Posted on 09/25/2023 5:55:43 AM PDT by Red Badger
"IT'S CRAZY TO THINK THAT OUR COLLECTIVE BOWEL DYSFUNCTION PROBLEMS HAVE GOTTEN SO BAD THAT WE'RE LITERALLY RUNNING OUT OF STOOL SOFTENERS."
Laxatives are having a major cultural renaissance — so much so, in fact, that soaring demand for the drugs is reportedly causing a national shortage.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, the US is experiencing a scarcity of polyethylene glycol 3350, the pharmaceutical powering name-brand products like Miralax and Glycolax. As for why? It's complicated.
Per the report, there are several suspected culprits for the rising laxative demand. On the one hand, the American population is aging, and older adults are more likely to suffer from constipation than younger folks. The average American also doesn't consume nearly enough fiber, and elsewhere, the WSJ notes that "lingering physical and psychological effects of the pandemic" appear to be playing a role in the lax-revolution as well. While locked indoors, people exercised less, ate worse, and experienced high levels of stress — all of which can contribute to gastrointestinal issues, constipation included. And on the flip side, the end of the pandemic, which disrupted our newfound routines, sending many back into the office and reviving a flailing travel industry, may have caused its own wave of gastrointestinal problems as well.
"It's crazy to think that our collective bowel dysfunction problems have gotten so bad that we're literally running out of stool softeners," Dr. George Pavlou, head of the Gastroenterology Associates of New Jersey, told the WSJ.
The growing laxative demand might also be linked to more concerning psychological trends. Per the report, some laxative buyers appear to be using the medicine as a de facto Ozempic. Of course, the two drugs are very different, and Ozempic is much more expensive than over-the-counter stool softeners. But various laxatives have been a staple of diet culture for decades now, despite the fact that they don't actually promote weight loss, and mostly just result in dehydration, mineral imbalances, and in some severe cases, internal organ damage, according to the National Eating Disorders Association — although that's not stopping people with disordered eating from trying them nonetheless.
"When people have an excessive bowel movement and they feel completely empty inside, that gets wrapped up in thinness and health," Eating disorder specialist Dr. Jenna DiLossi told the WSJ.
DiLossi told the newspaper that before the pandemic, her clients rarely reported turning to laxatives as a weight loss measure; now, however, at least "three to five" of new teen clients every week admit to taking laxatives as an attempted weight loss measure, often telling the doctor that they got the idea from TikTok.
"I had periods in my early 20s where I really struggled with disordered eating," 30-year-old Sophie Spiers, a fashion copywriter in Los Angeles, told the WSJ, "and it became tied to a mental thing of having to take my Miralax or I'm going to feel fat today." And though Spiers told the newspaper that she's learned to manage her reliance in a healthier way, she says she still takes Miralax every morning.
Laxatives aren't the only shelf item seeing a sales spark in recent months. Relatedly, the WSJ report notes that a growing number of consumers — young folks included — are reaching for passage-inducing fiber supplements, which doesn't exactly feel like a coincidence.
"The demand has changed," Jissan Cherian, a director of marketing at Haleon, the company that manufactures Benefiber, told the WSJ.
To be clear, laxatives and other stool-related supplements do have their medical place. But an unhealthy or unnecessary reliance can wreak havoc on the gastrointestinal system, and if you find yourself reaching for them on the daily — especially if you're a younger person — the eternal advice remains: talk to your doctor first, and as one expert told the WSJ, maybe up your fruit, vegetable, and whole grain intake before reaching for drugs at all. And if you're just looking for the feeling of an empty stomach? You might want to just skip the laxatives altogether.
More on weight loss trends: Scientist Behind Ozempic Warns That There's a "Price"
Shortage? Here ya’ go. Scramble some old eggs for breakfast and give it a coconut oil chaser. That’ll clean you right out in a hurry.
Be sure to have some fluids with electrolytes on hand and start the Imodium after an eventful 8 hours have passed.
Go to the store and buy gumy bears, that ought to do the trick.
Americans are probably eating less fruit and veggies and filling the void with carbohydrates.
This is a problem with Uranus.
People eat so much crap, their system either seizes up, or runs loose.
Eat a damned salad once in a while…LOL.
Put the Big Mac down. Eat a salad for a change. Things will “work themselves out”.
Here, “Big Mac” is representing all processed foods. The average American diet is garbage. DW and I have been cooking all meals at home using fresh, whole food since the plandemic and have never felt better. She has even remarked at…um…how well everything works now. No “grabbing something quick” at the drive through. No take-out, no delivery. You can cook a fabulous meal in thirty minutes. Clean-up in ten minutes. Laxative not required.
magnesium
So much easier and cheaper to fix your own.
Post of the day!
I'm not so sure about Fiber. Dr Mason presents findings on Fiber in the first 5 minutes of the below video.
Dr. Paul Mason - 'From fibre to the microbiome: low carb gut health'
Cantaloupe works.
I think Fat greases the skids.
But medically, bile produced by the gallbladder is the substance that is supposed to grease the skids. Probiotics with bile supplements may be a solution.
Boo Hoo! Everything I eat turns to poop. It’s been that way all my life.
I don’t know if it’s a factor, but opioids, heroin, many pain killers cause constipation.
Freegards
Too much meat... proteins also come in other sources. Eat steamed veggies too, eat raw veggies, lay off the compex carbs. Throw a bit of fruit in the mix, 3 prunes a day... H²O... abracadabra... you have just constructed a healthy poop.
During orientation week at boot camp in the early ‘70s the chief of the galley came in to talk with the new recruits, and he said:
“there are two kinds of food, foods that make a turd, and foods that push a turd”
And then went on about the construction of our training nutritional needs and why were to take the nutrional offerings provided, chew it thoroughly and finush our servings.
I will never forget that Chief, or his lecture. His might have been the first class that made sense during that first week of total immersion into the military, everything else was just a blur.
Yep, opioid use is rampant.
I know a lady that has all kinds of constipation problems even though she doesn’t have a particularly bad diet. She does eat too much and it makes it worse for her though she isn’t real big and fat.
She told me she started taking laxatives about 8 years ago. She is always miserable and she can’t go without them. She keeps increasing the dose.
Her doctor tried to tell her and suggested things like Miralax on a regular basis and certain foods, magnesium etc.
She just didn’t listen and griped about her misery all the time.
I finally told her to quit griping if she didn’t want to get better.
There is a fentanyl epidemic all over the USA and it has nothing to do with doctors and everything to do with open borders allowing in these opioids.
Opioids cause constipation and especially at high levels of use.
It’s overuse of street fentanyl, which is now found even in meth which is insane if you think about it.
Reading the article I have no confidence that they have any idea at all what is behind the run on ExLAX. Talk about the shotgun approach.
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