Have you ever felt all stacked up just because your early morning motion wasn’t great, and you did not clear it up? Generally, when the stomach is not getting cleaned well, we do feel the same way and those who aren’t facing this issue might not relate. What can be the reason for not having a good bowel movement or not clearing one’s motions? It can be caused due to low fibre diet, repeatedly ignoring the urge to go, less hydration, a lack of exercise, particular supplements or even stress and less sleep.
What should we do in order to help ourselves? And your answer lies in all the above-mentioned problems. The first thing to do is to start adding more of insoluble fibre into your meals. Insoluble fibre helps hydrate and move waste easily through your intestines so ultimately, it helps prevent constipation and keeps you motion regular.
Salads are a good source of fibre, which will also provide you with digestive enzymes and anti-oxidants to keep your gut health in check along with their minerals and vitamins. Include an array of veggies that contain insoluble fibre – from cucumber, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, onions and bell peppers. When you increase fibre intake, make sure that your hydration levels are optimum, otherwise, the fibre soaks up water in the intestine and can lead to more dehydration.
We need to stay active to improve blood circulation, only then the nutrient uptake in the stomach improves and eases constipation. It also helps constipation by lowering the time that food takes to move through the large intestine. This limits the amount of water absorption by your body from the stool. When water absorption happens the stools become dry which are harder to pass. Thus, it helps in improving constipation as well as overall blood circulation.
Along with the above pointers, here are a few things that should be avoided.
We generally reach out for a quick fix whenever we are suffering from anything, and constipation is no different. We take a laxative to improve the bowel moment and it actually works by stimulating bowel activity. We should be really careful when using such stimulants or laxatives as our body can get dependent on the same and won’t function well without them.
A diet high in cheese, butter, oil and other low-fibre/high-fat or high protein foods like too many eggs and meat throughout the day can slow down your digestion, and lead to constipation. The obvious solution? Go slow on your intake of such foods, and increase fibre.
For some people, caffeine can also lead to dehydration and constipation as they act as diuretics which eliminates water from the body. Limit your caffeine or coffee intake.
Avoid too much of dry food as that too causes dehydration, that’s why water is important for enabling good gut movement.