Have you experienced the positive power of pooping? Millions of Americans can’t answer yes to that question because, as a nation, we are more constipated than any other population in the world! A 2014 survey from the NIH (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3531555/) revealed that 16 percent of Americans, about one-third of them over the age of 60, suffer from chronic constipation. The result of this near epidemic necessitates more than 700,000 ER visits and billions of dollars spent on laxatives each year. No matter how young or old you are, at one time or another, we are all affected by the clogged-up consequences of constipation and other poopy issues!
I’m Nurse Wong of Butt Talks TV of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok fame. Over my 40+ years in nursing, with 20+ years specializing in colorectal health at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), I’ve seen it all. When I first started working with colorectal patients, I quickly realized that it’s difficult for most people to open up about their personal poop-related issues.
As I expanded my knowledge and mastered the skills of my profession, I became so adept at taking detailed case histories, testing patients’ anal/rectal muscle function, using biofeedback to teach them how to properly poop, and counseling them on dietary and lifestyle changes, that my co-workers affectionately dubbed me the “The Butt Whisperer” and the “Rear Admiral.” My son, Julien, a savvy Millennial, decided that my skills were worthy of a much wider audience. So, he came up with the idea of having me promote poop health via social media platforms and a free ButtTalks poop app. After a little over a year, we have hundreds of thousands of followers from all over the world.
The notoriety we gained on social media got the attention of a rep from Ulysses Press culminating in my new book, The Power of Pooping: A Cheeky Diet and Lifestyle Guide to End Constipation and Transform Your Health, which has just come out (pun intended). The book covers a lot of ground and is injected with humor throughout. The first seven chapters each begin with a short section chronicling the fast-paced life of Ella, a stressed-out manager of a tech start-up who develops serious poop issues. It moves on to provide an overview of the digestive system, addresses the taboo of all things poop-related, the prevalence of constipation and ways to deal with it, the history of food preservation, the empty calories of fast foods, how to properly poop, lifestyle changes to get you pooping, and a section of practical recipes for constipation relief.
My mission for Butt Talks and The Power of Pooping is to demystify the poo taboo and get the whole world happily and healthfully pooping! As part of that mission, the book is dedicated: To the silent sufferers who need guidance, treatment, and good old TLC to face and hopefully conquer the nasty poop-related issues that plague them every day. —Susan Wong, aka Nurse Wong
Throughout the book, you’ll see our main social media character, Butty, who appears in many sidenotes. Here he is from page 73.
Butt Talks TV has made understanding the pooping process easy for you, with the help of many educational videos by Nurse Wong. Scan this QR code to go to the Butt Talks website and check them out.
Here’s a snippet of Ella’s story that begins Chapter 1.
Ella, a single, thirty-something, stressed-out, multitasking manager of a software start-up, wakes up with a jolt, looks at her phone, and realizes she has overslept. It is Wednesday, and today of all days, she can’t be late for work since she’s in charge of a team meeting. She throws on her clothes, drags a comb through her tangled hair, and heads for the kitchen. Once in the kitchen, she grabs the large cinnamon roll her coworker gave her yesterday at work, nukes it, then ferociously attacks it. She washes down the sweet, doughy mixture in her mouth with a cup of day-old coffee she didn’t even bother to heat, grabs her coat and purse, rushes out the door, and off to work.
Ella is lucky that the traffic isn’t snarled, so she arrives with six minutes to spare. Once at work, she immediately heads to the employee lounge, pours herself a 32-ounce cup of hot black coffee, and heads to the conference room for the meeting.
Ella’s story continues through Chapter 7 where she experiences a catharsis as her saga of poop problems transforms her life in an unexpected way.
The practical side of the book includes a fun Poop Quiz to test the readers’ knowledge of the defecation process, the 3 Ps of the Public Pooping Protocol, the seven types of poop shapes and textures, and Nurse Wong’s 3P Questionnaire (Pre-Poop, Poop, Post-Poop) to name a few.
Here’s a small section from Chapter 2 regarding the taboo of discussing our poop problems with others.
I wrote this book because I truly want to help people live their best lives. Every day I listen to my patients and read the email comments from Butt Talks TV viewers telling me about all the doubts and emotional distress they have around their pooping problems.
We, as a society are not very open or comfortable discussing the messy topic of our poop problems with immediate family or clinically driven doctors who, on average, spend a mere five to seven minutes face-to-face with us.
Since we all have poop problems at some point in time; Butt Talks TV on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and now, via our new book, The Power of Pooping, can all help you live your best life so you can truly experience the power and joy of healthy pooping!
The book is available from UlyssesPress.com, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, eBay.com, Alibris.com, Thriftbooks.com, Walmart.com, Target stores, and other retail stores near you.
Susan Wong, RN, BSN, aka “Nurse Wong,” is a graduate of the UCSF School of Nursing. In her 40+ years as a nurse, she has served patients at UCSF in a variety of settings including surgical, dialysis, and colorectal. In 1999, she was asked to help with the development of a groundbreaking UCSF colorectal clinic.
Because of her ability to effectively listen and empathize with the beloved patients she treats, Nurse Wong has been affectionately dubbed the “The Rear Admiral” and the “Butt Whisperer” by her coworkers. She has participated in workshops all across the US as well as the Netherlands and Great Britain. She has won several service awards of excellence for contributions to her patient population and is rated as one of the top providers at her medical center. In May 2020, she was interviewed about the use of bidets for an article in the Smithsonian Magazine. At the urging of her son Julien, Nurse Wong and Julien launched Butt Talks TV on YouTube with the goal of reaching people around the globe with bowel-related issues by demystifying the taboo surrounding poop health. Though still in its infancy, Butt Talks TV already has a fast-growing subscribership along with further plans for expansion.
On a personal note, Nurse Wong was one of only five Chinese-Americans out of the 140 in her nursing class, which, at the time, was a cultural breakthrough. After the passing of her husband in 2003, she raised her son Julien, now a budding entrepreneur. Her first language is Cantonese and she is also fluent in French. She loves to cook for family and friends using the many herbs grown year-round in her lovely San Francisco patio garden. Follow Butt Talks TV on @butttalkstv on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
John Rietcheck, MA, AuD, is a clinical audiologist with a master’s degree from the University of Kansas and a doctorate from Salus University’s College of Audiology. He recently retired from the San Francisco VA Health Care System after twenty-nine years in hearing health care. He’s worked as a reporter for the Red Rock News in Sedona, AZ, and served as an editor of newsletters for local nonprofit organizations for a combined twenty years in both Topeka, KS, and San Francisco, CA. In his personal life, John is a singer and songwriter who has written and recorded many of his songs on two music albums. Now a resident of northern Nevada near Lake Tahoe, he enjoys cooking, reading, hiking, and playing disc golf.
