Bowel movement is a daily routine for most people. But what about if you have a difficulty releasing those bowels because you are constipated, how could you go on? Constipation causes a lot of unease and heavy feeling to a person.
Constipation is not a disease. It is rather a symptom to a disease in the digestive system. However, most of the time, this isn't a serious problem. It is usually cause by poor dietary or food intake that helps in the easy digestion process.
Know If You Are Constipated
As written above, to most people bowel movement is regular part of everyday. When you are having difficulty in moving or the daily routine becomes fewer in week. When you have constipation, your stools are usually hard, dry, and small in size but are difficult to eliminate. It seems that you are about to move but you just can not move those stools out. Many people find this condition painful because of staining, bloating and cuts in the anus.
Constipation do not exclude any age. Almost all people from a baby to an adult experience such difficulty once in their lives. However, this feeling of unease can be prevented and treated for immediate and longer relief.
Causes of Constipation
The causes of constipation begin from the food we choose to eat to the digestion to the elimination. The food we eat contains substances that are difficult for the stomach to digest and for the digestive fluids to break down. Understanding how the large intestine works in the digestion also helps. From the stomach, undigested food and food contents will be transported to the colon where the water is absorbed and the stools and waste products are formed. That is the reason why the stool is almost dry and solid when it reaches the rectum because the water is already absorbed. The peristalsis movement or muscle contractions in the colon push the waste products to rectum. That is the time you feel like eliminating something from inside the body.
Constipation occurs when the colon functions abnormally or improperly. There are times that the colon absorbs too much water that makes the waste products so dry. Because of lack of physical activity, the colon sometimes contracts too slow that makes the stool stays more time in it and becomes hard.
Common cause of constipation is the lack of fiber in the diet. These fibers help in the digestion by acting as sweepers of fats in the food. They also make the food easier to breakdown. When a person lacks exercise or other physical activity especially for people with old age, this also causes constipation. The body parts seem to be all resting, which makes the process of digestion more difficult for the stomach. Medications and abuse of laxatives could also affect food processing. Furthermore, lack of water intake or dehydration also causes constipation.
On the other hand, emotional and physical stress is also proven to cause malfunction is the digestive process and may cause constipation.
Treatment and Prevention
Two of the best treatment of constipation is eating high fiber food and increase in water or liquid intake. Fibers are naturally found in fruits and vegetables. Less likely that people who eat such kind of diet that they result to constipation. Low fiber food or high fatty foods like cheese, eggs and meats should be lesser intake. The bulk and soft texture of fiber especially insoluble fiber that passes through the intestine almost unchanged moisten the waste products and prevent them to become hard and dry so it could easily eliminated.
For foods that are difficult to digest, it is recommended that they are to be chewed well into small pieces before swallowing. When constipation is recurring, medical practitioners advise the use of laxatives. This medication helps in easier bowel movement. It has substances that break down the bulk stools.
Live a healthy lifestyle and do away with the difficult and uneasy constipation.
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