Disclaimer: This post is of a slightly gross nature. Read at your own discretion.

After weeks of discomfort, I have finally found a solution to my pooping problem!

Short synopsis for those out of the loop: Ever since I arrived in Shanghai, I’ve coagulated some shitty problems in that I seem to eat more than I used to but none of it would come out the rear end.  At first, my parents tried administering glycerin enema via rectal suppository which worked for a while but lost its effectiveness after the 7th time. (Also, I wasn’t very keen on having a plastic bottle head shoved up my ass on a periodic basis.)

So I nagged my parents to take me to the hospital where the doctor advised me to:

1) Drink lots of water (done)

2) Eat some yoghurt (done)

3) Exercise more (not done – overcoming laziness is a long term goal that cannot be effected on a short term basis)

4) Eat more vegetables (done –  Shanghai is like heaven for vegetarians. There are too many veggies to count!)

5) Drink some honey (done – twice daily)

She then prescribed some oral laxatives which were supposed to work within 24 ~ 48 hours, but after 3 days of taking it… still nothing! At this point, my parents got super worried because their precious daughter’s not pooping regularly. So they went to a Chinese herbal pharmacy and got a bag of leaves. (Apparently some old grandma living one floor below also couldn’t poop for 5 days and when she drank the tea made from these leaves, she had diarrhoea for 2.)  So I drank a cup (~6 grams) and finally experienced a relief like none other! 

Moral of the story? Rather go for a remedy that has been around for thousands of years and has been proven to work for thousands of years, than go for a sachet of powder that only came on the market in the last decade, has active ingredients 90% of which I cannot even pronounce, costs an arm and a leg and doesn’t even work at the end of the day.