Natural Ways to Ease Chronic Constipation

Video Transcript:

Our next viewer question comes from Colleen, who writes in, “Hi. My teenage daughter Caitlin, 17, has had constipation since birth (chronic constipation). After years of being dismissed by her primary doctor as diet-related, a specialist put her on, Amitiza, I think is the name of it. This medication along with daily Miralax does help somewhat, but she still does not have daily bowel movements, and suffers from bloating and discomfort. She also has migraines and cystic acne.

Caitlin has always had a good diet, eating a balanced diet with lots of fruits and vegetables. She avoided food known to cause constipation, does not enjoy sweets, and has recently stopped eating meat. She expressed interest in seeing if it could be possible that it might be hormone-related, or if taking any supplements might help. I would like to avoid some of the frustration of trying too many things that do not work, or get testing to be more specific if that would be helpful. I would appreciate any direction you can offer. Best, Colleen.”

Find the Root Cause of Constipation

Well, Colleen, I’m really excited to dig into Caitlin’s case, specifically because there’s a lot at play. And when I’m working with any pediatric case, especially early childhood, infancy, and young babies that might have constipation, there’s usually stuff happening that we need to address.

Support Liver Function & Bile Production

So, if it happened early on and a decade or so later, we’re still dealing with constipation, it might be from either a liver that’s not functioning well, meaning it’s not producing enough bile, which bile is this really amazing, healthy substance. It’s part of the detox process of the liver, but also lubricates the digestive tract, particularly it moves contents out of the small intestine into the large intestine, and out via the rectum.

So, bile production enhancement is really key, and there are herbals to do that. So, one of my favorites is drinking dandelion tea. This brand, actually, is my favorite. This single teabag has 1500 milligrams of dandelion, which is three times what you ordinarily get in a tincture or, which is a more concentrated liquid herbal, or in a capsule.

So, dandelion tea several times throughout the day, at least two or three cups, can greatly enhance bile production, which helps to move the bowel contents more easily. So, that can eliminate also the straining, and even hemorrhoids and things like that from straining.

Massage the Lower Intestine

The other thing that’s at play is when we have severe constipation, meaning long-term constipative state, we’re dealing with the actual structural alignment of the large intestine, what we call the bowel. Well, when there’s a lot of contents that aren’t moving, the lower left side of the bowel can expand, and then that becomes problematic, because even with a healthy diet and adding certain things we’re going to talk about in this video, you can still have that structural issue that is part of the post-constipative state. So, we actually need to shrink back that intestinal lining. And some of that can be done, manipulated, or via a manual process of actually massaging the lower intestine. There are some amazing tutorials on YouTube.

If you guys want me to do a specific tutorial I can do that and launch that and let you all know, but there’s a technique called a Mayan Massage, and that is a more abdominal related, a specific digestive and soft tissue, lower abdomen targeted massage. That technique can actually help, one it moves contents, so you can actually massage, and so you’re going from the left tip to the right tip in a circular pattern around the belly button. But that massage technique can actually help reshape the lower part of the bowel, the large intestine, and that whole rectum area where the contents are gathering. So that’s one thing.

Supplementation for Chronic Constipation

The other thing is making sure you’re getting magnesium in the diet. So, Magnesium 7 would be a staple. And for patients that have severe constipation, having a magnesium dose with every meal consistently throughout the day is a good delivery method of magnesium.

For some reason, some folks have greater magnesium requirements than others, particularly my constipative patients, we need more than the 400 milligram requirement a day. Sometimes we need 1200 milligrams, but we space that out so it’s more tolerable. The good news is with our Magnesium 7, it’s not just a magnesium citrate, which can really move the bowels by flooding the bowels with a lot of fluid, but it will help motivate that process. So, I really recommend that three times a day.

The other thing that I recommend is a powder. I use this powder all the time, and this is an organic fiber. So, adding really dense fibers like inulin fiber, and apple pectin, and apple-related, plant-based, Jerusalem artichoke, those are going to be really healthy fibers that are probiotic enhancing.

So, if you’re taking a probiotic like our ProBiotixx+, the fiber becomes a food for the probiotics, so you always want to make sure you’re getting good, healthy fiber. And while people eat healthy diets of fruit and veggies, sometimes we’re not seeing those high serving sizes, and we’re also not necessarily seeing the 35 to 40 grams of fiber we need to take in every day to help move the bowel.

So, that’s one kind of really key recommendation, and the other thing is to make sure we’re hydrating really well.

Long-Term Constipation is a Risk Factor for Other Diseases

But the liver function is critical, getting magnesium, that’s very powerful for moving the bowels, and then also doing the manipulative massage. I recommend that as a great resource to help you and your daughter move the contents in the bowel, and really help minimize the scenario for long-term constipation, because that just sets up for really, really unhealthy scenarios down the road.

And often when we’re constipated, we have a hepatic vein, we actually have a vein that runs from the lower part of the large intestine in the rectum back to the liver, so we’re just recycling toxic junk. So, that can disrupt hormones, and that can cost us, and even be a risk factor for breast cancer and other diseases.

So, I hope those tips were helpful, and definitely let us know how it goes. Give it about three to four weeks to really take effect, and I’m curious to see how that helps anybody else as well. Thank you for asking your question, Colleen, and I hope Caitlin does well with this.