Only hard in the sense of "difficult". You can technically still have constipation with the softest of, um, output.Well, wouldn't the study of constipation be a hard science?
Technically true, no doubt, but as the large bowel abstracts water from the contents, a sluggish gut will tend to produce hard faeces.Only hard in the sense of "difficult". You can technically still have constipation with the softest of, um, output.
Constipation is all about frequency (i.e. low) rather than content itself.
Technically true, no doubt, but as the large bowel abstracts water from the contents, a sluggish gut will tend to produce hard faeces.
Full disclosure: I had a hernia op last month and was advised to take sodium docusate pills for a while, to keep my faeces softer and more bulky while the surgery heals, to avoid any risk of straining. This is a surfactant (a sulphonate), which tends to retain more water in spite of the dehydrating effect of the large bowel, and also retains more fat. (I find these medical indignities can be made somewhat easier to bear by applying what remains of my knowledge of chemistry.)
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There. Just trying to keep the science content of this forum up to scratch, in view of recent comments by wegs and James R .
How would I know? I eat normally, with a slight Mediterranean bias. Fish twice a week, once oily, 1-2 veggie nights per week. I like spinach and cavolo nero.
I went through that procedure a few years back .The constipation was very unpleasant (a general nausea )and the relief when full stools were resumed was a great feeling.
Well as long as they didn't advise you to take norbornane.
Peanuts, oats, spinach, salmon, black beans, kidney beans....if exchemist is leaning Mediterranean he's likely to get plenty. Really, just eating a variety of nuts would do it. Wait...now I've forgotten the thread topic. And I don't get the in-joke about norbornane. Looks like an industrial bicyclic?
Norbornane is my avatar, that’s all. It’s because of the norbornyl cation, which has non-classical bonding and thus was an object of fascination when I was an undergraduate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-Norbornyl_cation It’s the sort of thing boron does all the time, but not carbon.
This was done by laparoscopy and was extraperitoneal, i.e. they find the space between the abdominal muscles and the peritoneum and blow it up with CO2, thus avoiding the need to puncture the peritoneum - they go round the side in effect and unroll a patch of mesh reinforcement.They did both sides. Very ingenious. I was able to go home 3 hrs after the op, which is pretty good. 3 one inch cuts in a line, from just below the navel to just above the penis: one for the light and endoscope, and two for various instruments. I was warned about baboon balls but have not seen it, though there is some puffiness either side of my lower abdomen which may be pooled blood or serum from the procedure. I expect it will go away eventually. And no stitches. They used surgical glue, which is a bit like that silicone stuff you put round your bath. It’s almost all peeled off now. So almost no scars.
I wondered what that was
Even though I now know more, am paid more, the lab days were my best days. It was hard work, surrounded by people who all knew more than I did, a humbling experience.
Spill the beans Wegs has he been in touch? He misses the site right?
I recall having suddenly to do wet chemical titrations after a 20yr gap, using a method I had never practiced, for ppm Zn in railroad engine oil, in Guatemala, because the chemist in the little plant I was commissioning had gone off sick.
The hard way! Probably just mass spec it now.
Yeah it would by spectroscopy (not MS) in large QC labs, but this was a little plant just for the Guatemalan market.
You're the chemist but I'm pretty sure they use a variant of MS for heavy metals at least for our stuff.
I will feedback Monday on this, check a few test reports.
I reverse Google searched the images to find out
XRF was coming in for QC work when I retired. But I don’t recall MS. I think it may be too expensive for the sort of routine work we needed.
I’ve looked up the ASTM methods I dimly remember. One uses AAS (atomic absorption) and one uses ICP-OES (inductively coupled plasma optical emission). The latter I think is a bigger machine and quite costly compared to AAS, but can handle a wider range of analysis, so was justifiable for big plants.