Tag Archive for Konstantin Monastyrsky

Chronic Constipation Isn’t From a Lack of Laxatives

Wow, I didn’t expect so many responses to Monday’s post on Amanda, Miralax, and the Manuka Honey!  Thank you all for your concern; she’s recovering, going to class, trying to be normal, and so far the new seizure drug isn’t causing any mood side effects; hope that continues to be the case.  She’s still a little beat up, but should be back to normal in another day or two.

vintage exlaxI definitely shocked a lot of you with that report on Miralax, as many of you wrote that your doctor has prescribed it for either your children, your older parents, or you’ve used that or other laxatives yourself.  American’s don’t spend $700 million a year on laxatives because they’re fun, Americans are chronically constipated.  NO ONE’S CONSTIPATED BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE ENOUGH LAXATIVE IN THEM. NO ONE.  Laxative’s don’t even work for a lot of people, and yet, they keep taking them, or worse, they take more in an effort to make things work.

Here’s another shocker:  high fiber grains, and high fiber supplements can make things worse.  Grains/flours get reduced to glucose/sugar in the gut, and then they go on to wreck havoc with blood sugar, pH, and gut bacteria.  Fiber supplements? Here’s the ingredients in Benefiber:

Ingredient: Wheat dextrin                            benefiber
Benefiber Orange also contains Wheat dextrin, citric acid, natural orange flavor, potassium citrate, aspartame, gum acacia, acesulfame potassium, maltodextrin, lactose (milk), triglycerides, sucrose acetate isobutyrate (adds a trivial amount of sugar), modified cornstarch, yellow 6, red 40

GROSS! Wheat, chemicals, artificial sweeteners, food dyes, and cornstarch. YOU DON’T HAVE CONSTIPATION BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT CONSUMING THIS. Honest.

Why the chronic constipation?  So many reasons:  OTC and prescription meds ( which either change the pH of the gut, the motility of the gut, or both),  a diet full of sugars, grains, and chemicals;  sitting too much; not enough exercise;  EMOTIONS greatly affect the gut via either constipation or diarrhea;  and of course, the biggie what you’re NOT eating: tons of vegetables, fermented/cultured foods and drinks, fruit, good fats, good proteins, and lots and lots of water. ( hey, that sounds like a Real Whole Foods prescription!)

What if you’ve been on laxatives and fiber supplements for years?  You’ve upset the hairdolaxnormal bacterial environment, the normal pH environment, and conditioned (addicted)  the muscles along the gut wall that they’ll be stimulated by chemicals.  It’s going to take some time, along with a real consistent program, to get regular again.  Unfortunately, if living “kind of healthy”, with the occasional/few times a week meal or snack of constipation causing foods or meds is your norm, it’ll be hard to correct the constipation.  Persistence and consistency will be key to reversing this, but wouldn’t “normal” be great?  It’s within your grasp, you just need to be patient and vigilant about the habits and actions of your every day life.  There’s no secrets or tricks, it’s always about planning, shopping, packing, and cooking.  Always.

However, if you’re addicted to chemical stimulants to make you go to the bathroom, get in touch with me.  You’re going to need a program.

Our body wants to be fed it’s necessary nutrients every day, every meal.  Food ALWAYS has an effect, either good or bad.  Always. There are no neutral foods.

I’m going to link to a TED talk by Dr. Terry Wahls.  She’s not known for her work with constipation, but no one demonstrates how food affects us like she can.  No one.  She’s an MD who’s REVERSED her Multiple Sclerosis with FOOD.  Food is Medicine, or Food is Poison.  It’s an incredibly slow acting poison (thanks to our body constantly trying to repair itself), so the eventual toxicity/effects can take years to manifest. ( The average disease, from cancer, to heart disease, to diabetes, takes 20 years to develop.)  I honestly can’t think of a better example to demonstrate that our body and our brain, are the result of the manuka garlicfoods we eat every day.  Your child’s body and brain are the result of what they eat every day.   If you’re struggling with staying on track with a Real Whole Foods eating program, watch this youtube.  It’s short, but it’s very, very powerful and motivating.

Oh! One more thing!  About the Manuka honey, here’s my tried and true Immune Boosting Magic Elixir:   garlic that’s been allowed to “air” for 15 minutes (that activates it’s beneficial nutrients) with the honey.  I swear, it kills germs FAST.  Swallow fast without chewing and it’s no big deal, honest.

 

 

 

 

Man Post, Seizures, Constipation/Miralax, Green Smoothie

Where’s Mark’s Man Post?  It was due on April 13!  We hit a snag with our weekend plans.   Our epileptic daughter Amanda ended up in the hospital much of the weekend with “break-thru” seizures.  She’s pretty beat up.  She was put on a new anti-seizure drug a month ago which caused such a depressive state of mind;  she quit cold turkey last Sunday.  She should have weaned off the brain med; however, she’s had plenty of seizures when she’s been on her meds too.

Epilepsy Sucks.  That’s all I can say.  No, actually, I have to say she’s amazing.  Last night, after a she got home and took a nap, because there’s no sleeping in a hospital, she worked on a problem set due at 11 today.  And this morning she’s going to get up and make the walk across campus for her 11 o’clock class.  She’s the toughest person I know.

Testosterone post coming soon, I’ll let you know the date.

In honor of meds causing side effects, today’s post will be about constipation, Miralax, and it’s dangerous side effects; inspired by the lady in the bed beside Amanda.  Her name was Susan and she had a brain tumor that was causing seizures.  Her most recent seizure, that landed her in the hospital, was “different” .  Her words.  (There’s ZERO privacy in the rooms, so I heard all her conversations with the doctors, plus her conversations with her husband and daughters.)  Susan’s on Miralax twice a day, and has been for MONTHS, and Colase, once a day, but now will take that twice a day also, per doctors orders.  Poor thing can’t poop, probably a combination of her meds and Standard American Diet (SAD).  ( She was eating pudding, fiber cereal, and pancakes, with a diet pepsi, in the hospital bed.)

Did you know Miralax, an incredibly common laxative, has had a FDA warning on it since 2011, stating that it’s correlated with “NEUROPSYCHIATRIC EVENTS“?  Besides Miralax, this warning also applies to these other meds:  Movicol, Dulcolax, Colyte, Colovage, Co-Lav, Clensz-Lyte, ClearLax, GoLYTELY, GaviLyte C, GlycoLax, Go-Evac, GlycoPrep, E-Z-Em Fortrans, Halflytely, Lax-a-Day, LaxLyte, MoviPrep, Macrogol, NuLytely, OCL, Peg-Lyte, Prep Lyte, Softlax, TriLyte, and all other brands with Polyethylene Glycol 3350 (PEG for short) as their active ingredient.   PEG breaks down to toxic byproducts that first affect the central nervous system (CNS), then the heart, and finally the kidneys.

People give this stuff to babies and children, with a doctors blessing. Please read on, because American’s spend more than $700 MILLION on laxatives a year, and STILL remain the most constipated people on earth.  We’re also the most medicated people on earth, consume the most fiber supplements, and consume the most high carbohydrate fibrous grain products.  Not the most Fruit, Vegetables, Water, or Probiotic Foods,  which are actually the Fix For Constipation.   Of course, there’s not a lot of money to be made on Real Whole Foods, so Big Phuvernment’s* not going to be pushing that real hard any time soon.

PEG is classified as a “NeuroToxin”.  The scary term, “neuropsychiatric events”?  That means “neurological conditions”, such as autism, MS, Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, seizures, etc.  (Miralax and it’s sisters work by artificially stimulating the nervous system so that you can squeeze out a poop. Apparently, listening to Susan, it doesn’t always work.)  PEG has several other side effects that don’t include the Nervous system, and I hope you read about them all here; medications always come with side effects, even meds that are deemed so normal that they have a tag line like this:  MiraLAX® is safe and effective – and available without a prescription.  It’s not safe.  The FDA has ONLY approved it for adults, and ONLY for a maximum of 7 days.  Pregnant women and children who’ve used it should be very worried, as it’s consequences for small, undeveloped or developing brains is very serious.  Please read the full report here.  There’s this blind trust that we’ve put in the medical system and pharmaceuticals that is very, very undeserved.  Know what you’re putting in your body!

There’s NO MEDICATIONS that don’t have SOME negative effect on your digestive system: they either slow motility of the bowels, or affect the pH of the gut, or both.  And I mean, NO MEDICATION.  Some of the worst offenders?  Anti-depressants, pain meds, antibiotics,  and diuretics.  Again though, Every Single Medication affects the gut in one way or the other.

Some people are going to read this and think, No Way.  If the medication was that bad or that dangerous, it wouldn’t be on the market.  Wrong.  Money Talks,… loudly.  In 2012 a petition was filed with the FDA in an effort to get PEG out of our medicine and FOOD supply:  For the pdf look here.

“As of March 2012, the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System showed 2257 reported adverse events related (in any way) to PEG products – up from 7 in 2001. Included in the adverse events reported are serious kidney, urinary, bowel, blood, skin, and neuropsychiatric symptoms – and at least 3 children’s deaths.”  

Note the word, “products”, because PEG’s not just in laxatives, it’s in several other products also:  “food grade polyethylene glycol (under the Carbowax Sentry trade name) is commonly added to chewing gums, table-top sweeteners, and energy drinks. It is also used as a base in solid and liquid soaps, shampoos, bath and shower gels; body and face creams and lotions; toothpastes, ointments and suppositories; as a tablet binder in drugs and supplements; as a lubricant in vaginal gels and eye drops; and as a solvent in cough medicines and elixirs. ”

The resource for this post is a scientist named Konstantin Monastyrsky.  He runs a site called “gutsense” and it contains more specific and applicable information about the gut and constipation than I’ve seen anywhere else.  You should really check it out if you want to learn the super gritty nitty details of what you can do if you have chronic constipation.

In the meantime, what about Amanda’s reliance on pharmaceuticals for her epilepsy?  We can’t stand it.  She’s been on a pretty solid ketogenic diet for almost a year, and she doesn’t drink alcohol, which has to help, but she’s in college.  College life is NOT conducive to epilepsy, at all.  The stress, the deadlines, the lack of sleep.  We feel tied to these horrible drugs yet want more than anything to get off them.  In her own words, she “wonders who she is if she wasn’t on brain medications.”….  We’ve been seriously investigating Medical Marijuana, which isn’t legal in Virginia yet, but hopefully will be soon.  What is legal is Hemp oil ( it’s lacks THC, which is the illegal substance, and contains Cannabidoil, which is deemed by some scientists to be the most Anti-Inflammatory substance in the world.)  We’ve ordered some and will be trying this in conjunction with her meds.   We’ve got to get the laws changed so that more studies can be conducted in the US.  Other countries are light years ahead on this and so far, the science looks incredibly promising.  All neurological conditions and cancer seem to be the main focus, and there’s some great information on this site here.

smooth4:11I want to end on a lighter note:  my morning Smoothie!  Today’s ingredients:  raw keifer, frozen spinach, frozen avocado, frozen cranberries, scoop of dark cocoa, spoon of Stevia, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, chlorella, and topped with coconut.

The two jars next to it are my waters that I take with me, and that little jar?  Manuka Honey – a powerful antibiotic honey from New Zealand.  Great immune booster:)

** Big Phuvernment: the sexual union of Big Business, Big Pharma, and Government.**