Chronic Constipation

If you have chronic constipation it’s really frustrating.  You might feel bloating, hardness in the abdomen and altogether uncomfortable. You’ve tried prunes, bananas stool softeners from the chemist and nothing seems to work well.  You might find you have become dependent on laxatives to go, but even then you might only go once or twice a week.

It is important to eliminate your stool regularly as it contains many of the toxins your body wants to get rid of. If you only go once a week, you have a week’s worth of toxins just sitting in your bowel, which won’t being doing your health any good.

Clinically, we find there are four main reasons for chronic constipation:

1. Too much inflammation (heat) in the bowel. Inflammation in the bowel can be caused by too much spicy or greasy foods or too much stress. The word ‘flame’ is in in‘flam’mation so heat is a key feature. Heat dries your bowel out.
2. Too dry in the bowel. There’s simply not enough natural lubrication to allow the smooth passage of stool through your bowel. This can be from smoking for a long time (the heat and smoking from cigarettes dries you out), having too much heat in your bowel (see #1 above) or simply from a genetic disposition to being fluid deficient (especially if you also have dry skin, mouth or hair).
3. Too much tension in the bowel. If you are a tense person – nervous, anxious or maybe you’re just always busy and on the go, you are tense on the outside (you probably have a lot of tension in your neck and shoulders) as well as tense on the inside.  Tension makes your bowel tight and restrictive so it cannot sufficiently move (peristalsis) your stool around the bowel to eliminate it.
4. Too weak. If you are really tired and lack energy, you may have a sluggish bowel that does not have sufficient energy to work properly.

We use supplements and acupuncture to alleviate constipation symptoms.  There are typically three stages to treatment:

1. We first get your bowels moving to retrain it to start working properly again. Within a week you should be going every day and your bloating should be substantially reduced.
2. We then need to address the root cause (see causes 1 to 4 above) of your constipation.
3. We then discharge you from care along with the information you need to stay more regular.

If you would like us to assess you and talk to you about how we can help you finally become regular again.