radiii wrote: »

TMI Alert:

Squatty potty is legit. I am finishing up (my last appointment is today, in fact!) 5 months of Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy (pelvic floor = urinary/bowel/sexual function).

They have squatty potties in all of their bathrooms there, and they have them along w/ the computers that do biofeedback (hook up electrodes to measure muscle tension). Sitting in a good posture activates a bunch of stability muscles everywhere and there's more tension. Sitting with a bit of a forward lean relaxes things a little. Busting out the squatty potty and raising the legs while still sitting at the same height forces an extra level of relaxation that is difficult to obtain otherwise. This leads to healthier pooping.

Sounds silly, but when you describe a (ahem) "Bathroom issue" to the therapist and they can immediately say "oh let me show you this" and you can see a graph on a computer screen showing exactly what they're talking about, its pretty darn convincing.

I also had to use the biofreedback thing to recognize massive amounts of tension I had due to some past trauma (some bad/painful infections leading me to tightening up to "protect" everything permanently) and learn how to actively relax, which took a couple months. But this stuff did make a noticible diference in the quality of my... bathroom time :P

Huh! who knew! That's interesting. I just know it works for us!

We learned about it from a woman named Katy Bowman. She's a biomechanist and is truely fascinating when it comes to health from a mechanical point of view. Dan, as an engineer you might find her interesting! She has extremely easy ways to increase health through movement, to build it right into your life. She has her own podcast and blog but you can find her in interviews all over. Just google her name. I was convinced just listening to her, but if someone could show me a graph, showing changes in real time, for sure I'd be convinced! Cool.

I sometimes put psyllium husk in my cooking, like with ground almonds and eggs to make "buns". I also take "Natural Calm" magnesium supplement before bed, and love that it serves several purposes in that it restores my body's magnesium deficiencies, calms my tired and jumpy muscles and remedies constipation. The tea works well too, I like Traditional Medicinals" versions.

More than you ever wnated to know about pooping to follow, seriously, if you're not interested, skip this:

DittoDan wrote: »

At some point when I get more weight off, I will start exercising again...

Appropriate level exercise for you should help here, not hurt. Ok, so lets go above and beyond the squatty potty here, since I literally just did this two months ago in physical therapy (and i'm not directing this AT you Dan, just using this quote as a jumping point to talk about this)

What I'm descirbing won't work for everyone, if you have a legit digestive disorder, if you have IBS, maybe one of 100 other things, maybe this won't work perfectly for you.

1) NO STRAINING. Ever. Even if it works, obviously there are health risks (hemmorhoids, prolapse) that are not good. But also, its counterproductive. It might get the job done in the moment, but it makes things worse overall. You probably aren't fully emptying if you strain, which confuses the system and signals for next time, I belive this can build on itself forever and make things slowly worse and worse.

2) Eat when you first wake up. Food stimulates the digestive system to start moving.

3) Get some exercise in the morning. Exercise stimulates things to move. Talk to any runner, google "Runner's trots"

4) Drink something hot in the morning. Hot liquid can stimulate things to move.

5) Eat regularly, every 3 hours. Eating regularly keeps the digestive system working regularly.

6) Learn to relax your pelvic muscles, ideally no pushing is required at all. Some pushing is ok, but it has to be PUSHING, not contracting. For many (me and my awful body awarenes) its confusing. I learned that if I breath in deeply and fill my stomach/push my stomach out, I can easily gently and properly push. My signal for straining/hurting myself is noticing my abs contracting. Now I'm squeezing, not pushing. Its different.


I had some other rules for myself. I was using glycerin suppositories every single night an hour before bed b/c I had some bloating/discomfort issues that this would relieve. I was told I was trianing my body to be ready to go to the bathroom at that time, and making that problem worse.

Fiber is a recommendation, but all of us low carbers already know about this. I am currently still using chia seeds to get fiber, I expect to stop this at some point to experiement and see if I need it or not.


I was someone who used a suppository to relieve gas and occasionally poop before bed, and who strained like hell every day around lunchtime to go.

Within two weeks of following these suggestions to the letter, and using the squatty potty, I found myself having no effort (and I mean literally, ZERO pushing, no effort), only one wipe required, perfect poops. My physical therapist knew how important keto was to me. She didn't ask me to change that. She knew I'd ignore everything else she said if she did. Because she didn't threaten my keto ways, I was wiling to follow every other piece of advice she gave for a few weeks even though that did require some changes on my part.


NOW, a lot of those pieces of advice I don't like. I don't like eating every 3 hours. I don't like exercising in the morning. I don't like etaing when I first wake up, I like intermittent fasting.

But, the point is, I learned how I *could* do it perfectly, I learned to notice when I was harming myself, and now I can learn how to tailor my habits around that. I stopped eating every 3 hours almost immediately. Most mornings I poop before I eat. Not every morning, some mornings I can tell its just not gonna happen like I want, so I go make my bacon and eggs earlier than I'd like ideally. As my PT told me, "that's ok, now you have a choice, before you didn't, so you can figure out what to do".


The first couple "no straining no matter what, no suppositories" days were a bit tough for me. But this is something that feeds on itself. Once you do it right once, you can build from it. I asked my PT about this specifically when I was struggling, she described many people having an "a-ha" moment where things went from uncomfortable to perfect overnight and it was perfect forever after that.


How many people with chronic consipation can be resolved entirely by following these steps? I don't know. I don't want to point at everyone and say "come on, its easy", because everyone is different.


But I can tell you all that I, very recently, as part of spending literally thousands of dollars on therapy (copays plus other major changes I chose to make at home to improve things like a standing desk, etc, to get me off my *kitten*), I drastically changed these things and its an honest to god quality of life improvement. So there you go, do with this what you will

warm lemon water in the a.m.
mag citrate at night
lots of water
lots of quality fat
probiotics

those work for me. i don't do cheese very often at all, however. perhaps once a week.

Another thing that can help stimulate the bowels is caffeine... but just a quick walk around the block works better. I have a feeling caffeine is on the no-no list with your suppositories, @radiii‌

KETOGENICGURL wrote: »

- See a big word? DO search it, no adult needs to thump the person helping by insisting they spoonfeed you….no excuses!….ah, bother reading to the end of the helpful post?..Eee the info graciously provided? Good.

For 15 years... in the age of instant information anytime of day I've watched someone share something useful in a group (ANY type of group..this is universal) ...and invariably (means "always") another person sends a 2 word email " What's X?" instead of making any effort at all to just type "X" into the search engine. While there are unlimited electrons willing to work forever, storing miles of pages of such emails is wasteful for any server farm.

Thank you! I see people do this on an hourly basis and it always has me scratching my head. If someone can take the time to ask another person to define something, they can just as easily google that same something and find pages and pages of clarification. That helps promote accuracy of comprehension, too, if it's something like a medical condition that can be researched via a legit medical site vs. a layperson's potentially sketchy rendition.

zoom2 wrote: »

KETOGENICGURL wrote: »

- See a big word? DO search it, no adult needs to thump the person helping by insisting they spoonfeed you….no excuses!….ah, bother reading to the end of the helpful post?..Eee the info graciously provided? Good.

For 15 years... in the age of instant information anytime of day I've watched someone share something useful in a group (ANY type of group..this is universal) ...and invariably (means "always") another person sends a 2 word email " What's X?" instead of making any effort at all to just type "X" into the search engine. While there are unlimited electrons willing to work forever, storing miles of pages of such emails is wasteful for any server farm.

Thank you! I see people do this on an hourly basis and it always has me scratching my head. If someone can take the time to ask another person to define something, they can just as easily google that same something and find pages and pages of clarification. That helps promote accuracy of comprehension, too, if it's something like a medical condition that can be researched via a legit medical site vs. a layperson's potentially sketchy rendition.

@zoom2 And there is a total difference in, "I read this, looked it up, but I still don't understand point B. Can someone elaborate?"

I tried adding the psyllium husk to my beef goulash, BIG mistake the whole lot had the texture of snot even the dogs took their time to eat it.

I also drink Senna based teas twice a week. It works and I like the fact that the bloat goes with it. You can find these teas at the Asian food stores. Give it a try, see if it works for you.

The husk actually made my constipation worse no matter how much water I drank. TMI my stools were hard and painful. I drink smooth move tea about once a week and it gets things moving . They have chocolate flavor , regular flavor and regular flavor.
It's an organic tea

radiii wrote: »

Fiber is a recommendation, but all of us low carbers already know about this. I am currently still using chia seeds to get fiber, I expect to stop this at some point to experiement and see if I need it or not.

I made a post earlier on this page, a very long one, on all of the steps I took, with a huge amount of help from my pelvic floor physical therapist, to fix probles I'd had my entire adult life in this arena, but I was still getting 25g+ fiber a day, in part b/c it was working, in part because while I was in physical therapy the goal was simply to establish a baseline set of habits I could follow (while still remaining on keto, of course) to get my bathroom problems fixed, then I could always go back to those if I needed but could experiment and figure out how strict I needed to be with some things.

Apparently its a common problem that when physical therapy ends and you aren't having a "check-in" every week with your therapist, to allow old habits to creep back in. That definitely happened with me. I was getting the fiber still but had slacked off on many of the other habits I'd learned and a few weeks ago I started having some fairly large constipation problems. So I decided to refocus on the list of things I had learned, but this time, without the fiber to see what would happen.

For the last ~10 days or so I've been constipation free with no fiber, or whatever little fiber I'm getting from eating some strawberries for dessert, certainly not a huge amount. Definitely a first for me, and a good lesson for me in remembering all the things I learned in PT and actually doing them


I still don't see anything wrong w/ fiber for those who it helps, or those who have a routine involving it, and there are all kinds of digestive issues for different people, so what worked for me may not work for everyone, but since a lot of people here (myself included) like to experiment, I figured this was worth a followup post and bringing this old thread back

I know I'm (really) late to the party here, but for anyone looking in this thread for future ref RE your original question about psyllium husks, you can buy capsule versions (I use them religiously). Sorry if anyone else has said this, I'm a bit sleepy