It’s actually a somewhat risky procedure, and can lead to perforating (poking a hole) the bowel and vagus nerve response, which can cause fainting and cardiac irregularities. You only do it with a physician’s order and after chemical means have been exhausted.
I’d like to acknowledge everyone for the polite and respectful, as well as enlightening, participation in this thread. It’s such an offensive and embarrassing subject it’s hard to talk about at all, much less talk about seriously. But it is a very serious subject, as Dr. Oz has told us. Healthy and effective waste disposal is critical for any system… I’m going to work on being more conscious about taking care of that aspect of mine. Especially given my age. (52… I’d love to have a colonoscopy, but no insurance. And “love” is not really the right way to say it…y’all know what I mean.)
That would certainly be annoying. As a vegetarian one gets a lot of ignorant nonsense from both carnivores trying to some how show the error of your ways and other vegetarians pointing out the great errors of eating meat. It is that much more disappointing when doctors don’t recognize that your diet already is very high in fiber.
Years ago, I was in the situation of dealing with reduced peristalsis as a pharmaceutical side-effect. I was eating bran at every meal and drinking roughly double what I normally would. It only half worked. I avoided hardening and straining, but my gut was still slow. It got very full. Uncomfortable, but at least not painful. I also learned the lesson that responding to the first urge was important.
I should point out that it is possible to have a vegetarian diet that is low in fiber. A diet high in refined carbohydrates is probably not high in fiber, but it can be vegetarian. Doctors shouldn’t assume that, just because someone is a vegetarian, they’re eating a high fiber diet. It is perhaps more likely that they are, but not certain.
I don’t smoke but my friends that do often complain about getting the urge to defecate if they smoke right before an inconvenient time to do so (soccer game, movie, etc). So don’t smoke, but smoking can stimulate BMs, apparently.
I quit ten years ago this month. I well remember that it was very effective at triggering BMs. It was also the best ADD medication I’ve ever used, quitting was what made my ADD so readily identifiable.
My doctor says to drink more water too. It has no discernible effect on my bowels but is very effective in destroying my sleep. I am always constipated, or nearly always. I have started having a little bowl of All-bran plus prunes every night and helps, but only a bit.
“I’ve been smoking since I was 18 and I’ve never had lung cancer before now! It can’t possibly be related!”
Also, for someone who said “Referring to bowel movements and the product thereof using nasty slang just squicks me out” you sure were fast to pull out a variant of the word “shit.”
giggle Know an even better one? Toxic Megacolon. I’d hate to ever have it (it can be a complication of IBD or Crohn’s disease), but it’d be an awesome death metal band name!
You’ve admitted in other threads that you are more obese than ever. Now you have this medical problem. Unrelated? Really? The human body is not designed to try and digest and excrete the huge amounts of food that the obese consume. It’s not suprising that the body eventually can’t handle it.
Obese people are, indeed, more likely than non-obese people to experience constipation. 8.3% of obese subjects and 1.5% of non-obese subjects are constipated (defined in this study as weekly bowel movements) in this study.