Common Causes of Constipation

Not being aware of food sensitivities that can create inflammation and alter the function of your gut. There's going to be nutritional issues like you're just not getting enough fiber. I know you talked about using exogenous fiber to treat the constipation, but you don't get into that situation if you're eating foods that aren't processed. All the processed foods that we eat don't have any of the indigestible fiber that's required for the stool to form correctly and also to maintain a healthy gut microbiome. So, again, it goes down to some nutritions involved. And what else would be some cause?

I think there's a lot of causes. Let's just go through them. So, you've got things that are often missed like thyroid, right? You've got low thyroid function as a big cause. Lack of magnesium, which is a huge issue for people. I think 40% of the population is low in magnesium. and that can drive constipation. People often have yeast issues from taking lots of antibiotics, which can be a big factor in constipation, the cause of dysbiosis. Dairy is the number one cause of constipation in kids and not only constipation, but anemia because the dairy irritates the guts of these kids and causes blood loss in the stool. So constipation from dairy is a huge factor. So we've got a lot of things we think about. It can be also things like heavy metals, which are factors that can impair gut function or even weird things like tick infections, oh yeah. Cause a neurologic problem in the gut that help damage the neurological pathways that cause peristalsis and that leads to constipation from tick infections. So from a functional medicine perspective, we really dive deep into figuring out what's going on.