Handy Tips

How to recover quickly after abdominal surgery

Abdominal surgery, which includes caesarean section, often leads to a condition called adynamic ileus. Your bowels just stop working due to the shock of the surgery and the effects of general anaesthesia. Sometimes it can take days to recover. It leads to a lot of discomfort and more expense for the longer hospital stay. This very cheap and easy treatment can get you moving a lot faster.

A recent study followed 102 patients that had bladder surgery. The researchers gave some of them some gum to chew on the first day after the operation. The others did not get gum. Those chewing gum began passing gas sooner, and had bowel movements sooner than those not chewing gum.

So after abdominal surgery, chew gum! It likely stimulates the autonomic nerves of your intestinal tract to help it recover. In addition, the sugar in the chewing gum can provide you with energy to speed up the recovery process.

Ref: "Gum chewing stimulates bowel motility in patients undergoing radical cystectomy with urinary diversion," Kouba EJ, Wallen EM, Pruthi RS, Urology, 2007; 70(6): 1053-6.

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