Doctor: Elvis was all shook up from constipation

ELVIS PRESLEY, the King of bacon, banana and peanut butter sandwiches, didn’t die of a heart condition. He succumbed, on the toilet, to chronic constipation.

That’s the word from Presley’s longtime friend and personal physician, Dr George Nichopoulos, who said The King’s insides were All Shook Up – and not in a good way.

“After he died we weren’t sure (of the exact cause of death) so I continued to do some research and I had some doctors call me from different places and different med schools that were doing research on constipation,” the now-retired Memphis doctor told Fox News.

“We didn’t realise until the autopsy that his constipation was as bad,” Nichopoulos, author of the new book The King and Dr Nick.

“We found stool in his colon which had been there for four or five months because of the poor motility of the bowel.”

Elvis suffered from a hereditary condition called bowel paralysis, Nicholpoulos said. Presley’s colon was 5 to 6 inches in diameter, which is about twice the size of the average person’s. It was 8 to 9 feet long, where a normal one is 4 to 5 feet, the doctor said.

Nichopoulos said Presley refused to undergo a colostomy, the normal treatment for his condition at the time.

“He thought he was really a man’s man and he thought that this was a sign of weakness and he wasn’t going to be weak,” Nichopoulos said.

“He would get embarrassed,” the doctor continued. “He’d have accidents onstage. He’d have to change clothes and come back because of the way we were trying to treat his constipation.”

But, Nichopoulos said that, had Elvis gone ahead with the surgery, he might have lived far longer than he did.

“If they had done the colostomy then, he’d probably still be here.”

Presley, who was found dead in the bathroom after going to the toilet, was thought to have died from cardiac arrhythmia, possibly brought on by drug dependency, obesity and a weak heart.

The doctor also believed that Presley’s prominent weight gain in the years prior to his death was not a result of overeating or eating the wrong foods, as they initially assumed.

The doctor says that Presley’s bloated appearance was due to his severe constipation.

Meanwhile, a “low-budget” Elvis Presley impersonator began a three-day ale house rock yesterday in a bid to shake up the record books.

Simon Goldsmith, 36, of Suffolk, is hoping to sing Elvis songs non-stop for more than 43 hours, 11 minutes and 11 seconds.

Instead of the bright lights of Las Vegas, Goldsmith has opted for a quiet country pub as the venue for his Guinness World Record attempt.

The man to beat is German Thomas Gothje, who set the marathon time in Heide, Germany, between June 24 and 26, 2004.

Goldsmith, who performs regular gigs as an Elvis impersonator under the stage name Harry Isaac Presley, describes himself as a “low-budget Elvis tribute act”.

“I’ve got no problem in staying awake for that long, it’s just the effect on my vocal chords,” he said. “I’m going to have to work on some tricks to keep my voice fresh.”

He started the challenge at 8am at the White Lion pub in Lower Ufford, Suffolk.

A spokesman for Guinness World Records said: “We’d like to wish him the very best of luck in his effort.”

Goldsmith is raising money for St Elizabeth Hospice in Ipswich, where his father David died aged 58 in April last year after a battle with cancer.