Keeping It Regular
While it may seem straightforward, having a regular healthy bowel movement requires a lot of factors to line up. These can include:
- Diet
- Medications taken for other conditions
- Hormones
- Antibiotic use
- Prior abdominal surgeries
- Mental health
- Prior pregnancies
While it may seem straightforward, having a regular healthy bowel movement requires a lot of factors to line up. These can include:
- Diet
- Medications taken for other conditions
- Hormones
- Antibiotic use
- Prior abdominal surgeries
- Mental health
- Prior pregnancies
Regain Control of Your Digestive Health
There’s no copy-paste solution for these problems. An integrative, comprehensive approach is best. Laxatives to encourage a bowel movement or medication to slow diarrhea can each be helpful in the short-term for symptom relief, but leveraging changes to nutrition, movement patterns, response to stress, and mental health can collectively be a game-changer to regulate digestion over time. By addressing each of the many factors that affect the digestive system, we may be able to reduce or eliminate the need for constant medication to regulate bowel habits.
There’s no copy-paste solution for these problems. An integrative, comprehensive approach is best. Laxatives to encourage a bowel movement or medication to slow diarrhea can each be helpful in the short-term for symptom relief, but leveraging changes to nutrition, movement patterns, response to stress, and mental health can collectively be a game-changer to regulate digestion over time.
By addressing each of the many factors that affect the digestive system, we may be able to reduce or eliminate the need for constant medication to regulate bowel habits.
FAQ: Constipation & Diarrhea
Can stress cause constipation or diarrhea?
The gut and brain are in constant communication, so our nervous system plays a big role in digestion. Stress activates our ‘fight or flight’ mechanism, which can directly affect the movement of your bowels in either direction, by slowing it down (constipation) or speeding it up (loose stools, urgency, diarrhea).
At EverBetter Medicine, we recognize the strong connection between mental health and digestive symptoms like constipation or diarrhea. We have found great success with a balanced approach using medications, lifestyle changes, and counseling to modulate the connections between your brain and gut in times of acute or chronic stress.
I eat plenty of fiber. Why am I still constipated?
While fiber is essential for using the restroom regularly, it is not always enough on its own to prevent constipation. Water intake plays a key role. Certain medications, like narcotics and iron supplements, can slow digestion, while a lack of physical activity can also make the digestive tract sluggish. Stress and anxiety, as noted above, can disrupt normal gut function. Many other factors likely contribute to bowel habits as well.
Are laxatives safe for long-term use?
Laxatives can provide symptom relief from constipation and are usually safe for long-term use. But our goal is to understand why you need them in the first place. To establish the underlying cause of constipation, we may need to order lab tests or imaging. Other times, the solution might be found by examining dietary intake, movement patterns, or looking at stress and how you feel. By addressing a range of influences on the entire digestive system, rather than simply focusing on symptoms, we aim to prevent the need for long-term reliance on medication to make our bowel habits more regular.
Can probiotics help regulate my bowel habits?
The theory of probiotics makes sense: add beneficial bacteria to restore balance in the gut microbiome. Currently, there are thousands of known bacteria in your gut, but no evidence-based way to predictably target the gut’s microbiome. As such, there is no substantial data that shows probiotics can be consistently effective for either constipation or diarrhea. Perhaps one day this will be a solution for constipation or diarrhea – we’ll always keep an eye out for any emerging research here.
