Constipation: Are you sure it's not
YOUR problem?
Constipation in its most severe form tends to be pretty unmistakable. If you've been going days at a time without a bowel movement, and you're feeling noticeably worse than usual, usually you'll make the connection and try to do something about it. Even at that, it's amazing how many people are in this state and consider it perfectly normal, and do nothing to address this dangerous problem.
But not all constipation takes the form of such extreme lack of movement. Even if one has daily bowel movements, the eliminations may be smaller, narrower, or drier than they should be, indicating that some waste material is not being properly eliminated, which can cause or aggravate a wide variety of significant health problems. (See "Constipation and Chronic Ailments" on this site.)
This degree of constipation can plague a person for many years and not be recognized as a problem, or a cause of other problems. First, such a person generally has no real frame of reference to know if his or her bowel movements are "normal" in this respect. Let's face it--this is not a common topic of conversation around the water cooler at work! Second, most people wouldn't think to link abnormal elimination with any health problems unless one or both occurred in the extreme. Third, even "normal" elimination, if one defines "normal" as what is "average" in our society, may not be the optimal for ideal health.
Constipation is not an all-or-nothing condition. It DOES come in degrees. And it's not surprising that most people experience at least a degree of constipation and don't even realize it, considering that few people get more than a third of the dietary fiber that even our nutritionally conservative government dietary guidelines recommend. Likewise, even fewer people eat a diet high in raw fruits and vegetables, nature's primary way of preventing constipation and the other problems it precipitates.
Constipation can continue to have some negative effect on health and vitality even after people have made some diet and lifestyle improvements. While any improvement in one's diet will have some positive
effect, previous years and even decades of poor food choices generally cause chain reactions of negative effects in the body, which don't all disappear quickly just because one's diet improves. For example, stored toxins can interfere, directly and indirectly, with our optimal absorption of new nutrients, including those which the body would use to help rebuild and revitalize the eliminative process, thus making it even harder for the body to eliminate all waste. Even modest dietary improvements alone generally bring some significant relief, and can keep the problem from getting worse, but they often don't completely undo all the effects of thousands af poor food choices.
