Is your lifestyle causing constipation?

Fibrous meals like this fruit-filled breakfast will help your digestion, if your constipation is only created by your lifestyle.

Probably not.

For whatever reason, constipation seems to be the thing patients often tell me is “only” due to their lifestyle. And true, for things to be moving regularly, you need adequate fiber, water and exercise. If you are not drinking any liquids, if you are eating less than 10g of fiber per day (I consider “good” fiber intake to be in the 20-30g range), and you have a sedentary job with sedentary habits at home, then you may want to change your lifestyle and that may improve things.

But more frequently, I see people who feel constipated unless they eat some crazy amount of fiber, like 80g a day, or need to drink 5 gallons of water before things get moving. These people will tell me they have no digestive problems, as long as their lifestyle is in check. This sentiment seems to have come out the bizarre belief that if you just have the perfect lifestyle - exercise regularly, eat perfectly, and meditate your stress away - then you just won't get sick. But that's just not true. This phenomenon of suffering unless you go to extremes is what a homeopath calls a “dynamic disturbance”. In other words, it is an illness, not a indisposition created by your lifestyle.

There is a bit of grey area here, but let me try and make it clearer with a different illness. Let’s say a person has depression, and the only way they feel better is if they have zero gluten, sugar, dairy or eggs. They avoid those foods, and feel perfectly fine - they will tell you they are perfectly healthy. Then one day a restaurant mistakenly gives them a product with gluten in it, and three hours later, they are swirling in their depression, quickly becoming suicidal. Now, is it normal that gluten makes you suicidal? No its not. You may be MANAGING your disease with food (I consider food in these cases to be used “therapeutically” not truly just a lifestyle intervention) but you still have a DISEASE.

With constipation, it’s the same. If you need to revolve your entire world around how you eat, drink or move your body in order to manage your constipation, then your constipation is not a lifestyle problem, it’s a disease problem. And if something is a disease problem, you need a homeopath, you don’t need to be more disciplined.