An estimated 3 million Americans suffer from frequent constipation or chronic constipation while the rest will experience it in one time or another in their lifetime.

Chronic constipation can have different manifestations for different individuals and will greatly vary from one person to another. Constipation is generally characterized by less than 3 bowel movements per week. Although there is no ideal count to the number of bowel movements in a week, generally, medical practitioners consider 1 per day as the most common pattern for a regular person. Commonly, people who suffer from constipation will experience reduce stool frequency, hard stools, abdominal pain, build up of gas,  difficult passing stools or the feeling of incomplete emptying after defecating. Any one or a combination of the mentioned signs above can be a manifestation of constipation.

Chronic constipation can be miserable enough, but it can be compounded with other undesirable bodily effects like feeling sluggish or bloated.

To truly understand what causes constipation, we need to understand how our digestive system works from the moment we ingest the food we take to the point it gets excreted from the body thru bowel movements.

When we take in food, it gets grounded up in the stomach and passed on to the small intestines in a liquefied form. As it passes thru the small intestine, nutrients and other minerals gets absorbed by the intestinal walls.  Then it moves to the colon where water is extracted forming the stool.

If too much liquid is extracted as the digested food passes thru the colon, the stool hardens and this is what causes constipation. When we take in less amount of water that what our body needs, our body takes most of the liquid from the food we digest and may also result to constipation. Other causes of constipation can be attributed to the lack of fiber in our diets, lack of exercise, ignoring the urge to have a bowel movement or just simple stress.

Chronic constipation, most of the times, could be a symptom for a different form of illness or ailment. Blockages in the colon walls can cause a longer time for the digested food to travel down its path therefore causing more fluids to be extracted from the digested food causing constipation. Constipation can also be caused by eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia or it could be a side effect to medical treatments and medications like those containing codeine.

Although detoxification of the gastrointestinal track will help clean up the digestive system and promote optimum filtration process for the body to prevent or cure chronic constipation, a visit to your doctor is advisable – especially in cases when constipation starts abruptly or becomes a long term struggle. Constipation can be a result from many things, from illness to abnormality in our system. Working with your physician to determine the causes of constipation will help educate yourself and manage or cure the problem for good.