Constipation Remedies

Does the simple act of reading that word make you squirm? How often do you find yourself squatting on the porcelain throne, tears streaming down your face, as you strain and push, hoping you aren’t giving birth to hemorrhoids or anal fissures? Do you poop several times a day, or do you go days between the urge?

Are you’re looking for that one thing, that one trick, that one pill that’s going to have you defecating easily without having to change your diet? We highly recommend permanent, well-researched diet changes with lots of raw produce to permanently alleviate constipation, but for those who don’t feel like this is an option, or for those on medications that slow bowel movements, the one you’re looking for is Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse Formula.

What is Constipation?

Constipation can be defined as having hard, dry, difficult-to-pass stools or by the frequency (or rather infrequency) of passing stools. It can also be indicated by the appearance of the stool and whether the stool is completely evacuated from the rectum after a bowel movement.

You may have heard that it’s within the “healthy range” to have three bowel movements a week or even one a week. We beg to differ. While there will naturally be some variation in frequency, a healthy gut processes food fairly quickly and consistently. A healthy body is efficient when it comes to ridding itself of waste.

Preferably, you want to have a minimum of 1-3 soft, but well-formed, easy to pass bowel movements a day. We contend that the ideal is one bowel movement for every meal. After one eats a meal, the urge for a bowel movement typically comes shortly after food begins to leave the stomach to enter the small intestine. If that sounds like too many, imagine having one bowel movement a week after eating 3 meals a day for 7 days. You’ve been packing that food into your intestines before eliminating any of it. How gross is that? What about 3 day’s worth? That’s still a lot of food waste packed and crammed into your body. Also, when defecation is easy it’s generally very fast. Frequent poopers probably spend less time on the toilet overall than those who need a book to do their business.

Healthy Poop

Healthy poop is well-formed but soft. The Bristol Scale offers a visual of normal stool, constipation, and diarrhea. It’s not always accurate; there are other variables thank can affect density and size, but it’s good to know:

Conventional Relief from Constipation

These methods are just a way to treat the symptoms, not the cause.

Glycerin Suppositories

Glycerin suppositories are tapered pieces of hardened glycerin that are inserted into the rectum. Once inside, body heat melts the glycerin, which provides lubricant to aid in passing the bowel movement.

This seemingly innocuous treatment, which has long been prescribed for babies, may not be as benign as once thought. There are drug interactions, allergic reactions, and other side effects with glycerin, and suppositories are known to weaken the bowel muscles if done repeatedly.

Mineral Oil Enemas

Like with suppositories, there are drug interactions, allergic reactions, and other potential side effects with glycerin.

Other Enemas

Enemas are also known to weaken the bowel muscles if done repeatedly. Body Ecology recommends a variety of enemas to cleanse the colon such as enemas with apple cider vinegar, burdock tea, lemon juice, etc, but we do not recommend regular enemas for health maintenance. Instead, we recommend enemas for acute care only, and we recommend cultivating a healthy ecosystem that does not need to be washed away for health reasons.

Herbal Teas Known to Help with Constipation

  • Spearmint Tea
  • Senna Tea
  • Dandelion Tea
  • Licorice Root
  • Black Tea
  • Peppermint
  • Burdock Root Tea
  • Green Tea
  • Clove Tea
  • Tulsi Tea

Exercise

Exercise is crucial to physical health, and it may also help alleviate your constipation. If you are a couch potato, get up and move. Walk, swim, rebound, squat, get moving. If you can squat, squats can help alleviate constipation and other issues as well. If you can’t squat try laying on the floor, getting up off the floor, lying back down, and repeating while alternating how the legs are used. And of course, there’s yoga! meet Adrian. Then follow her on YouTube and do her 30-day challenge. It’s life-changing. A few weeks later and you will love her and you’ll love yourself for doing it.

Eliminate Chronic Constipation For Good

The two most common causes of constipation are the two things most easily remedied – dehydration and a poor diet. If you want to rid yourself of constipation, you must drink enough water, and you must eat a diet filled with real food, optimally, a diet consisting of 80% fresh, raw, organic produce. Yes, real food, not processed garbage out of a box, a can, a jar, or a plastic tray you pop in the microwave. Ok, maybe it’s not an “easy remedy.”

The Constipation Elimination Diet

The recommended daily intake of water varies with gender, age, and other factors including how much raw produce a person eats. Check out this article at Healthline for more on water intake. An additional way to increase your fluid intake is drinking by cranberry lemonade throughout the day. Cranberry lemonade will also help you detox your liver and kidneys, boost your immune response, and improve all major bodily functions.

Raw produce provides the fiber and bulk to create healthy stools, and it provides the fiber needed for a healthy gut. Beneficial gut bacteria thrive when 80% of your diet is made up of raw, organic, produce. And a healthy gut is essential for overall health, proper digestion, and proper elimination.

If you think the 80% number sounds too difficult, eat one super salad each day filled with a variety of vegetables. Your body will thank you. Not only will you be filling your body with nutrient dense foods, you will be naturally detoxing on an ongoing basis through the food you eat. And in between meals, eat a piece of fresh, raw, organic fruit. For more on diet:

For extra help add several prunes and/or figs to your daily diet.

Posture on the Throne

We weren’t built to poop on a chair. We were built to poop from a squat. You can either squat in the woods or improvise. The knowledge that a squatting position is best for elimination is not news (I learned about it more than 40 years ago). But the idea is gaining in popularity to the point that posture aids, called squatting potties or toilet stools, are now readily available for purchase. Basically, these are footstools designed to raise your feet when you sit on the toilet and slide back out of the way when not in use.

For an immediate fix, try any low footstool you have on hand or make one with books or magazines. The point is to mimic the squatting position, which aligns the large intestine and rectum for ease of elimination.

Invest in a bathroom stool whether constipation is an issue or not. Correct posture will certainly help to avoid straining and aid in proper elimination.

Supplements That Eliminate Constipation

Dr. Shillington offers the Intestinal Detox and the Intestinal Cleanse formulas for detoxifying the bowels. If you need to move your poop, there’s nothing more effective than Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse formula. It also kills parasites, heals the intestinal tract, and is a healthy means to promote bowel movements for those who have trouble defecating. Shillington’s Intestinal detox draws out old fecal matter from the walls of the intestine, while it removes poisons, toxins, heavy metals such as mercury and lead, and more (heavy metals are another common cause of constipation). Due to the charcoal and clays in the Intestinal Detox, it actually slows things down a bit, and the two also work very well together to heal the gut.

Abzorb is another big recommendation. It’s a systemic enzyme, so the capsule does not release until it is inside the gut. It’s also a probiotic, and an effective one at that. Taken with food Abzorb makes for a very effective digestive aid. Taken without food, Abzorb will begin to clear away old fecal matter, and it offers a host of other benefits (read more about enzymes here).

Related Reading:


How Constipation Becomes Dangerous

After nutrients are absorbed from the food we eat,  undigested material and waste products form fecal waste, which is temporarily stored in the colon. When a person is constipated, the fecal waste is not expelled normally; it accumulates. Constipation can be caused by several factors. The most common are dehydration, insufficient intake of dietary fiber, and stress. Occasional constipation does not usually pose a danger to your health. However, being constipated often, or suffering from what medical practitioners call chronic constipation can lead to serious health issues.

Increase in Blood Pressure and Heart Attack

A high blood pressure reading indicates that the blood is exerting a higher than normal pressure against the blood vessels. This increased pressure  can damage the walls of blood vessels, making them more susceptible to cholesterol buildup. When cholesterol builds up, plaques and blood clots may form, leading to blockages within the vessels. When blood flow to the heart is compromised, lack of oxygen supply can result in a heart attack.

There is no scientifically proven causative relationship between constipation and hypertension. However, blood pressure can increase when a person is straining to defecate, especially when the person is constipated. The association between hypertension and constipation, especially in a person with serious heart disease, can be attributed to the excessive or frequent straining, which increases the risk of heart attack. A high salt and fatty diet are some of the known causes of both hypertension and constipation.

Formation of Hemorrhoids

Hemorrhoids are large purple masses that form in the anal canal as a result of rectal vein dilation and rupturing. They can be classified as external or internal based on their location. External hemorrhoids are found outside the anal canal as grape-like protuberances covered with a layer of mucus. Internal hemorrhoids are found inside the anal canal.

When a person is often constipated, hemorrhoids can develop due to straining. As the person forcefully tries to defecate, the rectal veins begin to dilate and may rupture and bleed. Inflammation usually develops into hemorrhoids, which can be itchy and painful.

Fecal Impaction and Colon Toxicity

The colon is responsible for the last phase of digestion, which includes the reabsorption of most of the remaining fluid in the fecal waste. With constipation, fecal waste  may become impacted in the rectum as well as the terminal or end portion of the colon, the sigmoid. As fecal waste remains in the rectum and sigmoid, more fluid is absorbed causing the fecal matter to harden and making it more difficult to pass. This is referred as fecal impaction. The condition can cause irritation to the lining of the colon and can also lead to infection.

Fecal waste contains bacteria and waste materials from the digestive process. Constant accumulation can cause a distention and possible rupture of the colon, which is very dangerous. Infection of the colon may result in further swelling and inflammation known as toxic megacolon while rupture will release the waste materials and digestive bacteria into other areas of the abdomen, which is life-threatening.

Rectal Prolapse and Anal Fissures

Rectal prolapse, or the protrusion of loose rectal tissue to a point where it is seen externally outside the anus, can be a consequence of chronic constipation. It usually appears as a proboscis-like protrusion passing the anal sphincter muscles.During defecation, fecal waste is normally pushed out of the rectum and out of the anus. With constipation, fecal waste hardens which makes it relatively difficult for the stool to pass through. When constipation becomes chronic and constant straining is common, the rectum may eventually slip off from its normal position and protrude out of the anus. Oftentimes, the protrusion is temporary and goes back to normal after the bowel movement. However, in some cases, the protrusion can become permanent and may display mucosal discharge. Though not life-threatening, the condition can be embarrassing.

Anal fissures or tears in the lining of the anal canal can also be caused by excessive straining due to constipation. Normally, when a bowel movement takes place, fecal waste easily passes through as the anal sphincter muscles relax. This is because the stool is relatively soft from retaining some amount of fluid even after digestion. But as fecal waste accumulates in the sigmoid and rectum during constipation, where water is continuously reabsorbed, hardening the stool, it becomes relatively difficult for the stool to pass through. Straining to forcefully defecate can also result in tearing of the anal canal, which leads to bleeding and painful bowel movement.

Conclusion

Proper diet will certainly be important. A high fiber diet full of fresh vegetables, fruits, and whole grains promotes movement in your digestive system and increases stool bulk. Knowing how constipation can be much more dangerous in individuals who are hypertensive, it should be prevented as much as possible. You can search for high-fiber DASH diet recipes here. And of course, regular exercise and drinking at least 1 ½ quarts of water daily should also be upheld.

Related Reading:
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Natural Remedies for Constipation – With Recipes

Anyone who suffers from constipation has serious diet issues. The best foods to promote regularity and a healthy gastrointestinal tract are raw fresh vegetables and fruit. They contain fiber, and the digestion process of raw vegetables and fruits promotes healthy intestinal flora. Diets high in refined sugar encourage yeast to flourish in the whole body, including the colon. Yeast overgrowth can overrun the beneficial bacteria, causing digestive problems.

Lack of exercise and dehydration also lead to constipation.

To prevent constipation, eat a healthy diet rich in raw, fresh, organic fruits and vegetables. Exercise, stay well hydrated and consider doing an intestinal cleanse to heal and strengthen the entire gastrointestinal system.

Dr. Shillington offers the Intestinal Detox and the Intestinal Cleanse formulas for detoxifying the bowels, and we have the recipes for these formulas at the bottom, after the other home remedies below.

If you need to move your poop, there’s nothing more effective than Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse formula. It also kills parasites, heals the intestinal tract, and is a healthy means to promote bowel movements for those who have trouble defecating. Shillington’s Intestinal detox, draws out old fecal matter from the walls of the intestine, while it removes poisons, toxins, heavy metals such as mercury and lead, and more. Due to the charcoal and clays in the Intestinal Detox, it actually slows things down a bit, but the two also work very well together to heal the gut and get bowel movements normal and healthy.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Immediate, Natural Relief for Constipation

There are many quick and easy natural remedies for constipation, from prunes and prune juice to enemas. Many of them are handed down from generation to generation.  Epsom salts are a commonly known laxative when taken orally or when used as an enema. But even the directions on the package contain a warning if you have kidney disease or are on a magnesium-restricted diet. Though rare, there have been reports of death due to magnesium toxicity. And while Castor oil has been used for generations, there are also concerns about ricin poisoning. Two tablespoons of honey will often relieve constipation, but honey, even with its antimicrobial properties may not be the best choice for people with an abundance of Candida.

More Constipation Home Remedies

There are plenty of other home remedies, but if you suffer from chronic constipation due to an injury, surgery, or a medication, chances are you’ll need more than the typical home remedies. We recommend Dr. Shillington’s intestinal cleanse for cases like aforementioned. For anyone who is constipated due to built-up fecal matter, we recommend both the previously mentioned cleanse and Dr. Shillington’s intestinal detox.

Prunes

Often called “Nature’s Remedy,” dried plums contain sorbitol, a natural laxative. Dried plums have both insoluble and soluble fiber.

Olive Oil

Pure olive oil can also help relieve constipation. It’s not surprising really when you consider how it works; the oil makes things very smooth and slippery, plus olive oil also stimulates your digestive system which can help get things moving. Try a tablespoon and increase if needed until you’ve achieved the desired effect. It works best on an empty stomach. You can mix it with a little bit of lemon juice if you like to lighten the flavor (lemon juice also acts as a natural aid for constipation.)

Flaxseed Oil, Coconut Oil

Just like olive oil, but with flax or coconut oil.

Molasses

Blackstrap molasses a (don’t get it confused with regular molasses) contains significant amounts of vitamins and minerals, including magnesium, a natural laxative. Some say to start with a teaspoon, others recommend a tablespoon.

Coffee

Coffee can have a laxative effect on the body, but we won’t get into it here because we’re not fans of coffee from a health standpoint.

Squat

You can probably figure out why squats can be so helpful, but exercise, in general, is one of the best ways to eliminate chronic constipation and squats help organs detoxify and function better.

Aloe

It’s best to use pure aloe vera gel straight from the plant. Start with about 2 tablespoons. If you don’t have an aloe plant, try store bought aloe gel or aloe juice.

Baking soda

It’s is so incredibly versatile. Baking soda works for constipation, indigestion, and other tummy issues because it is a bicarbonate. Baking soda will encourage air to come out of you one way or another, which will relieve pain from pressure., but may cause some in the meantime. Try a tablespoon in warm water.

Epsom salt

Epsom salt is an effective home remedy for constipation because the salt draws water from its surroundings, softening up stool, and Epson salt contains magnesium. Try two tablespoons mixed with water or prune juice.

Dandelions

Dandelions make it a gentle laxative as well as an effective detoxifier. A cup of dandelion tea can be made with dried dandelion leaves, or you can eat the leaves fresh with a salad. Bacteria is necessary

Probiotics

Unhealthy, imbalanced gut flora can cause constipation, leaving the undigested fecal matter in the intestinal tract to feed the bad guys. If constipation is caused by Candida or other nasty flora than probiotics can get things moving and keep things moving quickly. Typical store-bought yogurts and fermented foods are not the best probiotics because the bacteria gets killed in the stomach acid. Get probiotics that are designed to pass through stomach acid.

Related: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Shillington’s Formulas

As mentioned above, Shillington’s Intestinal Detox and Intestinal Cleanse may be what you need. Shillington’s intestinal cleanse restores the colon to optimal health by stimulating the peristaltic action and strengthening the muscles of the large intestine. It also halts putrefaction, disinfects, soothes, and heals the mucous membrane lining of the entire digestive tract. The result is improved digestion, relief of gas and cramps, increased flow of bile (which, in turn, cleans the gallbladder, bile ducts, and liver), and it kills Candida, all while promoting healthy intestinal flora. It even destroys and expels intestinal parasites and increases gastrointestinal circulation. For minor constipation, a few intestinal cleanse capsules can help relieve and evacuate the bowel within a few hours. If you want to make your own, the recipes can be found here:

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Related: Shillington’s Total Body Cleanse

Conclusion

Poor diet and poor colon health cause constipation. Overuse of laxatives causes weak bowels and chronic constipation. Bowel movements should be effortless and fast. If constipation still occurs after eating healthy for some time, a colon cleanse is in order. For anyone who has central nervous damage, or hypothyroidism, or is on medications that prohibit regular movements, or for any reason fecal elimination is a problem, the combination of Shillington’s Intestinal Detox and Shillington’s  Intestinal Cleanse will get things moving and help to repair the gut. For more on gut health, be sure to check out What Can Berberine Do For You and How To Heal Your Gut.