• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

“Navel Pulling”: Does Putting Castor Oil In Your Belly Button Benefit You?

November 30, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Eating sticks of butter, doing a spot of face yoga, swilling coconut oil around your mouth – the wellness side of the internet abounds with all kinds of unusual trends with some questionable claims about how they can benefit our health. One that’s been doing the rounds for a while now is navel pulling, but what exactly is it? And, most importantly, is there any truth behind the health claims people make about it? 

What is navel pulling?

Though the name could lead you to believe otherwise, navel pulling has nothing to do with uncomfortably trying to stretch out your belly button. Instead, it’s a practice that involves filling the belly button with castor oil and pressing or rubbing it in.

Advertisement

It’s been claimed to have a wide range of benefits, but some of the most popular videos about navel pulling on TikTok say that it can help with digestion, bloating, bowel movement regularity, weight loss, and “detoxifying” the body.

While such social media videos are only recent, the concept of navel pulling has been around for far longer than the internet.

It has its roots in Ayurveda, an alternative medicine system that’s been around for more than 3,000 years. Proponents refer to the presence of a “Pechoti gland”, a gland that supposedly sits behind the belly button and allows substances to be absorbed into your body.

There is, however, no scientific evidence that the Pechoti gland exists. Check for yourself if you’d like – when you search for the gland on Google Scholar, a search engine for academic literature, there are no results.

Does it have any health benefits?

Much like the existence of the Pechoti gland, there’s no scientific weight behind some of the health benefit claims made in popular social media posts about navel pulling. We imagine that’s primarily because, well, the belly button isn’t a hole (it’s actually a scar); the oil isn’t going anywhere, besides perhaps a little being absorbed into the skin.

The claims about detoxification can also be easily addressed: castor oil will not cleanse your body, nor will any other type of “detox” trend that’s out there. “Our body already has natural mechanisms through which it detoxifies,” Dr Gabriel Lopez explained in a post to the MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Cancerwise blog. It’s the job of the liver and kidneys.

As for the assertions about gastrointestinal issues, navel pulling isn’t going to be of any help there either. When castor oil is ingested, however, it’s a slightly different story – taken orally in specific doses, it’s listed by the FDA as a safe and effective over-the-counter laxative. If constipation is the reason behind bloating, then under the guidance of a doctor, oral castor oil may well help.

While there aren’t any internal benefits – besides perhaps the act of massaging your belly making you feel more relaxed – it’s possible that the skin in and around your belly button might end up super soft. “Castor oil is really rich in fatty acids, which help hydrate the skin,” Dr Matthew Bechtold, section chief of gastroenterology at the Harry S. Truman Veterans Hospital and adjunct professor of clinical medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia, told Women’s Health, although it can also cause some skin irritation.

The bottom line

Besides the potential for sore skin, there’s no harm in trying navel pulling – just don’t expect it to do anything miraculous to your body. The castor oil it utilizes is far more likely to leave greasy stains on your bed sheets than act as a quick cure for bloating.

If taken orally as a laxative, it’s also important to know that castor oil can have some side effects, such as diarrhea and vomiting. It’s recommended to speak to a doctor before using it in this way, particularly if you’re on any medications, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or have any existing gastrointestinal issues.

All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.  

The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions. 

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. For migrants bound for U.S., a long wait in a Colombian beach town
  2. Artemis May Not Launch Until October After Second Attempt Scrubbed
  3. New Record Set With 17 People In Earth Orbit At The Same Time
  4. Goodbye Fatbergs: There’s Light At The End Of The Sewer

Source Link: "Navel Pulling": Does Putting Castor Oil In Your Belly Button Benefit You?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Impact That Made Meteor Crater May Have Triggered Giant Grand Canyon Landslide
  • Get Ready, Skywatchers: A “Dazzling” Total Lunar Eclipse Is Coming In 2025
  • How A Man Won The Lottery 14 Times Using Unbelievably Basic Math
  • What Are The Amazon’s “Flying Rivers”? And Why Every Single One Of Us Relies On Them
  • Curious New Microbe With Tiny Genome Toes The Line Between Cell And Virus
  • We’ve Just Found Out Where The World’s Longest-Living Vertebrate Has Its Babies
  • For The First Time, An Animal Has Been Shown Responding To Plant-Produced Sounds
  • Deep Ocean Currents Have “Weather” And Seasonal Changes That We’re Only Just Learning About
  • Stratus: What Are The Symptoms Of The Latest COVID-19 Subvariant To Spread Around The World?
  • In 1927, Henry Ford Tried To Build A Town In The Amazon And Things Went Very, Very Badly
  • Human Botfly: Say Hello To The Parasite That Would Love To Get Under Your Skin
  • Is The Weather Making Your Headache Worse?
  • “Zoning Out” Actually Helps You Learn? Data From Up To 90,000 Brain Cells Says So
  • Over Past 250,000 Years, Three Major Waves Of Human-Neanderthal Interbreeding Have Been Identified
  • Zebrafish “Catch” Yawns Just Like Us – We Might Need To Rethink Evolution To Account For That
  • 80,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Footprints Reveal How Children Hunted On Beaches
  • 5 Animals That Have Absolutely No Business Jumping (In Our Very Humble, Definitely Unbiased Opinion)
  • Polar Vortex Patterns Explain Winter Cold Snaps Against Background Warming Trend
  • Scientists Tracked An Olm For 2,569 Days And It Did Not Move An Inch
  • Look Out For “Fireballs”: The Best Meteor Shower Of 2025 Is About To Commence, According To NASA
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version