Has he been checked by a GI doctor to feel if his bowels are moving correctly?

I spent a year and a half with a paralytic ileum. Basically, the peristaltic muscles in the small and large intestine were not moving properly. This caused me to become bloated and with full but non-moving bowels. A PT found the problem and could manipulate the ileal-cecal valve to allow proper flow into the large intestine and on.

The root cause was a chronic nerve impingement in my back. Relieving the impingement resolved this but the impingement took about a year of therapy to overcome. It flares up from time to time (like the past month or so). The most common symptoms of this is a bit of weight gain and bowel movements that are like deer droppings. For those of you who do not know what deer droppings are like, they are marble sized droppings. During the year, I had to take a spasmodic laxative to keep the peristaltic muscles exercised.

Like your son, I was sitting on the toilet a half dozen times a day or more. It was very annoying.

There is also a problem where the brain is not properly receiving the bowel signals even though the bowel is empty. I do not know if there is any way to diagnose this situation.

One of the problems I had at the same time was my brain failing to understand the position of an arm or a leg. This is nerve function is called proprioception. This problem resulted in ballistic movement. I might try to move my arm just a small bit across my chest and instead it would fly across my chest to the opposite extreme.

This was common if I tried to roll over in bed from my back to my side. My arm would fly across and my leg and/or knee would do likewise. My wife took quite a few knees in the thigh before we learned to put more distance between us.

We determined that this was caused by inflammation in my neck that was effecting the nerve signals.

I was quite a mess of problems for the first two years after my injury.

Interoception is when the brain uses nerve signals to understand how internal body parts are acting or feeling such as hunger or bowel fullness. This could be the faulty system in your son.

Oddly enough, I have not felt hunger pangs for decades. I recognize my need to eat by how my mind feels. It gets lethargic when I need to eat.

As nightnurse is finding, nerve problems in the neck can cause a myriad of symptoms.

Hopefully, you can find a good neurologist or maybe a neuro-chiropractor who can help you understand this, if it is a neurological issue. A high quality image study of his cervical vertebra may be in order. Cervical vertebra are rarely looked at closely even though they are usually impacted from the concussive forces.

Hope this helps you find some help for him.

My best to you.