Your Friendly Proctologist

Constipation KILLS: How Backed Up Poop Damages Your Health

• Dr. Albert Chung

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SPEAKER_00

When we usually talk about constipation, it's usually in that funny context, right? You went to a Super Bowl party, had too many beers and steaks and hot dogs, and the next day, oh man, you paid for it, right? You strained on the toilet for about two hours or something, your eyeballs are popping out of your head, and you dropped a huge summarine which clobbed up the pipes in your house. Yeah, that can be super funny at times and it's a minor annoyance, but did you know that constipation can actually get to the point of causing systemic illness, can even kill someone? Well, today I want to talk to you about those exact things. Constipation shouldn't be ignored and you should pay attention and get that fixed. Hi there, I'm Dr. Albert Chung, and I'm a double board certified colon erectile surgeon here in Orange County, California. And today's video is sponsored by Vessel, the very best in hemorrhoid oral supplements. And I use this guy every day to help me with my hemorrhoid symptoms, but more on this later. You see, the definition of constipation in our medical textbooks is quite big. In essence, it's really about the digested food unable to get out of our body through our anus into the toilet bowl. But it can be in our intestines. Are we digesting efficiently? Is the food moving through these tubes of intestine? Is the poop getting too big and that's why it won't come out? Is the anus and the pelvic floor musculature not allowing the poop to move through and therefore have us feel bloated, sick, pain, all these types of things fit into the definition. Now I want to share a story that happens a little bit too often all around the world and showcases what can really happen in severe cases of constipation. There's a news story in The Independent, and this was published in November 2025. But there was a 20-year-old gentleman who was living in an assisted living center and he has developmental delays. Essentially, what happens, it seems like the nursing staff there or the care staff ignored his distention, ignored his pain, and hadn't really done anything about him not pooping for not just several days, we're talking about weeks to even up to a month. Okay, and this ultimately led to his demise. Apparently, they found that he had 20 pounds of bowel obstruction, which I'm guessing they're saying 20 pounds of stool in his belly. My guess is that once he was found, it was emergent, so they had to take him to the hospital, probably had an attempt for a life-saving surgery, but unfortunately, it sounds like it was too late. And I know what you're thinking. Oh, that's not me. Come on. I mean, I can verbalize things, but I'm trying to tell you that constipation has other systemic effects, and we should be paying attention because constipation can be linked with other conditions, like for example, cardiovascular conditions. And when we're talking about constipation, we should be mindful of our hemorrhoids, of course. And that's why I'm thankful for the sponsor of today's video, which is Vessel. This is an all-natural ingredient, clinically based, researched formula. There is nothing like this on the market because I actually had input in this formula, to be straight up and honest with you guys, and I find it to be extremely helpful for my own hemorrhoids. This is a supplement you take every single day, and I find it to really even me out. When I'm getting the flares, it lowers them. And then the days I don't have flares, I don't get that worm sensation. It actually has disappeared from me since I started taking this about maybe like nine months ago now. I've been taking it for a very long time since it came out, and I will never put this stuff down. Definitely check them out at vesselhealth.com. They have a subscription plan, and you can get discounts with that, and you can get it every single month so that you don't go without your vessel. And there was a study done on 3 million veterans which found that up to 20% of people with constipation had coronary heart disease or stroke. And then another following study was done which showed hypertension and constipation carried a 1.83 times higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease. Now, these studies aren't saying that constipation causes heart disease, but with these two elements together, you're at risk of these sequelae from your vascular system. Another way that constipation can affect our overall health is through, of course, our gut. And our gut intestine has these defense mechanisms set up which have been developed over years of natural selection evolution, right? We have a symbiotic with the bacteria and organisms that live in our intestine. But what if there's an imbalance, right? And constipation can, if it's delayed and prolonged, can create an inflammatory response because then the barriers of our intestines, which are supposed to keep the bacteria in our stool not coming into our bodies, can start to break down. And in fact, through the research, we actually find these proteins in our blood and in our stool that are not supposed to be there. They're actually supposed to be forming barriers, making things caulked sealed tight, like in a bathroom, right? You don't want the water to get out and soak your floors and drywall. You need the water to stay in and go down the drain, like down our anus. But what we don't want to have happen is the immune system response coming in through the inflammation. All the inflammation cells and all the chemicals being produced start to break down these barriers. Now the tight seals between our intestinal cells that are only supposed to bring in nutrients now can have bacteria come into our bloodstream and start to create a huge mess because now the inflammation is all over our body. The bacteria are not all bad guys, but it needs to stay in a very delicate balance. If any of those bacteria which were beneficial before become overpopulated or underpopulated, things can get out of whack again, and therefore you can have inflammation. You know, that biome balance is also important to protect us from making sure other bacteria don't come in and compete and therefore grab a foothold. That's the whole thing about antibiotics. We don't want to be using that unnecessarily. However, it may be for cold symptoms and the flu season, we don't want to be unnecessarily taking these medications because it can create inflammation in our gut biome. And so, of course, it goes without saying that prebiotics and probiotics can be very helpful for restoring and maintaining balance of our microbiome. Now, finally, going back to that news article that I read before about the gentleman dying because he was so backed up, right? How does something like that ever happen in our bodies? Well, I'm telling you, I've seen poop that has been in somebody's body for so long, it was like fossilized. It was literally like hard stones. And no, this isn't just somebody who had a hard poop, this is something that's been just baking or just festering in the intestines for that long, okay? The patient was actually a nursing home patient, a woman who had just been ignored. I mean, this types of really sad situations I've had to see over and over again. And we get called to help these people because there is no way to communicate with them, and their bellies are just bloated and they're just wincing and wailing in pain. Super sad. And you do a CT scan in these people, and there is intestines that is so stressed out. Because if you try to examine these patients with your hands, right, they don't really tell you oh, that hurts really bad to give you that indication to go to help them in surgery faster. Sometimes you're really not sure what the solution is, and you don't want to unnecessarily do surgery on somebody like that. So I took this unfortunate woman to surgery. What did I find? Well, I found that things were so severe and there was it was a path of no return, okay. Her colon or enlarged intestine was stretched out so far and so full of poop, okay, that it started to turn green and purple and essentially was trying to die. You see, the process that wishes this happens, the poop starts to back up, nothing's coming out the anus. So, what does the tube of intestine do? It starts to stretch out, and when that's happening, now the muscles cannot effectively contract and give the push to get the poop out. So the patient can't get the poop out themselves, they need assistance, but it's too late for this person. The other thing that happens is the blood supply, which is the true killer here, starts to become weaker and weaker. The blood vessels of the intestines are within the walls of that tube. So if you're stretching out those walls and you're thinning those walls out, those blood vessels get smooshed, and now all of a sudden you have no blood going in and you have no blood going out with the venous return. And thirdly, the inflammation and the leaky gut response to the chronic constipation, giving that inflammatory response. Bacteria is leaking through into her bloodstream, the immune system responding to the bacteria, and I'm sure you know if she could talk, she probably would say that she was not feeling very well, probably feeling very flu-like, probably feeling fatigued, and all those symptoms happening all at the same time, contributing to her unwellness. Now, in that particular situation, I had to remove her entire colon and she actually survived. But there are some people that are get to the last complication, which is steril perforation. What that means is the poop got so big the intestines couldn't hold on and it popped. That is very, very bad because that is an immediate life-threatening situation. Okay, the bacterial contamination now has free reign to be absorbed into the bloodstream, and the immune system goes haywire. People drop blood pressure, you get kidney failure, heart failure, all in a very quick ending demise. And if that happens, the mortality rate of people is 35 to 40 percent. That's how serious that infection is. So constipation isn't just being about a little bit backed up, it can definitely trigger chronic issues that can have a domino effect when associated with other chronic conditions and lead to more morbidity and even mortality with death. And I don't make this video to be clickbait or to scare you guys, but really to give you some perspective on how big this condition is, and also maybe we should be paying attention to those episodes of constipation. Maybe I am a little bit more constipated more often than I should be, and maybe I want to take this opportunity to address some of that. Take us to a softener, change up my diet, drink more water, what have you? You know, when it comes to anal fissures and hemorrhoids, yeah, when they're super small and they bleed once or twice a year or something like that. Okay, maybe it's not a big deal. But when they all of a sudden turn into grade three, grade four hemorrhoids, recurrent or chronic fissures with spasm, will we have wished that we paid attention to things? Will we have wished we just researched a little or heard something to be aware about it? Yeah, I I would agree so. I would want that personally for myself. And so I hope this info was helpful for you. If you like the content, please like the video, subscribe to the channel, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.