Heal Constipation Permanently (5 Cures No One Talks About)

If you're constipated, the answer might not be more fiber, more water, or another laxative, because constipation isn't one problem. And treating every case the same way may be why yours keeps coming back. Now in this video, I'll show you the five tools for constipation by looking at your digestion through two different lenses. What both modern science tells us about motility, stool consistency, and the nervous system, and what Chinese medicine tells us about stagnation, Dryness, deficiency, and cold. Now by the end, you'll have a much better idea of which strategy actually fits you and helps you. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book, Master of the Day. Let's jump in. Now if you don't know my story, a lot of why I became a traditional Chinese medicine doctor instead of a conventional medical doctor was my experience with digestive illness throughout my life. You know, I'd seen the best specialists, doctors, dietitians, nutritionists, the best GIs anywhere I could, and I didn't find that anyone was very good at diagnosing what I had or really effectively treating it, even symptomatically. And inevitably where I ended up was the office of some acupuncturist who was a French guy who knew Chinese medicine. The most bizarre thing ever, but it actually completely changed my life. And what he gave me that day, an herbal formula 900 years old, gave me the best digestive function of my entire life. And it blew my mind. And one of the major issues I had at the time was constipation. So before we can get into the five things you can actually do about constipation, we need to understand what constipation really is. Because most people think constipation just means I'm not going to the bathroom enough. But from my point of view, that's really only part of it. From a Western medical point of view, having a bowel movement is actually a pretty coordinated process. Your digestive tract has to move food forward through these rhythmic muscular contractions called peristalsis. As that material moves through the colon, water's absorbed. And eventually stool reaches the colon, you get the signal that it's time to go, and when the muscles of the pelvic floor and anal sphincter have to coordinate properly to let that stool out. So constipation can happen when any part of that process isn't working well. Maybe the colon is moving too slowly, so the stool sits there longer, more water gets absorbed, and it becomes harder and drier. Maybe the transit is relatively normal, but the pelvic floor isn't relaxing properly when you try to have a bowel movement. Something people rarely connect with constipation, which is your nervous system. Your gut has its own nervous system, the enteric nervous system, but it's constantly communicating with your brain and your autonomic nervous system. So if you're chronically stressed, constantly rushing, eating while working, sleeping badly, or basically living in fight or flight, digestion can change too. And this is where things get really interesting. Because Chinese medicine looked at constipation very differently. Instead of asking only, how do we make this person poop? We're basically asking, why is this particular person constipated? Because in Chinese medicine, constipation isn't just one single pattern. One person might have what we call heat in the intestines. They tend to have very dry and hard stools. Maybe they also feel hot, thirsty, irritable, and their constipation gets worse when they eat a lot of spicy, rich, or drying foods. Another person may have what we call chi stagnation. They're bloated, they feel like they need to go, but they just can't quite get things going. Maybe their constipation gets noticeably worse during periods of high stress. Then you have someone with what we call qi deficiency. This person might have the urge to go but they don't really have like enough GI strength to move the stool effectively. They strain and they feel exhausted afterwards and they may generally feel fatigued or depleted. Another person may have what we call blood or yin deficiency where there isn't enough nourishment and moisture in the system. This is something we may see more often as people age after chronic Or in other depleted states, where the stool becomes dry because from a Chinese medicine point of view, the intestines themselves aren't being adequately moistened. And then there's something weird that we call cold. These patients may feel cold in general, have abdominal pain better with warmth, and their GI can feel like it's just moving in slow motion. Now, all of these patterns can overlap, you know, because people don't always fit into one perfect little box. But this is one of the most useful ideas Chinese medicine brings to constipation. The same symptom. can come from very different underlying patterns. And if you don't know which pattern you're dealing with, you could end up doing something that actually sounds healthy, but isn't right for your body. Like you add more fiber, or you add more magnesium, or you drink more water, or you keep taking laxatives or supplements, and let's say they help temporarily, but the constipation keeps coming back. So for the rest of this video, I wanna show you five approaches that people rarely talk about. Not simply five ways to force a bowel movement, but five ways to start asking a better question. What is preventing your body from having a normal bowel movement in the first place? Strategy number one is move the Qi. Now it sounds almost too simplistic because sometimes constipation isn't primarily a fiber problem It's a movement problem. Now in Chinese medicine, there's a concept called Qi stagnation. Qi or function is supposed to move through the body and when that movement becomes constrained one of the places we can see it shows up is digestion. because these are the people who tell me my digestion is actually pretty good when i'm relaxed but the second i'm stressed or traveling or working too much or my routine changes i really can't go and sometimes they'll even notice that exercising walking or finally relaxing at the end of the day makes everything start moving again so in chinese medicine we look at that and we'll say don't just add more bulk try to get things moving There's actually a modern physiological parallel to this because your intestines aren't these passive tubes. It's not a PVC pipe. They're surrounded by muscle. They're controlled by the enteric nervous system and they're constantly communicating with your brain and autonomic nervous system. Research has found that physical activity can help people with constipation. Now in particular one systematic review looked at nine randomized controlled trials involving 680 people and found that exercise was associated with improvements in constipation symptoms. And some of the interventions studied weren't intense workouts. They included walking, just physical movements, and even qigong. So when Chinese medicine says move the qi, I don't think we need to pretend that modern science has somehow proven the existence of qi, but we can say something interesting. Both symptoms recognize that movement matters in more than one sense. And there's actually a particular form of constipation called dyssynergic defecation, where the muscles involved in having a bowel movement don't coordinate properly. So instead of relaxing when you try to go, parts of the pelvic floor are actually working against you. And clinical trials have shown that retraining this coordination can actually improve constipation in these kinds of people. Here's something very simple I have patients thinking about. Before you add something try moving something. Take a 10 or 15 minute walk after a meal. Practice that slow diaphragmatic breathing where your abdomen actually expands as you inhale instead of holding your stomach tight. You can also use gentle qigong movements that involve abdominal breathing rather than sitting still all day. And there's even something as simple as gently massaging your abdomen like this. That can really dramatically improve your gut health. Now strategy number two is putting the moisture back. Because what if movement isn't your problem? What if you're moving your body? You're exercising. You're doing all the right things. But when you finally do have a bowel movement, it's dry, hard, or maybe even little pellets. So in Chinese medicine, we start thinking about something completely different. Dryness. And this is where I think people sometimes misunderstand constipation. Because the automatic advice is usually just to eat more fiber. And fiber absolutely can help constipation. But Chinese medicine asks another question, which is that does this person actually need more bulk, or do they need more moisture? Because if the stool is already extremely dry and difficult to pass, simply putting on more dry material may not address the whole picture. The large intestine needs adequate fluids to function properly. And when we see very dry stools, dry skin, dry mouth, maybe thirst, or a person who generally seems depleted, we start to think about about insufficient what we call Yin blood or body fluids. And you can think of it almost like a river. If there's enough water in the river, things will flow and garbage will get washed out of the river. But if that riverbed dries out, everything slows down. So researchers have actually studied foods like prunes and kiwi for chronic constipation. And in one randomized trial, people with chronic constipation were given either two green kiwi fruits per day, prunes, or psyllium for four weeks. Now all three groups had improvements in bowel movement frequency. But both the kiwi group and the prune group also had significant improvements in stool consistency. In Chinese dietary therapy, we can use that same principle. For a person who truly presents with dryness, I might think more about foods that are more nourishing and moistening, like cooked pear, sesame, soups, stews, and fats and oils. So if the problem is dryness, think about nourishment and moisture, not just trying to stimulate the bowels. Now if you're listening to this and thinking, I'm thinking, okay, but which pattern actually sounds like me? I made something to help. Just DM me the word gut on Instagram and I'll send you a full video breakdown where I break down the process step by step of fixing constipation, bloating, and food reactions. Or if you'd rather work through it alone, I created a free gut root cause quiz below the video to help you start identifying what may actually be driving your digestive symptoms. So you can download that for free using the link right below the video. Now number three is where constipation gets interesting because sometimes the problem isn't blockage at all. It might actually be digestive weakness. So strategy three is strengthening the engine. Now the third pattern is almost the opposite of the first one. Sometimes you're not constipated because everything is stuck. You're constipated because from a Chinese medicine point of view, your digestive system doesn't have enough strength to move things through. This is usually what we call qi deficiency and very often spleen qi deficiency. Now when I see the spleen here, I'm not talking about the anatomical spleen you learned about in biology class. In Chinese medicine, the spleen describes a much broader functional system involved in taking food, transforming it, extracting nourishment from it, and helping move things through the digestive system. And when that system becomes weak, constipation can look very different. And there's actually an interesting western concept we can put next to this, because the colon doesn't just move randomly throughout the day. When you eat it triggers certain motor activity in the gut and it's called the gastrocolic reflex. When food enters your stomach neural and hormonal signals can increase that activity in the colon and that's one reason some people suddenly need to use the bathroom right after breakfast or a big meal. So something I tell people is work with your body's natural rhythm instead of fighting it. Eating meals at consistent times is actually more helpful than snacking. Giving yourself time after breakfast instead of running right out of the house immediately can be helpful. And if you feel the urge to have a bowel movement, don't repeatedly suppress it because you're answering emails or rushing to work. And from a Chinese medicine point of view, this is also where food preparation is important. If someone has weak digestion, they're tired, they're weak, they're bloated, worse after cold or raw foods, just introducing cooked warmer meals, soup, stew, congee, cooked vegetables, can on its own improve the digestive function there. Now what if instead of forcing the bowel harder, we strengthen the system responsible for it? So remember, if it's stagnant, move it. If it's dry, moisten it. And if it's weak, strengthen the overall system. Now, strategy number four is warming the system, which sounds weird. But it's probably the easiest one to experiment with at home, which is just simply warming the system. Now, this is something that's very, very Chinese medicine. Because if you walked into my clinic and told me you're constipated, one of the things I might ask you is, are you more hot or are you more cold? And that might seem completely unrelated to your bowels. But in Chinese medicine, it's incredibly important. Because remember the person we talked about who had very dry stool, thirst, and signs of heat? That's one pattern. But there's another person who's almost the complete opposite. They're always cold. They have cold hands. They have cold feet. Their GI is sluggish. Maybe their abdominal cramping is better when they put something warm on it. And they might notice that lots of cold foods, smoothies, or ice drinks don't make them feel that good. In Chinese medicine, we might start thinking about cold in the digestive system, or what we call yang deficiency. Yang being like the warming, activating side of physiology in our model. And one of the simplest herbs Chinese medicine has traditionally used is something that pretty much everyone has in their kitchen, which is ginger. So fresh ginger is called Shengjiang in Chinese herbal medicine. And traditionally, it's used to warm the middle burner, the digestive system, and support the movement of digestive function. Ginger can influence digestive function and movement. So if you're someone who fits this cold or sluggish pattern, here's a simple experiment. Instead of starting your morning with an ice cold drink or smoothie, try something warm. You can make a simple ginger tea with 5 or 10 grams of fresh sliced ginger steeped in hot water, use more ginger in your cooking, favor warm cooked meals for a period of time, and just pay attention to how your digestion feels with it. And then after you eat, take a short walk instead of immediately sitting back down. And if you want, you can even use like a gentle warm compress over the abdomen if that feels good. Now strategy five is to treat the pattern, not the poop. Number five is really the principle that ties everything we've talked about together. Stop treating the bowel movement and start treating the pattern. Because think about what we've seen so far. One person's constipated because everything feels stagnant. Another person feels dry. Another's depleted and doesn't seem to have enough strength to move the stool. Another person is cold and sluggish. They all walk into the conventional doctor's office with the same complaint, I'm constipated. But from a Chinese medicine point of view, these can be four very different patients. And this is where things like acupuncture and Chinese herbs can become really interesting, because we're not necessarily using the same points or the same formulas for each constipated person. We're trying to figure out the pattern first. And there's even really interesting research on acupuncture for constipation itself. So in particular, one of the largest studies was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers took 1,075 people with chronic severe functional constipation and randomized them to either receive electroacupuncture or a sham treatment for eight weeks. The people receiving acupuncture had a greater increase in what researchers called complete spontaneous bowel movements. Bowel movements without needing rescue medications basically. And what's particularly is that the improvement persisted during the follow-up period after the treatment ended. Now if your constipation is chronic, this is where you have to think about the patterns. You know, maybe you need to figure out what kind of constipation you actually have. Is it stagnant? Move it. Is it dry? Moisten it. Is the system weak? Strengthen it. Is it cold and sluggish? Warm it. And if you can't figure out which one you are, that's where that individualized diagnosis becomes valuable. For example, look at one of my patients, Santi. He was constantly stressed, only had a bowel movement every three or four days, couldn't sleep through the night. After treating him with a customized herbal formula to his pattern, which was initially dryness and then was actually the motility pattern, we ended up getting him to bowel movements every other day and completely sleeping Because it turned out his gut problems were driving a lot of his insomnia and the nervous system and the gut were having a little bit of a fight that they couldn't resolve there. So by using a targeted formula for a targeted pattern, he did radically better. And if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, but what pattern actually sounds like me? I made something to help. If you just DM me the word gut on Instagram, I'll send you a full video breakdown where I break down the process step by step of fixing bloating, constipation, and food reactions. If you'd rather go through it yourself, I created a free gut root cause quiz to help you start identifying what may actually be driving your digestive symptoms. You can download that for free right below the video right here. And if constipation is only one piece of what you're dealing with, maybe you also have bloating, food reactions, or you just feel like your digestion has never been quite right, watch this video next because I break down the step-by-step roadmap I use to get to the root cause of bloating, food reactions, and chronic digestive issues instead of just chasing symptoms one at a time. So click that video on the screen and I'll walk you through exactly where I would