Medication
Constipation – 2
There is nothing worse than the tired, dull, heavy feeling that comes with constipation. It is the result of auto-intoxication. Put simply, food lying and stagnating too long in the bowel produces toxins. Because elimination is slow, there is nowhere else for the toxins to go but through the bowel wall and back into the bloodstream.
The result of self-poisoning is heaviness, bad breath, coated tongue, and strain on the eliminating organs, such as the liver and kidneys – and that’s putting it mildly.
Laxatives don’t get at the root of the problem. If the problem is of long standing, a good Detox would be a good start. But what’s really needed then is to get the bowel and the other organs of elimination working properly. The best way is to get into the habit of feeding your body foods that assist it to eliminate and also provide it with real nourishment for the cells and organs. If you take the little extra effort with food shopping and preparation, you will reap huge rewards, including the knowledge that you are in control of your health at last.
Constipation Makers
White flour and sugar top the list. Avoid sugar whenever you can and replace white flour with wholemeal and/or other grains and seeds. Note: artificial sweeteners are toxic and therefore taboo.
Meats and cheese taken without fibre can also be constipating, because they are such concentrated proteins. Make sure you get plenty of fibre with them. Though apples alone are not enough, cheese and apples eaten together are delicious!
How To Deal With Constipation – Fibre
Vegetables are a good source of fibre, and so are sunflower seeds – grind them in the coffee grinder. On the CONSTIPATION page of this blog, I’ve listed the best natural sources of fibre – and the great thing is they all have heaps of other health benefits too.
You can start off by building fibre and other healthful ingredients into whatever food you are already making. Try baking grated carrot into a loaf (without tons of sugar – carrot has its own sweetness. Add a bit of blackstrap molasses if you must, that’s helpful for constipation, too). Be creative and adapt your favorite recipes – it’s a learning process. Treat it as an adventure.
Here’s what I did to keep my mother regular:
I limited my use of white flour to a very small quantity, used only when making bread. When I baked bread my ideal recipe for my mom was a quarter white, a quarter sunflower seeds (ground) or grated carrot and half wholemeal flour. The sunflower seeds are very good for keeping things moving, as well as being healthful – up to a quarter of the ingredients by bulk. The only reason I used white flour at all was because she didn’t like the bits of roughage in wholemeal flour, so it was a concession.
We very often ate muffins instead of bread. I made muffins using sunflower seeds, coconut (another handy standby) and a little potato flour or wholemeal. Sometimes I made them with oatbran and potato flour, or with grated carrot. Another grain I kept on hand was ground millet. You can also add ground sesame seeds, which as well as being very healthful and excellent for the bowel, are great for preventing baked goods from going mouldy quickly.
Sesame seeds have been regarded as a highly nourishing source of food for centuries, going back to ancient Egypt and China. The Greeks issued them as emergency rations to the soldiers in their armies, which speaks volumes. In the 5th century BC, Hippoctrates, the father of medicine, advocated their use and later in the first century Dioscorides commented that sesame “deals with the griefs of the colon” – note! I still use quite a lot of those – often a cupful in a batch of muffins (grind them first). They are also yummy ground and sprinkled on steamed veggies. Use plenty.
Getting Flavor Into Your Food
Understand that your tastebuds can get jaded with the likes of sugar and salt, so when you first cut down, they feel deprived. Just stick with it, and you’ll enjoy your foods better in the long run. I can actually taste the sugar in tinned foods like beans and spaghetti – and I hate it!
With muffins you can add ginger (good for digestion and dizziness) or vanilla (real) to give extra flavor. You can also add real fruit, but beware of canned fruit and don’t use sugar or artificial sweeteners – use a bit of blackstrap molasses instead. If you have to, take this change gradually, keep cutting back on sugar till you phase it out altogether.
When You Have No Option
If you keep your white flour consumption at home really, really low, when you do buy takeaways for a change (maybe a pie, a pizza or a quiche), or when you go visiting, the main part of your diet will compensate for it. I kept very little white flour in the house and white sugar was absolutely taboo. Fortunately, my mom never took sugar in her tea, never ate sweets and always preferred savory foods.
This diet may not be so easy for some people. Giving up sweets, cakes and sugar may come a bit hard, until you reflect on how far this rubbish is from the foods we were designed to eat and how much damage it does to the body. If your’e in any doubt, please click below:
Why Bleached Flour May be Worse than Chlorinated Water
Sugar – Food Profile
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Constipation – 1
Well, I’m going to tackle the “unmentionable”, because I think whilst constipation is the problem no-one talks about, there’s a lot of it around, and getting on top of it is really one of the basic keys to good health.
I have recently put together some information about dealing with constipation for my Alzheimers Carer Blog and it got me thinking how much of a problem constipation can be for many people – not just the elderly. So I’m going to adapt the slant of the information and include it here too.
If you happen to be caring for an elderly person, I really recommend you visit my posts on The Alzheimers Carer also, and get the special insights for the elderly there.
Please Understand the Following about Constipation:
Constipation is not an unavoidable result of getting older.
Constipation isn’t an unavoidable result of reduced mobility.
Constipation does not have to be treated by the ongoing use of laxatives.
Laxatives are damaging to your health and they do nothing to encourage normal functioning of the bowel. In fact, the continued use of laxatives deprives the bowel of the tone it needs to function properly. Using laxatives is simply avoiding the issue.
The only real solution is to understand what causes constipation and deal with the cause rather than trying to fix the effect. So follow the advice in this set of posts and on the CONSTIPATION Page of this blog to establish normal bowel function naturally. The benefits will be enormous. Sorry to be blunt, but your health depends on you going at least once a day.
What Causes Constipation?
Without a shadow of a doubt the most constipating things on this planet are white flour and white sugar. They are constipating firstly because they have been stripped of all the natural fibre in the foods they are derived from, and secondly because they have been stripped of all the natural elements (vitamins, minerals, enzymes etc) that might help the body to digest them effectivsly. So in both areas they are quite simply a huge tax on the digestion. That’s without even thinking of the toxic chemicals used in their production.
Now think about the average diet and ask yourself how much white flour and white sugar there is in it – breakfast cereal, bread, cakes, pastries, cookies, bars, pies, pasta, pizza, puddings, dessert, custard, ice cream, canned fruit, soft drinks – it goes on and on and on. In addition, if food manufacturers have any doubts about how appealing their product might be, they throw in some white sugar for good measure. They do this with anything and everything, even canned vegetables, spaghetti and sausages, you name it – just check the labels and you’ll see.
Per capita sugar consumption in the USA is estimated at an average of 130 pounds of sugar per person per year, or about 1/3 pound daily. Most people are totally unaware if how much sugar they consume. And of course, white sugar and white flour are staples in most kitchens. Hospital kitchens included – Oh My!
I was able to keep my elderly mother (95 years of age and with very reduced mobility) constipation-free by feeding her a healthy diet, which I will describe shortly. She went to the bathroom every day. However, she got constipated after a week on a hospital diet. Maybe it’s not surprising. The reason I am stressing this is because I know as people get older they tend to gravitate towards the “tea, toast, cookies and cakes” diet regime.
Younger People Too …
Younger people too can end up constipated through faulty diet – takeaways, sweets, soft drinks all lead down that road. When you are young, you don’t feel the effects of it so much, but believe me, if you take this seriously and set yourself up on a constipation-free path of eating, you will thank yourself for it a hundred times as you get older. Realize too that constipation could be affecting you now – like bad breath, poor skin, urinary problems – and you don’t need to be prone to constipation if you are starting a pregnancy either.
Understand a little about what your body needs to function well and take the common-sense step of feeding it properly. Get rid of the fast foods habit and you will reap rewards. Set yourself a foundation of wise feeding to help your own future.
Next post I’ll tell you how to keep constipation-free.
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High Blood Pressure
Blood Pressure Medication
Here are some thoughts on the experience I’ve had with blood pressure, which I know is a huge concern to many people. We had never had problems with it in my immediate family until my mom had an accident and fell down the stairs about 5 years ago (no broken bones, thank goodness). When they examined her at our local hospital they found her blood pressure was up and prescribed medication for it.
“Oh-Oh”
I picked up the medication from the pharmacy on the way home and once mom was settled I opened the packet. The first thing that caught my eye was a notice on the pack that said “DO NOT DISCONTINUE THIS MEDICATION”.
Alarm bells went off in my head immediately. I rang the clinic to check up and the receptionist said, “Yes, once you are on that medication you have to stay on it” – more and even louder alarm bells.
I got another appointment with the doctor and asked him if I could try to treat this naturally. He went rather red in the face, and asked me what I wanted to use. I told him I had experience in alternative remedies and I wanted to try her on Garlic and Hawthorne capsules. Rather grudgingly, he agreed to let me have a 3 months window to trial it.
Effect of Garlic and Hawthorne
Well, the upshot was that the hospital forgot about it, I put her on Garlic and Hawthorne capsules, and some six months later when a District Nurse was here we checked her blood pressure and it was found to be completly NORMAL. That would have been about 4 years before she died, and from then on, what with the visiting nurses and her admissions to hospital she would have had a pretty regular check kept on that blood pressure – and it remained normal until her final admission in February 2007, at which time it was “slightly elevated, but nothing to worry about.”
I have to add, that we do live on a healthy diet – for those blood pressure sufferers who are not adjusting their diet and don’t plan to, PLEASE don’t expect any kind of supplement to work a miracle. You have to also take responsibility for your eating and lifestyle habits. But if you do that, then taking the right supplements can hep you greatly.
I have a friend who used to own a service station and garage. Because of the extreme black circles around her eyes, I felt concerned enough one day as I filled my tank to ask her if she had problems with her kidneys and she said yes – it was her blood pressure medication. She was in her early 50s.
Side-Effects of Medication
Now I ask you – how many people are put on medication and kept on it for the rest of their lives – medication that causes side effects of this magnitude? It bears thinking about. I am not a doctor and I would hate to look like I am advising people, but my own mother is a case in point.
At 94/95 years old whenever she went in for Respite Care for a week per month to give me a break, she was the only elderly person in our small rest home and hospital complex who was not on medication of some kind – and in some cases there was medication upon medication to stop the side effects of this or that drug. Stacks of pills. Stacks of chemicals. I used to watch the meds trolley doing its rounds and shudder. I was grateful my mother wasn’t part of it. And frankly, I’m inclined to think that’s one reason she lived as long as she did.
People actually seem to use medication as a badge of honour. “Oh yes, now they’ve got me on XXX.” Or, “They’ve just changed my medication again to YYY.” Hmmmm…
Pharmaceutical drugs are fine for emergency situations. We have much to be grateful for there. But I recently saw a video clip of some dolly-bird rep of a pharmaceutical company on US television openly stating that her company wanted everyone to know that they needed her company’s products to stay well. As if the human body requires artificial chemicals to enable it to function normally and repair itself if given half a chance. What rubbish – what arrant, arrogant, money-grubbing rubbish!
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
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