Constipation: a new approach

From The Australian Women’s Weekly Health Series: Constipation. Buy the Book.

The toileting position and muscle action you are used to will influence whether you empty your bowels effortlessly, inadvertently strain or obviously strain over time. Whether you sit or squat to defecate (empty your bowels) depends on your ethnic group, and whether you use your muscles correctly or incorrectly is the result of habit determined by custom. Interestingly, squatting is the way nature intended humans and some animals to empty their bowels. Dogs, for example, share with humans the same basic design and programming of the cylinder and action muscles. And when dogs have difficulty defecating, they show similar straining actions.

Many factors can upset the performance of your internal cylinder of support, including:

A chronic chest condition such as asthma or emphysema
Lifestyle activities, including hard physical labour or heavy lifting
Overdevelopment of certain muscles, caused by too many sit-ups
Childbirth, and the way you push in childbirth
Self-image and self-esteem, which affect your posture
Whether you are male or female. Men and women have the same muscle structure for toileting yet at different periods in history cultures have set different norms. (The early Greek historian Herodotus describes Egyptian women working while their men stayed at home. The women emptied their bladders standing up, the men did it sitting down.)

Bad habits begin when, as a child, you learn to use the “big” toilet. As boys get older, they tend to adapt, while girls strain. It’s a matter of anatomy: as their genitalia grow, boys sit right back on the toilet for comfort. The way you sit determines how and where you push. Both sexes think they perform the same action, yet men sit right back with their legs apart, while women hover or perch in a “ladylike fashion” and often don’t have time to stay – all of which is inefficient.

Unwittingly, women also give bad advice to one another, such as motherly advice about public toilets, and incorrect pushing instructions during childbirth and labour. Women are also often willing victims of the fickle fashion industry, the dictates of which may affect our posture. The way a woman pushes is based on a variety of life experiences.