Does anybody else push on their sides when they're pooping?
When I poop, I'll take my hand and make a "knife hand" and massage the area above my hip and grab the side of my stomach while bending over to help the poop get out instead of straining. It's this weird?
Hmm, you shouldn’t be straining. Metamucil and plenty of water can help without lots of pushing. I find that making smoothies with berries, unflavored yogurt, spinach, and milk helps too.
as somebody who has worked a bit in nutrition, you’d be surprised how many people live off soda and McDonald’s sandwiches or ramen noodles. An overwhelming majority of people poop solid coal-like nuggets of shit every time they poop. they huff and puff to get that shit out. your question on why would you need to strain is probably only relatable by a small amount of people here.
Can’t say I ever have. I do, however, use a little step stool to put my legs in the crouched position, and a bidet for afterwards. Use some TP to make sure there’s no barnacles, then a a set of rags I keep specifically for drying off the ol’ undercarriage since the TP isn’t going to dry it all.
I like to climb up through the toilet seat ring, and sit on the thin part, wearing the ring around my waist like a pool floatie. I then do a kind of hoola-hoop sway against the ring to massage my abdomen thoroughly. It works better with the soft, squishy seats, of course.
Well, it’s very rare I need to, what with having IBS-d. But, yah, that’s a long standing thing.
Back when I was still able to work, my main job was as a nurse’s assistant, I even did it for other people. When folks can’t really walk, the normal extra help you get from using the muscles of your abdomen can’t assist the bowel. So they’d be more likely to get backed up than usual. And, a lot of medications can change bowel motility too, including opiates. Since opiates are fairly common for bed-bound patients, and not rare with non-ambulatory but not bed-bound, I’d say close to 9 out of 10 of my patients would get constipated semi-regularly.
Giving that little massage over the descending colon helps a lot, and if you give one over the transverse during a bath, it can prevent things from getting as hard and dry. Not much point of working the ascending colon, since there’s pretty much never enough water removed in that section to get backed up there.
But, for paralyzed patients, you do sometimes do a full abdominal massage to help work things along. Not all of them need it, but it usually does help anyone with paralysis to work their bowel program anyway. Prevents accidents throughout the day usually, because by the time you’ve gotten done with the massage, done all the movement required to get set up for the necessary activity with the bowel, you’ve moved things along so that you can empty the last bits of the colon fully.
Which is long winded and tangential, but I figure it might be of interest to someone scrolling through that has sone kind of difficulty with their bowels
I learned some time ago that you’re supposed to squat a bit to press into your intestines so that you don’t need to strain yourself. Turns out modern toilets aren’t ideal for that.
So, the rectum (poops last stop before freedom) is actually deep inside your pelvis as your colon makes the turn from the left side to the center, so your massage isn’t moving the poop out like squeezing a toothpaste tube. However, it lies close to some internal muscles like the iliacus which can put pressure on it if they’re stiff or inflamed (not unheard of in western society), and massaging them can get them to relax and relieve the pressure.
You’re certainly not hurting anything with this, and since you’ve been doing it for so long, you may have developed a psychosomatic connection that might actually help your bowels do their work. It’s weird, but go right ahead massaging the shit out of yourself because it might help in some way.
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