New non-drug pill helps ease constipation overnight

[thewayne]

This is exceptionally clever. It vibrates.

30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, vibrating as it works its way through your digestive tract. The vibrations help to stimulate the peristaltic response, and then the pill is 'ejected' in the morning. Some testers said they could sense the vibrations, but that it wasn't unpleasant or kept them awake.

It will be interesting to see how much this is when it hits the market. My dad had this problem for most of his life, I wish they'd come out with this a couple of years ago.

https://gizmodo.com/constipation-vibrating-pill-prescription-remedy-treat-1850099562

Comments

[bibliofile]

I dunno, the article said two hours on, six hours off.

And how will that affect the cat on my lap?!?!! I wonder.

(Fortunately, this is one chronic health problem I've not really had.)

[thewayne]

I guess I'm mis-remembering the article, it was last week that I read it. That would be interesting to see if a cat on your lap heard it!  Hard to say, I'm not sure they tested for that. ;-) Ditto, not a problem for me, but we never know what's going to happen as we age.

[armiphlage]

Smart phone enablement sounds like they are making it overly complex.

[thewayne]

I was thinking along those lines.  Not everything needs connectivity.  I read an article a few weeks back about the "lack of implementation" or disconnection rate of smart white appliances, and the number that are not connected is high, as is the rate of people who connect it and then the device goes offline to the mfr: either purposely disconnected or they get a new router and forget to reconnect it.

[rain_gryphon]

It never fails to appall me how eagerly people connect everything to the internet.

And, the obvious thought... Could this thing be hacked and pwned?

[thewayne]

A friend of mine - professional, life-long IT guy - had an Amazon or Google 'assistant' device.  One night his wife woke him up saying that someone had broken into their house and she could hear voices on the ground level.  My friend grabbed a baseball bat kept in the room and crept down.  It was the device, saying 'no internet connection available'.  There had been a power failure and the thing couldn't reconnect on its own.

[disneydream06]

I wonder if you can recycle? LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugs, Jon

[kaishin108]

LOL LOL!!!!!

It sounds pretty weird to me, but hey if it worked ;-)

[thewayne]

That'd be a hard no.  One-shot battery. A friend of mine taught a health class at my uni, in fact, that's how I met her.  She recovered a pill cam that she had used - cleaned and sterilized it - so she could pass it around the class and people could see what it was like.

[disneydream06]

Thanks for sharing teacher. lol...

[thewayne]

It was a very cool thing to see!  You could see the little camera lens and the LED flash unit.

[silveradept]

There's some unnecessary complications there, sure, but I like the idea of it, especially if it can be used to avoid the see-saw between constipation and diarrhea.

[thewayne]

Agreed.  It's a very simple device: eccentric weight on a motor for vibrations, and a timer and battery.  That's about it.  Should not be hugely expensive to make, I would think.  They'll probably end up adding Bluetooth to it and a smart phone app just to drive up the price to increase profits.

[silveradept]

Or to give it some kind of unique feature that would make it patentable. As described, it seems generic enough that others could manufacture the same things, but if there's something unique that has to be left out for a generic than the company can tout how their version is superior because of this cosmetic thing that doesn't do anything at all.