New here and would like input from others

Hi stretchen and welcome. If you are having 5 to 10 small, soft bm's a day, with a larger normal one once or twice a week, can you accept that as your norm for now, and avoid straining? The two worst things you could do for your prolapse right now would be 1) constant straining and 2) letting the posture work take a back seat. WW posture and firebreathing are the best tools you have for getting your organs into proper position to make elimination less of a problem. A month is not long to be doing this work; you'll be doing it forever and the biggest improvements are going to be down the road after this has become totally second nature to you. I know this post might sound like an over-simplification of your problem. And maybe it is. But correcting the posture and doing all those other things that we need to stay mindful of throughout the day, are the most powerful tools we have. Just don't decide to wait on posture work until your pooping issues have resolved. Rather, let posture be the constant and see where that might take you over the next few months. - Surviving

I am very new here n I am not a doctor or even in the medical profession but I have had those pencil thin poos before! When I was having them was a couple of years ago. I was drinking a lot of coffee n no water during the day! The caffeine was acting as a laxative but I didn't have enough fluids in my intestinal tract to push the bowel movements thru so it was sticking to the sides!! Don't know if that's ur problem but you might need to cut out caffeine n add lots of water!! Once I started drinking 6-8 glasses of water a day n cut out the coffee I started having "more normal" bowel movements!!

I guess the fact you are going to doctors is that you may be looking at a physical cause for your defecation situation. If you have already looked at your diet then I guess what I have to suggest may not be helpful at all. However, passing many small stools does not sound such a good idea as you are using your rectum so regularly and they are being very hard to pass because they lack bulk enough for the intestinal muscles to move them effectively. Magnesium is recommended to prevent too sticky stools that are too soft and small to move smoothly. It sounds to me more the texture of the stool (their too softness) and their spaced out delivery, rather than their actual shape which presents the main difficulty. I know the type of stool you are talking about looks to be the result of some obstruction. I at one stage suspected the pressure of a prolapsed uterus was causing this. Now however, I don’t believe that to be the case. To form a complete stool, you need to eat everyday; fat (preferably saturated animal- have whipped cream in your coffee or on your plate of fruit), protein, potassium, vitamin C, calcium and magnesium. You should be able to gain most of these in your day to day diet. There is no reason why you should not do as Surviving suggests and continue WWposture concurrently with working out your defecation problem. Certainly, attend your next doctor’s appointment, but in the interim have a look at your diet and see if there is any room for improvement along the lines I’ve suggested. I don’t recommend going the quick route and including lots of fibre.

I take one Align probiotic supplement a day. It was recommended by my gastroenterologist as being the very best for digestive issues. He also recommended a product called Digestive Gold.
I agree with the water as being very important and your diet. (I am definitely going to try the whipped cream in my coffee.)

Re digestive issues, last year I was diagnosed with fructose intolerance, gluten intolerance and (SIBO) small intestinal bacterial overgrowth-not bad bacteria, just too much bacteria). "This condition (SIBO) can cause symptoms of gas, bloating, abdominal distension, loose stools and even constipation..."

According to the literature they gave me, one cause for this is over use of antibiotics and prolonged use of over-the-counter antacids such as Prilosec or Zantac, etc. As a child, I was given a lot of penicillin shots because of chronic throat infections. As an adult, I was prescribed Zantac for heartburn, and also prescribed antibiotics prior to dental work due to my mitral valve prolapse. (Now, they no longer recommend that.)

My fructose malabsorption, gluten intolerance and SIBO were diagnosed through breath tests at a gastroenterologist's office.

Breath testing: There is a protocol for what you eat the night before your doctor's appt. for testing. You show up at the office without eating or drinking water or brushing your teeth and they have you drink specific things for each test. Then every hour, four four hours, they have you blow into a device and they measure what they find and they are able to diagnose what your issues are.

I was amazed at what I learned about food after that. For fructose malabsorption issues, any sweetener that has any ingredient that ends in "tol" (example Manitol, Sorbitol, etc.) is bad for you. I have been using Stevia every since. The best fruits for people who don't have the enzymes to digest fructose are strawberries, blueberries and blackberries. They have a low fructose/glucose ratio. You can go to Wikipedia and search for "fructose malabsorption" and get all the information.

I find that if I eat what we would call a Whole Food diet, I have no problems. Processed foods are really bad for me. I hope this was helpful. I am also new to the site and am very, very grateful to have found it. I was recently diagnosed with a prolapsed uterus and was told that I needed a complete hysterectomy by a female gyn doctor. I had already purchased Christine's book and DVD's and knew I now was in charge of my life and my body and made the choice to save myself and my body.

Hi Sarah and welcome. Thanks for the helpful post. You will definitely find lots of like-minded women here, taking their health into their own hands. Good luck as you pursue the posture journey!

I have become convinced there is a lot of food sensitivity out there undiagnosed. My husband and I are in our 60's and he has been plagued with allergies all this life. He went cold turkey off gluten, and the rest is history. I'd never heard of this breath testing, but he says that just 3 or 4 days off gluten will tell you if that's your issue.

Thank you for a very interesting post and good luck to you! - Surviving

Hi, I also started having alot of lower bowel pressure I would say over the last 2 years, my gyn wants me to have my uterus removed as well as a large fibroid that is outside of my uterus which she attributes as the lower back pressure and the bowel problem. Do you think you might have fibroids??
What kind of test did the 5 doctors do?? Just wondering because I have been to doctors and they don't seem very interested in what is really going on with me and finding an answer.
Thank you for your post.

A very interesting post Sarah. I have also lowered the amounts of fructans I eat (again, as you pointed out, you can find a list of these on Wiki) and certainly found this helped symptoms of gas and bloating neither of which are helpful to prolapse. The artificial sweeteners also caused me diarrhoea. The presence of fructose in sugar (half glucose and half fructose = sucrose) is also another reason possibly why giving up sugar is also beneficial to anyone with prolapse and there are also some of us who have both prolapse and IBS; so double benefit there. Quite apart from the fact that having given up sugar and white bread I realised just how addictive I found these things, weight loss was pretty straight forward from that point on. My weight gain just happened to coincide with using artificial sweeteners the “tols” and accompanying diarrhoea (yeah, not much sense to be made of that! Although I have a very unscientific theory about it).
I gave caffeine away completely and after walking around in a caffeine-starved daze for three months and restricting general fluid intact to max six cups, I found that the frequent need to have to urinate small quantities went away. I went back onto one cup of coffee a day and found I can tolerate that again now. Adding the whipped cream made it the highlight of my mid-morning also eliminating any desire for eating a morning tea as such thus making it easier to avoid eating extra fruit or cake (sugar) or bread (gluten), as well as making sure I included a bit of ‘healthy’ fat in my diet. So all in all a win/win. The last couple of weeks I had some virus so upped my coffee to two per day rather than take analgesic or anti histamine and all’s well, but I’ll be knocking off the second cup just to remain on the safe side.
Birthday cakes I cook using dextrose; it has no fructose and apart from the cooking time being shortened slightly it can work pretty well just substituting dextrose for sucrose, but because I have not been eating sugar at all I find it compatible to cut the dextrose to a half of the usual sucrose and surprisingly people who do eat sugar are not disappointed by the cut in sweetness.

Fab and others, I so appreciate these discussions about sugar and gluten, as I am currently just starting to work on these addictions (which they most certainly are!). I need to fix my eating, my husband needs to quit smoking, and when we accomplish these goals, we will be well on our way to (hopefully) staying relatively healthy and active as we approach our golden years. - Surviving

I am also not a doctor and am new here, but two thoughts came to mind. I have a friend with rectal prolapse who had severe constapation along the lines you were describing, and it persisted even after surgery to remove the prolapse. She was just diagnosed with crone's disease. Have you ruled out issues such as crones and IBD yet? Also, I don't want to scare you but sometimes people get internal rectal prolapses that disguise themselves as IBS, chronic constapation, or diarrhea. I read about it as I have an external rectal prolapse and came across an article in which a person was misdiagnosed for years.

BTW what is it with doctors? I also have a, well less than stage 3, uterine prolapse and my female gynecologist also tald me, without any physical exam or office visit on the matter, that the only option would be a hysterectomy: to wich my reply was over my dead body, I am 30 years old and otherwise healthy and want children! I can empathize with people's stories and it's frustrating how many of us are misdiagnosed, not taken seriously, and if we think doctors know best which I no longer do, we end up miserable. Ridiculous! I am so greatful to have found this site and to have listened to my intuition.

Yes Treewoman, your suggestions re IBS and Crone's disease are worthwhile anyone pursuing. Also, as you go through different life stages it is possible to develop food allergies to foods which you could better tolerate before. Now that I am older, I find that the discomfort that some foods present and which I reasonably tolerated before, I no longer wish to do so not just from a comfort point of view but because they seem to be the ones must contributory to unnecessary weight gain. Another aspect worth checking on is any supplements or medications you may have could also be creating discomfort. After you check out whether any pure foods are causing you problems you could look at these supplements and medications and seek out alternative ones which do not have these side effects.
The offer of hysterectomy for uterine prolapse is simply a matter that it is all the medical profession has to offer. Don't forget their profession is to help and fix; almost obsessive in some cases: to medicate or cut and sew are the quick fixes for a fast moving, impatient society wherein most adults are concerned with earning their living, studying or parenting all of such occupations being full time and do not bend easily to time out to heal. The consideration that you want children, that a young woman losing her uterus will bring about premature menopause and all its side effects used to be a strong consideration before this only option was offered. So stick to your guns, girl.

"Don't forget their profession is to help and fix; almost obsessive in some cases: to medicate or cut and sew are the quick fixes for a fast moving, impatient society wherein most adults are concerned with earning their living, studying or parenting all of such occupations being full time and do not bend easily to time out to heal. "
This is what I needed to realize back in 2006 when the doctors won me over- the surgery with mesh failed with shame and now I have residual mesh and surgical scars as well as prolapse and my belief is that had I quit my jobf( who can just quit their income source) and let myself heal (I think a prolapse needs to be pampered with all the things Christine recommends) I would be a whole person and that too is a shame

Sammy, as you have pointed out, most of us who work cannot afford to just quit our jobs while coming to terms with prolapse maintenance. No more than a new mom can farm out her kids to a relative! That is the beauty of Whole Woman, it gives you all the tools to get on with life, without putting life "on hold". - Surviving