Western Bowel Syndrome.

[Revlot]

Western Bowel Syndrome

That’s an interesting name, and I will get back to that. First; 40’s man with bowel issues whole life as sub-text to genetically inherited progressively degenerative neurological condition. I have had experience with different medications for different conditions. I choose to be un-medicated since in my experience medications lead to side effects and dull minds. I have learned to live with my body as it naturally is. For many years now I have eaten only dinner. My bowel is on a schedule and I know that after my morning trip to the facilities that I will be clear for the day. I have a variety of classic Crohn’s symptoms. I have an upper and lower endoscopy procedure scheduled for mid September. My father had a lower colostomy when he was in his 30’s.

Being rather freaked out about my possible future I began to learn anything on the internet I could that might help me. And that led me to Helminthic therapy – worms. I was seriously considering deliberately infesting my bowel with worms tailored to restore my digestive health. Anything to avoid surgery in the future. However upon further research I discovered that the worms are only treating a symptom of an unbalanced bowel, and not correcting the problem that is unbalancing my bowel. I want a cure – not a treatment.

So back to the internet for a trip around the world. The short of a long story is that Crohn’s is only about as old as the sitting toilet. Crohn’s is mostly a western condition. Most of the world squats for elimination and most the world does not have Crohn’s. So I buy myself a squatting stool for my bathroom to see for myself. WOW! I can tell that things are moving more as they are supposed to now. It’s no magic fix. I can tell that I still have a lifetime of incorrect bowel posture to overcome. My poor bowel having been so mistreated for all these decades by forcing things through it at the wrong angle. And my legs have to be retrained to squat for the required time. But – WOW! My standard level of constant and periodic internal discomfort has decreased markedly. I can only imagine that continued squatting may restore my bowel health over time. No drugs, no surgery, no funny diet, and no more pain. All because I have started using my body the way it was designed to be used. I am currently working on finding a squatting toilet to install in my house so that I don’t have to pull out the stool when ever I need to do my thing.

So here is enough of my quest for others to learn without the boring in-between searching;

Helminthic therapy


Merely a social phobia against ALL worms. Truth is we could not digest food without the zoo of single cell bugs that live in our bowel. If you can get over the ‘Ick!’ factor and you can’t squat then this may be for you. As I said earlier I decided to pass on this, but others have done it with favorable results. Here is a good place to go for those interested;

autoimmunetherapies.,,,

Squatting

(note – I do NOT endorse their squat platform for sale, I only link to their excellent information page containing information on Crohn’s.)

Squatting stool
There are many available on the market and a quick search of Amazon will reward you. I got a nice wood one.

Squatting toilet
OMG! There are SOOO many models. I am in the process of attempting to acquire one that can be used as a regular toilet for the other members of my house but will also work for squatting for me. I have settled on an ‘Anglo Indian Water Closet’ like this one;


I understand that it is not an American plumbing code approved toilet. But there is no law that I can not install one in my house so long as I go through the trouble to make sure that it is hooked to the system properly and functions as intended. My solution may not apply to others situations. I plan on paying over a thousand dollars to see this imported and installed, but compare that to the cost of surgery down the road. My gamble is that I will avoid an unpleasant fate by doing this now.

So now I am back to my original statement, I believe that using a western toilet instead of an eastern toilet has given me ‘Western Bowel Syndrome’.

[Ok, so I had to muck up my links ‘cause I can’t post links till after post #10]

 

[nogutsnoglory]

Welcome to the forum. I purchased a "squatty potty" a while back and think others have also experimented with it here. It's done absolutely nothing to make my condition better. It may be more helpful for people with constipation.

 

[Revlot]

My squat stool was very hard on me the first month. But persistence paid off, now after over a month of using it religiously I am in better physical shape, and now that my body is used to it my morning ritual has become effortless. The secret for me was good posture by not cheating; as in - continuing to sit on the seat while just having my legs bent up. I support my whole body on my feet and use the proper angle. Just my experience.

 

[Jennifer]

Hi Revlot and welcome to the forum!

Sorry I had to remove your links for now so please wait until you have 10 posts. We have heard of the squat toilets before and the theory behind it and have heard about hook worms as treatment. I never did the worm treatment because they have the potential of becoming adults which can perforate your bowel so it just seemed to dangerous to me. As for a special toilet, hope it helps you. Keep us posted on your scopes.

 

[krika]

Welcome.
Interesting, keep us updatet on how it goes. While I personally dont have any faith in this theory, I wish you luck and hope it works.

 

[Revlot]

@krika;
No drugs, no surgery, no funny diet, and no more pain. I think this is an attainable goal. I firmly believe that society makes us ill. This complicated artificial life we have constructed in cities forces us to eat bad food and use sitting toilets. Since everybody is different I think it is great that you have no faith in my theory, that validates me for not having any faith in a western medical system that would rather cut me up or drug me out to treat a symptom, rather than cure the cause of my distress. I firmly believe that I have allowed society to lull me into a false sense of what is the right way to care for my body. I am now trying to use my body the way it was designed to be used instead of the way society wants me to use it.

 

[krika]

I do hope it works, nothing would be better than that. A simple and easy solution is never to be ignored or discarded, I am at a point where I see many have tried so many different things and I have tried diets and so on, but nothing has worked. So for me to be carefull in believing before I see it, is just my way of being causious and not get dissapointed, when this is all this illness is, a huge life wrecking dissapointement.

 

[vonfunk]

I would like to start this off with saying if you are able to keep your disease in control with diet and altering how you go to the washroom, that is amazing and fantastic. keep it up. There have been studies showing that squatting as opposed to sitting causes less stress, so it helping you has some merit.

However claiming to to have "cure" will immediately set people on edge as due to the nature of this board there have been a large number of charlatans and snake oil salesmen touting "cures". I'm not saying you are one of them, but be mindful of the words that you use.

But there are several things that you seem to be overlooking in your squatting/sitting theory. And as I like to play Devil's Advocate, I will bring them up.
1) Ethnic heritage: Studies have shown that certain ethnicities have a higher prevalence of IBD. Those of Jewish descent, particularly those of Ashkenazi lineage have a much incidence rate.
2)Diet: The countries with the highest rate of IBD are US, UK, Canada & Australia. These countries have a diet heavy with factory farmed meat and processed foods. As such ingest a much higher volume of Omega 6 and less Omega 3. When comparing to other countries with less intensively reared animals, and a higher consumption of vegetation and fish (therefore less omega 6 and more omega 3), the so called Western countries have a higher rate, and as the stereotypical American meat heavy diet spreads we are starting to see an increase in countries like Japan, which a very low rate until ago up to 20-30 years when it started to appear.
3) Antibiotic use: Western society use more antibiotics
4) Sanitation: Western nations tend to be overly sanitized, you briefly touched on his with helminthic therapy.
5) The historical timelines of toilets & IBD: Toilets requiring you to sit down have been in common use since middle ages, even then they date back to Roman empire. Even chamber pots, while not "toilets" in the sense that we know them, were usually fitted into a "commode" in which you would sit on. The modern toilet in as we know it started to appear in the mid-1800's. The first references to IBD did not appear in medical literature until the 1930's, (although existed before then, Napoleon was thought to have IBD). The timeline is the least troublesome of the overlooked details. Short lifespans mean that there would be less time for symptoms to show, less sanitary conditions (touched upon earlier), and dysentery was a big killer (which could have been Crohn's in some cases, symptoms are similar). Up until the 20th century the average life expectancy topped out around 40.

 

[Revlot]

Not selling anything, just advocating squatting. And yes, people apply undue importance to specific words such as 'cure'. I have tried to be specific that I am only relating my own personal experience. I will alter my verbiage to exclude 'magic' words to avoid antagonizing people who only read magic words instead of considering the entirety of the point being stated. I would add that there is a great deal of information available on the internet, and counter your roman sitting toilet theory as being proven false when the originator of the statement was asked to elaborate on his findings of roman sitting toilets and replied that he merely found the toilets with no instructions and assumed the modern sitting method. Evidence leans towards roman squatting while using the togas as a privacy shield. Every story in unique, and yes many bowel problems are created by problems other than sitting verses squatting. Unfortunately I am unable to post links so I am unable to point you to my information sources. But you seem like a resourceful fellow, perhaps you can find it on your own.

 

[vonfunk]

I was not stating that you were a toilet salesman, just pointing out the use of loaded words can cause issues.

I'm aware the Roman toilet usage is a bit dodgy, as are the examples that date back further. But yes, you are correct they have yet to have found the manual that dictates which way they went about their business. I'm pointing that IBD is a condition of the modern era, the use of sitting down pre-dates Crohn's by several hundred years, and even then it is least important out of all of the points. I'm not denying that it affects "Western" society far more than others, I'm just pointing out there are other contributing factors that have been linked. You are more than welcome to PM me a couple links provided that they have citations to their evidence.

 

[Revlot]

This being my 11'th post I should be able to post links.

http://www.naturesplatform.com/health_benefits.html#antiquity

"Toilets from Ancient Times

Pictures of ancient public toilets tend to confuse westerners, who assume that they were used in the sitting position. This impression is often reinforced by the pose of a comical tourist.

But, in reality, these are squat toilets.

They are elevated, not for sitting, but because there is an open sewer underneath. The cutouts in the vertical wall allow people to clean themselves with water, which is done from the front when squatting.

The ancient Romans used the posture shown below on the left. (Togas were more convenient than trousers, and provided some degree of privacy.)

The tourists shown below might be surprised to learn that, except for royalty and the disabled, everyone used the squatting position until the second half of the 19th century

Note: The Sulabh International Museum of Toilets website claims that archeologists have found "sitting-type" toilets at ancient sites, thousands of years old. The author of the site, Dr. Bindeswar Pathak, was asked for his evidence that these toilets were used in the sitting position. He replied that he actually has no evidence, but was simply repeating the assumptions of western archeologists.

 

[vonfunk]

Any links that aren't from a manufacturer?

 

[nogutsnoglory]

I don't think anyone is arguing that modern toilets aren't what they used to be but correlation doesn't equal causation. Just because we now poop this way doesn't mean that's why IBD is on the rise. Do you have any citations to suggest a link? Why would only a minority get IBD while others get by with no digestive ailments?

 

[Revlot]

@vonfunk;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#Ancient_civilizations
"Roman toilets, like the ones pictured here, are commonly thought to have been used in the sitting position. But sitting toilets only came into general use in the mid-19th century in the Western world.[12] The Roman toilets were probably elevated to raise them above open sewers which were periodically "flushed" with flowing water, rather than elevated for sitting."
Although I can tell that you are still playing devils advocate, so I expect you to point out that 'paper does not refuse ink', meaning that either side of the ongoing debate could be correct since nobody really knows for sure. Let me put it this way, I choose to believe that most of humanity has squatted for elimination for most of the existence of humanity. This leads me to believe that our bodies are best adapted to eliminating in a squatting position, and so that is what I will do.

@nogutsnoglory;
I would say that everybody is slightly different and that leads some to be more susceptible to the additional physical stress involved in eliminating in an unnatural position like sitting, and so some develop bowel problems while others don't.

So I have a theory that squatting will help me to restore my bowel health, I am putting this theory to practice on myself. I highly suggest that everybody else take a radically different course from me, for I may be wrong in my theory. Who knows, I could spontaneously invert my colon by squatting one morning. All I really have to go on is the information I find on the internet, what is actually happening to my body at the moment, and my own good common sense.

 

[vonfunk]

I wasn't referring to the Roman aspect. I already conceded that the evidence for Romans sitting/squatting was dodgy. I was referring to links you came across while doing your research that you did that lead you to come to your overall conclusions.

 

[Revlot]

Months of looking at pages from google search results and comparing conflicting data sets. That is where I got my overall conclusions. What I think you want is a line-by-line breakdown of; I went to this page and read item A and then on that page I read item B and that led me to conclusion C. I had to separate the data into apples and oranges when the internet does not discern from either and just gives me fruit. As I said earlier I was considering worm therapy until more research led me to believe that would only be treating a symptom and not a cause, so I continued to research several hundred more pages until I came to understand that the digestive tract begins at the lips and ends with the anus - so adjusting my elimination procedure would have a domino effect back through my bowel, and that my body will heal itself once the physical imbalance created by the wrong posture for elimination was corrected. That both the cecum and the puborectalis muscle are moved into proper position for elimination while squatting, and and and ... the list goes on. I was not really planning on writing a scientific article where my citations were to be scrutinized - I was just looking for a place to voice my joy at how much squatting has helped me in my case so far.

However I am not one to be cast in the light of blissful ignorance, as I have obviously chosen the folly of knowledge, so I find myself compelled to provide a coherent post containing enough credible links to satisfy the lay mind that I am indeed acting on my own behalf from a position of some authority. I can not provide this in one day, I need several - as the body of internet I must filter to acquire this knowledge is vast.

 

[afidz]

Its great that you are feeling better, it really is.
But, in our defense, everyday we hear "if you try this you will feel better" or "this person tried this and now they have their life back"
When someone comes on here, with that mentality, we all get a little off put. Vonfunk asked you for references, and you havne't provided them. Out of all the research you did, none of it stood out enough for you to reference? If that is the case, its not credible information.
There are so many of us out there that have been through the ringer, they have had to deal with so much pain and agony that they are desperate. And then they are given false hope that they can get better with out proper treatment. When they don't improve, and most of the time actually get worse, they are even more discouraged and depressed as they were before. We have to make sure that the information that we post is credible as to help everyone make informed decisions about their health.
Also, maybe I skipped over it, or you didn't say, but can I ask what conditions you suffer from? That might clarify your above statements a little bit

 

[vonfunk]

This is a topic that almost never comes up. With things like SCD and hookworm therapy, a lot of people know the basics, and the concepts are easy to grasp. If this is working for you, then that is amazing.

But this, this is new to just about everybody. I, as with many people, approach these things with scepticism. You are the one that knows the most about this. But because of the concept of how this minor change could possibly affect what is considered to be something with a genetic component seems to be so outlandish, we just want some more information. Are there studies? Is there data? What research and studies brought you to this point? We're curious, that is what it boils down to. If you posting it here helps even one more person improve their life, then that is fantastic.

Everyone here at some point has tried something that has to claimed to be the silver bullet. Part of the asking for more information than "Hey guys, this worked for me, you should do it" is that if someone wants to try it they have the information present to make an informed decision.

Like I said earlier, I want to read the things that lead you to the conclusion. I will head into it with a healthy dose of scepticism. But I will read, unless it is from a supplier of goods, I ignore all information pertaining to something if the source of it is trying to sell me a product.

 

[Revlot]

@afidz;
Well, I DID start out by trying to post some links that were removed from my first post, so I do kinda feel on the defensive from post one. I understand the rules and that everybody must follow them, so it is ok that I was edited. Second, I foolishly assumed that my story would be 'taken with a grain of salt', meaning that when I say that I found something that works for me that it does NOT mean that I have some snake oil I want to sell to others. Squatting stools and the nomenclature surrounding them is easily available all over the internet. Any simple search will show this and I did not feel it necessary to provide scientific data on something I did not invent but began to use out of my own common sense. There are posts on the subject of squatting on this forum that date back to at least 2010, so I am not introducing a new subject. How many people here expound on whatever treatment they are undergoing with no more to back up their decision than 'the doctor told me to take it'? Are those people run over the coals as to what scientific evidence they have for believing their doctor? Really, I say that I think that using a squatting stool is helping my condition - that's it! You want to know the one I bought? I got a stepandgo.com wood model from amazon - and this is the first time I have mentioned the brand name so I can not be placed in the category of 'all my previous posts are designed to sell you a squatting stool'. Squatting is free and easy, you can do it or not, it happens to work for me in my case. If you try it and it does nothing for you then you can easily quit with no harm done. I don't care if you use clay bricks or solid gold bricks to hold yourself up as you do it. I don't care if nobody else does it at all. It is something that I saw on the internet and thought that I would try it since it seemed to be of some help to a few other people, and it happened to work for me. At this point, anybody who is curious about squatting stools can just go to google and find out about them the way that I did. There is no need to clutter their minds with the specific reasons why I personally believe that this is the answer for me. Because when it comes right down to it, all I know is what I learned from the internet. I took in the information and made a choice about what I would do with that new information. For all I know the information I discovered on the internet is all a big lie, after all I have never personally visited another country so I really do not know if squatting toilets really do exist or not, I am just taking it on faith that they do exist and that most of what I read on the internet is not a lie. Anybody who is not lazy can take at least a few mins to look them up on their own and not feel the need to rely on others to hand them knowledge that is freely available.

 

[nogutsnoglory]

Afidz asked if you have ever been diagnosed with IBD? I am also curious about this.

We have seen people claim many things are the special fix. We have to look at things through a scientific lens and with some skepticism because so much has failed for us.

Do you have any scientific evidence to suggest a link between not squatting and crohns?

 

[Axelfl3333]

Interesting thread which is probably unsuitable for most peoples homes some of what you say correlates with something my clinic nurse said with chronic constipation,basically when on the throne raise your feet,sit them on a couple books it's a more natural position.controlling your symptoms with one meal a day,well less in equals less out!

 

[krika]

This is interesting, and yes there are countries that has these kinds of loos.

However, here is a link to IBD around the world.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22001864

Its an increase in IBD world wide, "conclution: Although there are few epidemiologic data from developing countries, the incidence and prevalence of IBD are increasing with time and in different regions around the world, indicating its emergence as a global disease.

How can this be explained, when they use squatting in those regions if that is a "cure"?

Yes, the numbers are lower in certain areas, but they are there.
If it helps a person with IBD on a daily basis, thats great, but to believe that squatting will eliminate the IBD issues completely and make a person well, that is a strech.

 

[Ronald]

Not sure about the worms, but I have read up a lot on the squatting and I am interested in getting myself a squatting stool. Diagrams I've seen show that in the sitting position, the bowel is obstructed and you're more likely to strain and not fully empty them. According to one blogger, lifting your knees up when sitting regularly on a toilet can replicate that and I've done it ever since. If I don't do it now, I actually feel like I can't go. I really wish I knew about it before I got my fissures and hemorrhoids.

Thanks for the extra information and I do love the term 'Western Bowel Syndrome' to describe IBD. We're obviously doing something wrong! Unfortunately most will argue to their grave that lifestyle is nothing to do with the cause, but disease is far more rife as you said in westernised countries. Like most diseases, they're not a normal part of life, they are caused either by our environment or lifestyle - nothing else. There's the argument that you got IBD when you were 4 (or were born with it) and your parents made you eat nothing but greens - so? Bad lifestyles went on before you, including your parents. It's not always directly our faults, we're taught bad habits (like sitting on a toilet rather than squatting which is how humans are supposed to - you don't see a dog sitting on a toilet!) and we don't get given the nutrients we need to develop properly and healthily at such early ages.

I apologise for going on a bit haha.

 

[blackli]

Not sure about the history and the worm theories, but I've started squatting when at home with great results. No pressure, no pushing and I feel empty effortlessly. Again, I wish I tried this well before the hemmorroids! I didn't buy anything fancy, I just use a $5 fold up stool that I keep beside my toilet in our bathroom.
Give it a try, it doesn't cost anything and may help with some symptoms!

 

[gordan]

I'm a big believer in a toilet squat stool as well. After looking over this article, I figured it was probably time to make the choice and get one. While I'm undiagnosed now, avoiding something like diverticulitis would be great!

Best of luck to you and everyone, I hope it worked out for you!