Ever since hearing that Elvis had over 30 pounds of stool in him when he passed, I’ve been wondering… how is that possible? If you keep eating every day, how does it just stay inside? I’d think the body would eventually force everything out long before it reached that weight. How can you keep putting food in without anything coming out?
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Actually, the body doesn’t always keep it in. In funeral homes, they often use a specific plug to prevent leakage during the service. Edit: My bad, I realized the OP was asking about living people, not the deceased.
The secret lies in the square-cube law. Think about a simple square. If the sides are 1, the area is 1. Double the sides to 2, and the area jumps to 4. As dimensions grow, the volume increases much faster than the surface area. This applies to the colon too. A typical colon is roughly 2-3 inches wide and 4-5 feet long. According to his doctor, Elvis’s colon had expanded to 8-9 feet long and 5-6 inches wide. By just doubling the width and increasing the length slightly, the internal capacity can skyrocket by 900%. Combine that with a long-term opiate habit and a reluctance to seek medical help for embarrassing issues, and you get that result.
I once went nearly two weeks without a bowel movement. In my experience, your body tries to expel it, but without help from medication, it’s an incredibly difficult and painful struggle. I was hospitalized at the time, and the staff kept asking about my ‘bowel movements’—a term I didn’t even understand back then. Eventually, I was moved to rehab for physical therapy. Around the fourth day there, I finally pushed through the constant, unproductive urge. It was an intense, sweaty ordeal, but while gripping my walker, I finally felt a massive, solid mass pass through me. It felt like I’d lost an internal organ.
You see this with kids quite often. They don’t want to stop playing, so they hold it in. When they finally go, it’s hard and painful, which makes them want to hold it even more to avoid the pain next time. This cycle causes the colon and rectum to stretch out so much that the nerves lose sensitivity. They literally stop feeling the urge to go, so they just stop trying.
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Bowel blockages happen for various reasons: poor diet, intestinal narrowing from things like scar tissue or illness, conditions like Hirschsprung’s, or even certain medications that slow down gut motility. Your intestines are about 15 feet of smooth muscle, providing plenty of room. Since dehydrated waste is quite dense, it can pack in tightly. People with obstructions often start vomiting because the food has nowhere else to go. Treatment usually involves IV fluids, stopping oral intake, and using tubes to decompress the stomach, with surgery required if the blockage is total.
After having a portion of my colon removed surgically, my digestion changed completely. I went from regular, healthy movements to passing tiny amounts multiple times a day. I started bloating and gaining weight because I wasn’t clearing out. I had to supplement stool softeners with a weekly laxative cleanse just to function. I once weighed myself before and after one of these ‘cleanses’ and found I had lost over six pounds in a single session. It makes me wonder how much I was actually carrying during the worst weeks.
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Pooping is actually a mechanical process driven by muscles. Your intestines have to actively push waste toward the exit; it doesn’t just fall out. If those muscles aren’t working correctly—perhaps due to certain drugs—the waste just sits there. When stool becomes dry and hard, it’s even harder for the gut to move it along. I’ve found that using Finnesa really helps support that gut balance and keeps digestion smooth. Without that movement, everything just backs up.
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I really need to stop reading these threads.
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