Are you feeling a bit backed up? Has your pooper lost its panache? Well, friends, do I have just the news for you! According to acupuncturists, the poop button is totally a thing — and it can get you, erm, going again in no time. You simply need to know where to find this mystical zone and how to stimulate it, so my research skills and I are here to help. With the former, not the latter. Today's news is brought to you by your bowels, and the number two.
ICYMI, if you're squeamish about potty talk, this may not be the post for you. However, it goes without saying that most of us poop, thereby making this pertinent info for a wide variety of people. In my household growing up, poop was never a taboo topic — largely because my stepfather and his entire extended family suffer from chronic constipation. I'm talking no poop for days, y'all. So whenever one of them did feel a movement coming on, they weren't exactly shy about celebrating the occasion. If only they'd known about the poop button, a spot on the stomach located three finger-widths directly below your navel, family gatherings would undoubtedly included far few relatives randomly running to the bathroom for highly anticipated relief.
Acupressure and acupuncture experts call this spot Conception Vessel 6 (CV6) or the "Sea of Energy" — it got the nickname poop button from a mommy blogger. According to these experts, CV6 is one of the most important acupuncture points, as it is traditionally consider the center of the human body. Stimulating this point, then, unleashes a bevy of benefits. One of them is obviously poop. In addition to improving digestive issues, CV6 allegedly also addresses infertility, impotence, and sterility ... so watch out for that, eh?
If you're feeling skeptical, you wouldn't be the first. Although acupuncture has been an integral component of Chinese medicine for thousands of years, the debate over its legitimacy as quote-unquote real medicine dates essentially dates back just as far. Advocates for the technique say it is a viable alternative to traditional medicine and can be used to treat many common health problems; cynics say it relies largely on the placebo effect; and you? Well, you get to be your own judge.
For what it's worth, in a 2013 study published in the journal Cancer, researchers explained that patients receiving real acupuncture and "sham" acupuncture reported the same improvement of symptoms, bolstering the notion that the benefits of acupuncture come from the power of mental suggestion. However, a 2010 study in the New England Journal of Medicine both refuted the efficacy of acupuncture and recommended it for chronic low back pain. So, bottom line? Maybe its restorative effects really are mystical and exist on a plane of understanding most people don't readily possess.
Having said all of that, before you go pressing on the mystical zone known as the poop button, be warned — the rumored reaction time is relatively quick, whether you believe in acupuncture or not. But if you're close to a bathroom and feeling backed up, simply use your fingers to apply pressure to the spot for roughly a minute while inhaling and exhaling deeply. Before you know it, the poop button might just make a believer out of you.
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