Why Am I Always Constipated?

Nobody likes to talk about it, but many people suffer from constipation.

According to recent scientific study, chronic constipation is highly prevalent among Americans, impacting approximately 15% of the U.S. population. Globally, around 12% of people report experiencing self-defined constipation, with those in the Asian Pacific and the Americas suffering at twice the rate of the European population.

Constipation, defined as a problem passing stool more than three times per week, can have many causes. Sometimes, simple lifestyle tweaks can get things moving again, but in some cases, chronic constipation stems from poor gut or hormone health.

Constipation and Lifestyle Choices

One of the more common reasons for constipation is living a life low in exercise, water, and key dietary nutrients.

For many people, constipation is the result of spending too much time spent being inactive and stressed out. Conversely, studies show that exercise helps to keep bowel movements regular and can even speed up the movement of food through the colon. Exercise can also relieve stress and anxiety, a constipation culprit for many in our fast-paced world.

Dehydration and diet also have significant impact on the frequency of bowel movement and on feces composition. It’s estimated that as many as 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated, a condition that occurs when you lose more fluid than you take in. When the body is low on water, stool becomes hardened and more difficult to pass. Upping your water intake to no less than 8 eight-ounce glasses of water per day may help turn your constipation around.

Likewise, due to the junk food-heavy American diet, most Americans are deficient in key nutrients, including fiber, vitamins A, B, D, C, E and zinc, that play a part in healthy digestion and constipation prevention. One 2019 study found that “Vitamin D deficiency, anxiety and depression symptoms are commonly associated with chronic functional constipation,” and Vitamin B1 has been shown to help soften stool, making it easier to pass. Additionally, increasing dietary fiber has been shown to “obviously increase” stool frequency in patients experiencing constipation.

Without these essential nutrients, our digestive system is running on empty. Luckily, dietary supplements — including EVEXIAS’ B Complex and ADK — can make a notable impact and may be just the ticket to get you feeling better.

Constipation and the Gut

If chronic constipation sent you to the doctor, your doctor’s treatment most likely began with assessing your exercise habits, diet, and hydration and encouraging you to adjust where necessary. That said, if you’ve made these changes and are still backed up, it may be time to look closer at your gut.

Sometimes, constipation can be the result of a gut microbiome that’s out of whack. Each of us have an ecosystem of trillions of microscopic organisms living in our digestive system that help digest our food and fight off microbes that are bad for our health. Each person’s gut microbiome is unique to them and shaped by their diet and environment.

With the western diet, which is heavy in sugars and low in fiber, certain types of microbes living in our bodies die off throwing our whole digestive system off balance. This can lead to chronic gut issues, like constipation, and even chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

If you’ve tried everything else, resetting your gut microbiome may do wonders to alleviate your constipation. Reset can occur in a variety of ways, but it typically takes some time to get things back on track.

To start, boost your dietary fiber intake by adding a diverse range of fruits and veggies to your diet. Likewise, taking fiber supplements and probiotics, which add more of the “good” bacteria back into your gut, can make a huge difference. EVEXIAS’s Active Probiotic ND 50, for instance, which contains nine species of beneficial probiotic microbes from non-diary sources and prebiotic fiber, is a great nutraceutical to add to your regimen to ease constipation and boost your whole-body health.

Constipation and Hormones

Menopause, andropause, or any sort of hormonal imbalance can also be the cause of constipation. This is because hormones play an important role in regulating the digestive system.

During menopause and andropause, testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone levels plummet. Lower than normal levels of these hormones can contribute to constipation in different ways.

One of estrogen’s roles in the body is to regulate the stress hormone cortisol. When estrogen declines, cortisol levels and stress can increase, causing constipation.  Decreased estrogen may also cause a loss of muscle tone, including in the pelvic floor, making it difficult to evacuate stool fully.

Additionally, when progesterone decreases, this can cause intestinal motility to decrease, causing stools to stay in the colon for longer, where they harden and become more challenging to pass.

As for low testosterone and constipation, this is not an area that has received much study. That said, recent studies have shown that low levels of the male sex hormone may be associated with irritable bowel syndrome, a condition that may lead to constipation.

At the same time, in a 2023 study, researchers found that high levels of estrogen may also contribute to constipation. Overall, their findings suggest that estrogen may play a significant role in how efficiently the colon evacuates waste.

Clearly, restoring optimal hormone balance is an important part of managing digestive issues. With that goal in mind, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy like EvexiPEL may play an important role in resetting the gut and alleviating chronic constipation.

Getting Back on Track

Constipation is a common issue with a variety of causes, but it does not need to be a forever problem. Assessing and adjusting your exercise, water intake, and diet are important first steps to feeling better, and from there, looking at your gut and your hormones may lead you to seek more specialized care.

EVEXIAS offers a range of expert-developed pharmaceutical grade nutraceuticals for gut health and whole-body vitality, as well as one of the leading forms of hormone therapy, EvexiPEL. To investigate if these care options are right for you, consider setting up an appointment with an EvexiPEL-certified practitioner near you.

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