Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health
Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health

Constipation

What are normal stools?

Symptoms of constipation

Causes of constipation

Consequences of constipation

Prevention / remedies / cures / treatment for constipation

What are normal stools?

If your digestive tract is working normally, you should have a complete, comfortable and voluminous defecation at least once every day. It should take less than a minute, and be an easy, pleasant experience. The stools should be formed into a soft, round, sausage-like shape. They should be just hard enough to be formed, rather than coming out like a cow-pat.

Different people vary in their need to defecate. Some people go after every meal, others only every second day, or even every few days without this being a problem. But for most people, the ideal is once per day.

Constipation is usually a temporary problem, the result of eating the wrong food. If you suffer from ongoing constipation, then try the suggestions in Healing constipation below, and check the experience and votes for the different remedies suggested by visitors to Grow Youthful.

For many people in the industrialised west, defecation is not like this. There is an element of (sometimes substantial) strain to eliminate. People sit on the toilet for many minutes, sometimes even long enough to read a book! Constipation is common, and can be painful. There is often a frustrated feeling that a little bit more still needs to come.

If the stool comes out in thin strips it is usually an over-spill, squeezed through a hard mass of old compacted faeces lining the wall of the colon. This hard compressed faecal lining can remain in place for months, poisoning the patient and providing a residence for harmful microorganisms.

Symptoms of constipation

Causes of constipation

Consequences of constipation

If you do not empty your bowel every day, toxins can be reabsorbed from the stools in your colon back into your body.

Prevention / remedies / cures / treatment for constipation