The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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Prune juice always worked well for my kids, and coffee for me, but if you're having a morning espresso every day for weeks and not seeing much effect, I'm not sure how strong you want to go with stimulant laxatives.
Water absorbers like fiber and miralax are good for softening stools and avoiding developing constipation, but if you're already blocked up it's too late to try to soften the culprit with additional solids. Getting yourself very well hydrated and using a chemical stool softener medicine can help even after you're already blocked up.
Are you still blocked up, though? "small and soft", as long as it's still frequent, sounds like a subtle diet change, not a still-unsolved blockage. If you're not bloated then maybe you really do just need more fiber.
If you are still blocked up, for weeks? Lifestyle changes can be subtle (travel can be a trigger for me too, though never nearly this bad), but if you're having awful constipation with no diet/lifestyle changes and you're male and you're paranoid/hypochondriac then it wouldn't be completely crazy to get a PSA (Prostate-Specific Antigen) self-test kit and then go in for a real exam if it comes up positive. Increasingly bad constipation was the first symptom of my father's cancer, and not getting it looked at until it sent him to the hospital gave the tumor time to metastasize.
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