as mine, but he will still make the trip to our house so he can go in our toilet".

She said "each to their own," but that she was trying to explain to him that you shouldn't ignore your "urges" to poo, because "the longer you sit there, it's really not great for you".

Dr Nighat explained: "More water gets sucked out of your bowel, and then as the water is getting sucked out, it gets harder, and the poo becomes slower, and constipation quietly becomes your new baseline".

She did share that she "gets it" because sometimes it doesn't feel "convenient" to go for a poo, but she said it's good to "act on those urges" if you're in a position to, because if you don't, you'll "get discomfort".

Plus, over time, "regularly holding on can mess with your bowel muscle pattern, can dull your natural urges, and set you up for tummy pain in the long run, which doesn't get better, because having a full bowel causes bloating, flatulence, and cramps in your tummy".

She said that the bloating can also cause "lack of appetite," and can even cause "overflow diarrhoea" which "contributes to diverticuli formation later on in life".

Dr Nighat urged people to take a look at a stool chart to "keep an eye on" what their poo looks like, to better understand what's going on in their body.

"Get into the habit of looking at your poo now," she advised, as she said it should sit around type three or type four. Type three is "like a sausage but with cracks on the surface". Type four is "like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft". She said that type one and two are "constipated," and type seven is diarrhoea.

"I know when you've got poo sitting in your back passage, and you're ready to go, sometimes it's really awkward. It could be the middle of a meeting, or you can only poo in one particular loo. But acting on that urge is so important, you're literally protecting your gut by going when you need to go. It's a waste product, and it's better to get rid of it as soon as you can," Dr Nighat said.

In the comments, someone wrote: "As an IBS sufferer, we need to normalise going to the toilet and not making it embarrassing as we all do it".

Despite Dr Nighat suggesting people "put their health first," however, some couldn't face it, saying: "I'd rather wait all day until I get home than go [to the toilet] at work. One toilet for the whole office and my colleague can hear conversations that happen upstairs, so I'm definitely not going".