What if the most overlooked signal in your body is the one that could change your life? In My Search for the Perfect Poop , microbiome researcher and entrepreneur Martha Carlin—known as the “Poop Queen”—shares her deeply personal and scientific journey into the hidden world of gut health. After her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at just 44, Martha began searching for answers beyond conventional medicine. What she discovered transformed her career and led her to found one of the first large-scale stool banks, collecting and analyzing thousands of samples from people with Parkinson’s, autism, autoimmune disease, centenarians, and healthy families. Blending humor (from poop tents on Kilimanjaro to the Squatty Potty phenomenon) with cutting-edge microbiome science, Martha reveals how stool holds critical clues about immunity, metabolism, inflammation, and even neurodegenerative disease. She explores why chronic constipation can precede Parkinson’s by years, what baby poop reveals about lifelong health, and how modern life has disrupted our most fundamental biological systems. Part memoir, part scientific investigation, My Search for the Perfect Poop challenges the silence and stigma around digestive health—and invites readers to start listening to what their gut has been trying to say all along. Because your poop isn’t gross. It’s information.