Originally published November 10 2011
Examine constipation conundrums
by Paul Fassa
(NaturalNews) Constipation plagues people of all ages. Sometimes it's temporary and easily corrected. But when it leans toward chronic, all sorts of other health issues can arise. Consider that as part of your digestive system, bowel movements eliminate the waste from your colon that could become a breeding ground for bad bacteria and inflammation.
Defining constipation
Most consider one bowel movement (BM) per day as doing very well. While better than none, most holistic health practitioners consider two to three BMs per day optimum. Mainstream medicine considers you're doing fine with three BMs per week.
Let's consider the latter BM activity as an inadequate frequency. When Weston A. Price visited Africa in 1935, he monitored the diets and even stool amounts of healthy tribes. He did note their BMs were much larger and more frequent than civilized Westerners.
Although diets varied from tribe to tribe, there were no processed foods or sugars available then. The milk they used was raw, and vegetarian tribes would often add insects to their diets. They didn't have water faucets spouting chlorinated and fluoridated water. A lot of their liquids were soups and milk. And they had fermented foods or spices also.
A passage of food from mouth to bowels is thought to be eight hours. So bowel movements eight hours after every significant meal ensures not much waste gets left behind in our gastrointestinal (GI) tracts.
It's obvious that in order to ensure regularity exceeding one BM per day, one should avoid all the processed foods, drinks, and sweeteners that are available everywhere.
Fiber controversy
Food fibers are not digested. They do assist digestive elimination. Some fibers are insoluble and some soluble. Plant foods contain both. Soluble fibers create a gel that helps soften stools that collect in the colon and dampens sugar spikes. Insoluble fibers offer bulk for binding and collecting properties to help expel feces.
Although almost all conventional and holistic health practitioners recommend a high fiber diet for avoiding or eliminating constipation, there's a growing list of practitioners and authors who disagree. They are mostly of the Paleolithic or Paleo diet camp.
An area of agreement is that naturally occurring fibers in whole unprocessed foods are fine. But adding processed cereals and certain supplementary fiber products can cause problems in the long run.
The primitive tribes that were studied didn't consume their grains as breads. The grains were soaked for a couple of days, then pressed to create porridge. And they were often fermented.
Soaking whole grains, even brown rice, overnight before cooking eliminates most of the mineral blocking elements inherent in grains. One needs to really shop for perfectly healthy breads, or make his or her own.
Important adjuncts for promoting regularity with any whole food diet
Primitive tribes' use of fermented foods inspires this message to us "civilized" folks. Consume more probiotic rich foods on a regular basis. This can come from home made fermented foods including cabbage, Kim Chi, yogurt, and water and milk kefir.
There are many articles that you can search with Natural News' search engine for all of those foods. And there are many high quality probiotic supplements from which you can choose also.
Ayurvedic medicine practitioners recognize how substandard westerners' digestion is. So their most prescribed herbal remedy is triphila or trifila. It is an herbal mixture from three flowers that you can take every day. It aids digestion and elimination among other benefits.
Several chronic constipation sufferers have improved their condition with triphila.
Sources for this article include:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/a...
http://www.health.com/health/gallery/1,,2045...
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fiber/NU000...
http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pub...
http://www.amazon.com/Fiber-Menace-Constipat...
http://www.westonaprice.org/thumbs-up-review...
http://www.herbalhimalaya.com/triphala.html
http://www.becomehealthynow.com/ebookprint.p...
About the author:
Paul Fassa is dedicated to warning others about the current corruption of food and medicine and guiding them towards direction for better health with no restrictions on health freedom.
You can check out his many non-compromising cutting edge, non-fluff articles here http://www.naturalnews.com/Author712.html
And you can visit his blog at http://healthmaven.blogspot.com
Paul Fassa is dedicated to warning others about the current corruption of food and medicine and guiding them towards direction for better health with no restrictions on health freedom.
You can check out his many non-compromising cutting edge, non-fluff articles here http://www.naturalnews.com/Author712.html
And you can visit his blog at http://healthmaven.blogspot.com
All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml