Bowel Movement Breakthrough (Or: Constipation Quick Fix)
In the quest for bodily health and well-being—important components of happiness—a lot of studies study what goes in. Not so many consider what comes out. Or what doesn’t. Constipation can make you feel, well, you know the word. A new study suggests one possible remedy, something that couldn’t be simpler: Put your feet up when you go. A stool can apparently loosen your stool, as it were.
This won’t come as news to a lot of people.
Unbidden, my sister recently extolled the gastrointestinal virtues of toilet-straddling footstools, which she explained are all the rage and which she advised me to try. She’s got one in each of her home’s bathrooms, to help her family let it all out more easily. Biology, she said. For eons, humans squatted to go № 2, but with modern toilets we’re forced to set upright, and the angle of attack is all wrong.
Despite a popular brand name that reeks of late-night TV ads, the device and the concept made sense. But as a reporter of science, I tend to pooh-pooh anecdotal evidence. I can be annoyingly anal that way. I pretty much wiped my sister’s advice from my mind and pushed on.
Until yesterday, when I learned of a new study at Ohio State University that illustrates and supports exactly what my sister had said.
Four weeks after being introduced to toilet stools — or defecation postural modification devices (DPMDs), as they’re known to science (and I swear I did not make that up) — 71 percent of study participants (where do they get these people?) reported faster bowel movements, and 90 percent said they were straining less.
“DPMDs positively influenced BM duration, straining patterns, and complete evacuation of bowels in this study,” the scientists scientifically stated.
It was a small study — just 52 individuals, reported in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology — and as with much in science, proof will be in the pudding of a repeat experiment, should some enterprising researcher (who’s not all backed up with other work) choose to accept the challenge. But like the problem toilet stools aim to solve, the study’s results are hard to ignore. Loosely summarized, here’s what the scientists say is the straight poop behind the stool’s effectiveness:
Sitting on a toilet bends the rectum, thwarting complete bowel movements. The toilet stool straightens the bend in the rectum.
“The straighter that is, the easier the bowel movement should be,” said Peter Stanich, assistant professor of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition. Stanich, a co-author of the study, advises anyone with constipation to consult a doctor on possible solutions.
Meanwhile, commercial toilet stools are available on the internet — all the rage, as my sister says. But by the looks of the setup in the photo above, it seems a couple bricks could do the job.
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This article is part of my 2020 Vision project, in which I’m spending the year 2019 exploring and writing about happiness: what it is, what it means, what contributes to our sense of it, and how all that affects the human condition.
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