- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
A new report details an ongoing shortage of laxatives, purportedly fueled by an aging population and gut health TikTok influencers.
It might be time for Americans to start eating more fiber. The U.S. is experiencing a shortage of laxative products, according to a report this week from the Wall Street Journal. One alleged reason for the short supply is extra demand from younger people—an interest apparently fueled by TikTok influencers touting the supposed benefits of laxatives for good gut health.
The shortage concerns polyethylene glycol 3350, the active ingredient in many laxative brands, such as MiraLAX. According to a report from the analytics company Pattern, cited by the Wall Street Journal, product searches for laxatives have more than tripled over the past year on Amazon, while fiber product companies have reported an significant increase in sales as of late. The outlet also interviewed both gastroenterologists and suppliers about the drug’s declining availability, who offered several long- and short-term explanations for the increased demand.
The average American is getting older, for instance, and older people are more likely to regularly suffer from gastrointestinal conditions like constipation. The pandemic also changed many people’s dietary habits for the worse, leading to an increase in eating unhealthy snacks and other foods more likely to cause constipation. And at least part of the demand might stem from TikTok fans tuning into #GutTok, filled with people offering folk remedies for any number of gastrointestinal health issues.
GutTok has been a trending topic on the social media platform for quite some time, with influencers claiming to know the best way to reduce bloating, improve mood, and even clear acne by improving your gut health. While some of the provided suggestions for a better gut are likely to be harmless at worst, such as drinking more water, other ideas can be actively harmful, and that can include an overreliance on laxatives.
Chronic laxative use can worsen a person’s constipation further, to the point where they need higher and higher doses to pass their stool. They can also cause long-term damage to the intestines and raise the risk of rectal prolapse, a condition where the rectum slips out of the anus. And acute side effects like dehydration or stomach cramps aren’t exactly a picnic.
Though the occasional laxative is fine, people’s gut health would be better served by sustained positive changes in their lifestyle and diet, such as eating more fruits and vegetables as well as getting plenty of exercise. Whether these changes are possible on a widescale level in the U.S. anytime soon is another question.
“It’s crazy to think that our collective bowel dysfunction problems have gotten so bad that we’re literally running out of stool softeners,” George Pavlou, President of the Gastroenterology Associates of New Jersey, told the WSJ.
South Park had an episode where that happened as a growing skin infection, and while LE EPIC SATIRE IRONIC JOKE it still lead to lots of 90s edgy teenagers accusing vegetarians and vegans of having “vaginitis” and decades later they’re still reactionary edgelords, only more constipated.
I hate south park
So much of my dislike for “haha just kidding… unless” edgelord humor comes from that show. I saw it define the sense of humor, the slang, even the day to day vocabulary of so many people where I went to school, lived, and worked.
My (rather charitable) read on South Park is that it had the 2010s idubbbz mentality regarding offensive humor. They made fun of straight white people just as much as they made fun of everyone else, and they genuinely thought that that made it okay.
Privileged liberals who didn’t harbor malice towards minorities but were blind to the dynamics of oppression. Who didn’t understand that it’s okay to make fun of white people because there is no group who can utilize harmful stereotypes to suppress them, while similar jokes about black people can have actual, material consequences.
Reinforcing stereotypes about, idk, rural white people being inbred or sth is less likely to cause a white person to fail a job interview than reinforcing the stereotype of black people being street thugs, because it’s much more likely that a white person is also the employer.
That, in my mind, is what South Park (and many other white edgelords) didn’t understand and why it caused so much harm.
They didn’t make much fun of the apathetic bubble-world rich white asshole libertarianism of Matt Stone and Trey Parker, that’s for sure.
Agreed, and adding to that, I think even the underlying structure of the show and its propaganda message (caring too much about things makes people stupid, so apathy and pretenses of centrism/neutrality are by extension smart) still has a tight grasp on the thought processes of many millions of consumers that absorbed that for years, even decades now.
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