Some time ago a friend of mine said, “I have become a medical intuitive. I can look at people’s faces and diagnose if they are constipated.” As I looked at her in admiration, she guffawed, “It is very simple. If someone is not smiling, s/he must be constipated. Can’t you recognize a constipated look?” I laughed with her then, but when I look at so many unsmiling faces around me, I often think of her words. By her definition, almost everyone is constipated.
My mother, who suffers from chronic constipation, tells me that in her younger days, everyone, including her, regularly moved bowels twice a day. If someone did it only once, s/he was given a laxative.
As I mull over her words, they make sense to me, and when I learn through the Internet that the digestive health's thumb-rule is 'one meal in-one meal out', I understand the reason behind two bowel movements; in our ancestral household, people ate two meals a day!
Going by this thumb-rule, most of us are constipated. We eat three meals a day (if not more) but pass the poop only once a day (or on alternate days!)
I am reminded of our pet dog, Catherine. We gave her two meals and took her out twice a day. The day she couldn’t move her bowels, she would refuse to eat; and that’s really something for a Labrador! Instead, she would go around looking for some grass. She always knew where to find it, even though we moved several houses/ cities with her! That dear dog followed her instincts to add roughage to her diet (just as all dogs do); she intuitively knew that she must not stuff more food into her system, if she had not emptied it .
Small babies too easily follow the meal in-meal out formula. What happens when we grow up? Why don’t we pass regular stools as our elders used to or as our babies and our dogs do? Regular here means; Meal in -Meal out!
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