Biofeedback Therapy and the Impact of Sitting on Digestive Health

Childbirth can cause tearing of the delicate nerve fibers that allow the two muscles to communicate with each other. The good news is that those nerves can heal and reconnect. Irrespective of whether the damage was caused by childbirth or some other way, one good treatment option is what doctors call biofeedback therapy, offered by some gastroenterologists or gastroenterology departments. It teaches the two sphincters to overcome their estrangement and get to know each other again. A machine is used to measure how efficiently the internal and external sphincter are working together. If messages from one to the other get through, the patient is rewarded with a sound or light signal.

The closure mechanism of our gut is not designed in such a way that it can open the hatch completely when we are seated. There is a muscle that encircles the gut like a lasso when we are sitting or, indeed, standing, and pulls it in one direction, creating a kink in the tube. This mechanism is a kind of extra insurance policy, in addition to our old friends, the sphincters. When we are sitting or standing, our sphincters have to expend much less energy keeping everything in. If the lasso muscle relaxes, the kink straightens. The road ahead is straight, and the feces are free to step on the gas.

Squatting has been the natural pooping position for humans since time immemorial. The modern sitting toilet has existed only since indoor sanitation became common, in the late eighteenth century.

Hemorrhoids, digestive diseases like diverticulitis, and even constipation are common only in countries where people generally sit on some kind of chair to pass their stool. This is not due to lack of tissue strength, especially in young people, but to the fact that there is too much pressure on the end of the gut. Some people tend to tense up their entire belly muscles when they are stressed. Often, they don’t even realize they are doing it.

Hemorrhoids prefer to avoid internal pressure like that, by dangling loosely out of the anus. Diverticula are small, light-bulb-shaped pouches in the bowel wall, resulting from the tissue in the gut bulging outwards under pressure.

Source – Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders, Jill Enders (Illustrator)

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23013953-gut