How to prevent or relieve constipation: its causes, remedies, and when it’s an emergency – expert advice on staying regular
- With December being constipation awareness month, we talk to doctors about how bad it really is for our systems and what can we do to avoid or ease it
- One go-to remedy? A spoon of flaxseeds or chia seeds with plenty of water first thing in the morning; prunes work well too
“The intoxication of the body with hazardous agents from faeces in the bowel” – that’s how The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical reference book of sorts, defined constipation back in 1550BC.
And thus it was – with the mistaken belief that waste that remained in the colon poisoned our systems – that our millennia-long obsession with regular bowel movements began.
Roughly 2,000 years later, King Henry VIII sat on the British throne. He was attended by a “Groom of the Stool” – a courtier who accompanied him everywhere to examine the outcome of his bowel movements.
He would advise the king on how to alleviate the chronic problem of constipation resulting from his lifestyle – too much red meat, too little physical activity. Four such “grooms” – all well-connected nobility – held the post during the king’s reign.
One even once resorted to assisting the king in bowel evacuation with an enema fashioned using a pig’s bladder. The courtier noted the exercise had been successful: his royal master was relieved by “a very fair siege”.
By the beginning of the 19th century, medics’ unanimous sentiment was that constipation was the most universal of all ills, and that daily evacuation of the bowels was vital for good health.