5 Surprising Affects of Constipation

It’s common to think that being constipated only affects your ability to eliminate waste, makes your gut feel unwell or contributes to bloating. In reality, the affects of constipation and not having healthy, regular bowel movements go far beyond making us feel a bit bloated. From our brain function to inflammation to weight gain, healthy bowel movements are an essential piece to your overall health.

Constipation Makes You Tired

Feeling lethargic or totally exhausted is not normal, although it would seem to be, the way society plagued with fatigue. When things aren’t moving properly in your gut, you’ll never have enough energy no matter how many coffees you down throughout the day. Constipation, or slow motility impacts our body’s ability to make energy and creates excess congestion and inflammation.

When we can’t properly eliminate waste, this causes increased toxicity that our other organs, such as the liver, have to overcompensate for. Constipation can also slow thyroid function, and if your thyroid is low, you’re more likely to be constipated and fatigued. It’s a two-way street. If your bowels are sluggish, you likely will be too!

Constipation Causes Fermentation

How does constipation contribute to digestive issues like bloating, pain and gas? One reason is due to fermentation of foods by excessive amounts of bad bacteria. When we aren’t regularly eliminating, we can’t eliminate bad bacteria or yeast, which causes a backlog of toxins, waste and creates further imbalances within the microbes in our gut. Addressing constipation is key here, but we can also look deeper into the microbiome by testing with GI-MAP.

Constipation Can Contribute to Pain

Now you might be wondering how constipation could possibly be linked to joint pain or inflammation in your hands or knees, for example. The gut is the centre of our health, and if there is excess inflammation or dysbiosis here, you’re more likely to develop leaky gut. When the gut is “leaky”, we can then develop excess inflammation anywhere in the body.

Have you gotten my Free Leaky Gut Guide yet? If you’ve been struggling with your gut health or energy, this will be such a helpful resource!

Constipation Can Affect Mood & Brain Fog

The gut-brain connection is real and irregular or incomplete bowel movements can definitely impact your mood. We know from research that our gut bacteria strongly dictate our how we feel mentally, and imbalances here contribute to anxiety and depression via the gut-brain axis. Constipation, or not fully eliminating 2-3x daily (depending on how many meals you eat) promotes the growth of bad bacteria, yeast and parasites, which can all impact our neurological and mental health. If you’re struggling with mood, memory or brain fog, the gut is where you begin!

Constipation Makes You Gain Weight

Seriously, weight gain too? Yup. Those little critters in our gut have a massive impact on our metabolism and how we convert food into energy. Once again, if the gut is under-active, we won’t be able to properly convert or build thyroid hormone, which is a common reason for both constipation and weight gain. Additionally, as we discussed above, constipation causes stagnation, overgrowths and nutrient depletion in the gut, which can raise cortisol, and we’ve all heard of the lovely “cortisol belly”, right?

Ready for real gut-health transformation?

Join me on Thursday, April 20th at 7PM for my FREE Webinar:

4 Key Foundations for Gut Healing.

Spaces are limited, click the button to learn more and register!

REGISTER NOW