Constipation occurs when stools are difficult to pass and also happen with cramping and pain in the rectum caused by straining to pass hard, dry stools. Representing 20 percent of all the diseases, constipation is one of the most common medical complaints in the world, but medical professionals neglect it as they are busy fighting diabetes, hypertension, apoplexy, coronary heart disease, and cancers. They treat constipation with laxative, psyllium, herbal laxatives containing senna or buckthorn, etc. However, these treatments are ineffective, and 70 percent of the patients eventually have hemorrhoids due to a longtime constipation. People don’t understand that constipation can be healed until they know the following causes of constipation:
- Gastocolic heat in your body exhausts body fluid, dries up large intestine, dehydrates stools, and makes stools difficult to pass when you are in one of these situations: predominant yang is in your body; you experience a febrile disease; pulmonary heat and dryness moves into your large intestine; or you eat excessive greasy spicy food, drink a lot of alcohol, or take some kind of medicine that increase heat in your body. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners name this constipation heat constipation.
- Depression moods and melancholy lead to splenic impairment and qi stagnation. Sadness, worries, and anger result in stagnation of qi and hepatic depression. A longtime sitting or standing also triggers qi stagnation. There can make qi flow discontinuous, the function of large intestine abnormal, and stools extremely dehydrated. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners call this constipation qi-stagnant constipation.
- On traditional Chinese medicine’s view, such factors as pulmonary asthenia, yang asthenia, weak body without much yang qi, splenic and gastric impairment, weakness due to aging, asthenia of qi, chronic illness, postpartum without much positive qi, and hurting yang qi by eating unnecessary cold foods will all cause constipation to happen because qi stagnation and less yang in your body will produce a weak movement of large intestine, and thus stools can’t be passed down easily.
- Yin stagnation is another reason for constipation. Traditional Chinese medicine theory describes yin stagnation as exhausted body fluid and inefficient blood. After a person had a disease or a woman delivered a baby, much body fluid and blood could be lost. Seniors often have constipation because they are weak and experience blood stagnation. Hot and spicy food can also trigger constipation, which will lead to less blood in large intestine. When large intestine can’t work properly, dry stools develop.
- Taking laxatives to keep fit or capsules to expel toxin for a long time will reduce yang and hurt qi. The stagnated qi and yang will dry out the fluid in large intestine. This symptom will reoccur when the laxatives and capsules are taken time again.
Now we know that constipation is closely related to our organs like lungs, kidneys, stomach, and spleen although it occurs in large intestine. Therefore, we should find out first the causes of constipation; then we can use the right remedy to treat it. Doctors of TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) heal varied types of constipation with different medicines: They treat heat constipation with Chinese herb medicines that can expel pathogenic heat to loosen the bowels, produce liquid, and moisten dryness; treat qi-stagnant constipation with those that can guide qi downward; and treat qi stagnant with impairing yang by warming kidneys, enhancing yang, invigorating qi, and moisturizing intestine.
To cure the last catalog of constipation, they use remedies that can increase yang qi and benefit spleen. I have effectively treated more than 300 constipation patients; 95 percent of them got rid of constipation and no longer took any medicine for stool after receiving my treatments. One of my patients, a young woman, was in her 20s. She had taken laxatives to keep fit for a long time. Each time she stopped taking the laxatives, constipation would occur. For seven years, the more laxatives she took, the severer her constipation.
When I treated her constipation, I found her guan pulse heavy, face while, and her tongue covered with a dark coating. She even had varicose vein under tongue, just like people over 60, and a bad odor in her mouth. After my two-month treatment, her seven years of constipation was gone, and a red bright face returned. So, don’t assume constipation to be tough and don’t take laxatives when you have it for a long time. Take some Chinese medicines and your constipation can be cured.