Constipation Explained: Causes and Solution

That weird situation, where you feel heavy in the tummy, yet unable to flush out for days. That’s annoying and frustrating, as you can neither solve it nor talk about it so easily.
The health condition where you are unable to pass out poop for 2 to 3 days or more is called constipation. There can be many reasons for constipation, including your diet, mental health, lifestyle, and even digestion.
So, if you are someone struggling with constipation and want to know the root cause, read on this Mool Health’s detailed guide on what causes constipation and how to fix it.

When Is Constipation a Concern?

If you go to poop 3 times a day or just thrice a week, it’s normal. Especially, if you don’t feel heavy, painful, or too difficult to pass out stools. The bowel movement varies from person to person. Your flushing frequency is fine until you see sudden changes. So, here are the key signs that say your constipation is severe and to be concerned about:

• You feel bloated or heavy after going to the washroom. You have that constant feeling that you haven't emptied your bowel completely.
  • You skip bowel movements for more than 2–3 days and have noticed sudden changes in your bowel movements.
  • Your bowel movements are painful, and you must strain as your stools are dry and hard, making it difficult to pass.

Constipation happens when your large intestine absorbs too much water from your poop, making it dry and hard. This dryness slows down the poop movement in the digestive tract. The more it stays in the tract, the drier it gets, making it difficult to push out.

This indicates that the causes of constipation in adults are not just an inconvenience, but can also be signs of underlying digestive issues.

What are the Root Causes of Constipation?

Now, let’s talk about the key reasons that might be the root cause of your disrupted bowel movement:

1. Weak Digestive Fire (Low Agni)

Low Agni, or weak digestive fire, is an Ayurvedic concept of poor digestion. When the digestive fire is weak, the food you eat doesn’t break down completely, leading to a buildup of toxins in the gut. This undigested food stays in the body longer than it should, causing fermentation and issues like bloating, gas, and constipation.
Causes: The key reasons behind low digestive fire can include overeating, drinking excessive water during meals, consuming leftover food, drinking chilled or iced liquids at the wrong time, or eating too much processed food. Besides food, even tablets like antacids or strong pain medicines can also affect the bowel movements.
Solution: You should work on rekindling your gut with basic steps like sipping hot water frequently, avoiding heating spices like garlic, ginger, and pepper, and starting to take herbal tea, etc.

2. Sluggish Gut Motility

When your large intestine’s normal wave-like motion (peristalsis) slows down, it’s called sluggish gut motility. It makes stool move slowly in the digestive tract. As a result, the colon absorbs moisture from the stools, which makes the stools hard in the gut.

Causes: The sluggish gut motility leads to constipation due to a lack of water, physical movement, and exercise. In Ayurveda, proper hydration, physical activity, and a balanced nervous system are connected to Vata (an energy made of the elements of air and space that governs movement in the mind and body). When this Vata imbalance occurs, it slows down gut rhythm, causing constipation.

Solution: People often turn to laxatives to treat sluggish gut motility. But laxatives can only push the stools out, but not restore the natural bowel movement rhythm. As a result, your constipation keeps coming back. So, to fix gut motility, you must pay attention to your food, water intake and do regular physical activities.

3. Gut-Brain Axis Disruption (Stress-Related Constipation)

Constipation due to stress is real. Your gut and brain share an intimate relationship. The brain and stomach are connected through a two-way communication called the gut-brain axis. This links your brain and digestive system using nerves, hormones, and chemical signals. From gut feelings, the butterflies in the stomach, to signaling about poop, your mind, and tummy communicate through this axis.

Causes: Studies find that stress can affect the gut by causing problems like nausea, vomiting, and even changes in bowel habits. During stress, anxiety, or due to poor sleep, your brain sends mixed signals to your gut. These confusing signals disrupt the gut-brain axis and slow the gut’s natural bowel movements. Hence, you end up facing issues like freezing of the gut, where you feel no urge to flush out or only partial evacuation. Thus, stress and these mixed signals are related to chronic constipation**.**

Solution: Stress-related constipation is often seen in Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Constipation (IBS-C). In such cases, you must not just take medicines, but also indulge in yoga, meditation, deep breathing, and journaling to calm the nervous system and restore healthy gut movement.

4. Dehydration and Low Fiber

Your water and fiber intake highly affects your bowel movements. Both food components help to keep the digestion smooth and support good gut bacteria.

Causes: If you feel constipated after eating**,** it’s a sign you are not eating correctly. Lack of water and fiber in your diet makes the stools hard and difficult to pass, which leads to constipation. Besides, if you eat a high-protein diet, the digestive system slows down as it struggles to break down the food due to a lack of fiber and water for smooth digestion.
Solution: Add fiber to your diet. It can be a bowl of popcorn with limited seasoning. Besides this, add apples, pears, broccoli, carrots, and nuts to your diet. However, adding fiber without drinking water can worsen constipation through bloating and gas. So, pay equal attention to your fluid intake.

5. Overuse of Laxatives

Laxatives are often the first choice of many people who face constipation frequently. It helps to flush out the stuck stools and offer temporary relief. But using laxatives only helps to pass out the stool, but they don’t improve the key gut issues.
Causes: Frequent use of laxatives weakens the large intestine of the body. Over time, your intestine depends on the laxatives to push out the stools, as it gets so weak that it can't even complete a basic and natural bowel movement. As a result, constipation might end up being a permanent problem.
Solution: Laxatives are ideal for quick, temporary relief. However, always remember that it just helps you pass out the flush, but does not restore the gut rhythm to eliminate constipation. So, rather than depending on laxatives every time, try to fix sluggish gut motility to actually work on root causes and get real relief.

6. Gut Microbiome Imbalance

Your gut is home to trillions of good and bad bacteria. Good bacteria in your body help break down food, produce short-chain fatty acids, and keep the bowel muscles moving and working properly. When this microbiome is disrupted due to an increase in harmful bacteria, it can lead to gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, bloating, inflammation, diarrhoea, and constipation.
Causes: There are many reasons behind this gut microbiome imbalance. Some key reasons include taking too many antibiotics that kill beneficial bacteria, consuming highly processed foods, being physically inactive, and experiencing stress.
Solution: To fix constipation caused by gut microbiome, you must balance the ratio of good bacteria and bad bacteria. To do that, you should add probiotics and fiber to your diet.

7. Hormonal and Female-Specific Causes

Your hormones also have a role in causing constipation if you are a woman. Your body's hormones work as chemical messengers to send signals for gut muscle movement, digestion speed, inflammation, and pain.
Causes: During the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, menopause, and if you have PCOS or hypothyroidism, an imbalance in hormones can slow down the gut cycle and cause constipation.

Solution: Generic fiber pills don’t help to resolve constipation caused by hormones. You must adopt a personalized approach to balance hormones, lifestyle, and receive medical therapy tailored to your specific hormonal condition.

Ayurvedic Understanding of Constipation

According to Ayurveda, constipation is caused by to Vata imbalance. When your vata is imbalanced, you can experience gut issues like dryness, reduced motility, making your stool hard, dry, and difficult to pass.

Dehydration, lack of physical activity, having cold or dry foods, and irregular habits worsen this imbalance and affect the natural rhythmic movement of the gut. Here’s a quick table to understand constipation in the Ayurvedic way:

Unlike many generic medicines, Ayurveda doesn't just work on loosening the stool and helping it flush out. Instead, the Ayurvedic approach helps restore the gut rhythm and alleviate constipation.

Why Common Constipation Meds Don’t Fix the Problem?

Generic tablets don’t actually target the root causes of constipation. These tablets work best in case of emergencies. However, relying on them in the hope that they will solve your gut issues can only worsen your constipation. So, if you are using any of the above tablets, consult an expert to find a solution that targets the key cause, not just offers temporary relief.

Mool’s Root-Cause Approach to Constipation

As you have come down till here, you might have a question: why Mool? Unlike generic medicines, Mool offers a personalized approach to restoring your gut health and getting you relief from constipation. Here’s how Mool helps:

• Identify your root imbalance: Our experts assess and understand your every concern to find the root cause of constipation. This helps to offer you a solution that provides relief and also targets the root cause.
• Rebuild digestive strength: Instead of just helping you to push out stools, Mool experts ensure to rebuild your digestive strength. You not only get rid of constipation but also don’t have any other gut-related issues like diarrhea, bloating, or gas.
• Restore natural elimination rhythm: Mool offers a science-backed and Ayurveda-inspired personalized solution for your constipation issue. It doesn’t just work on your digestive tract, but also helps to restore your natural bowel movement to ensure you don’t have to rely on tablets to flush out toxins from the body.

Here’s how Mool works on your gut health. You just have to take the first step with a quick 2-minute test:

1. Take a 2-minute gut quiz: Visit Mool Health and take a quick a test. This test includes important questions related to your body, health and tummy behavior, and based on your responses, a result is drawn.
2. Get a personalized kit + diet + expert guidance: Based on your gut health test results, our experts offer you guidance, diet tips, and a personalized kit that targets the key cause behind your constipation.

This personalized kit includes:

When should you expect to see results?

If you have mild constipation, you can expect to see results between 5 to 7 days and see full improvement in 4 to 6 weeks. But if you have chronic constipation (if your constipation lasts more than 3 months) or IBS-C, you can feel initial relief in the first 2 to 3 weeks and complete improvement in 3 to 6 months.

Final Thoughts: Constipation is a sign, Not a Condition

Constipation is your gut telling you: something's off, it can be digestion, rhythm, or balance. Whether it’s constipation due to poor digestion or constipation due to stress, taking tablets for temporary relief is never a good idea. Instead, it’s an excuse and negligence towards the key underlying gut issues.

So, the solution is not pushing the problem away with tablets; it’s to rebuild the gut’s natural intelligence.

At Mool Health, we believe in going beyond the routine quick fixes. Our experts understand the ‘why’ behind the constipation issues to help you resolve them with expert-designed Ayurvedic plans.

Take a free test to get a personalized Mool healing kit, which offers you relief while at the same time helping you restore gut rhythm.

FAQs

1. What is the main reason for constipation?

Constipation has many reasons, including your diet, lifestyle, mental health, and certain medications.

2. Can stress or sleep issues cause constipation?

Your gut does most of its work when you sleep. Lack of sleep affects gut health, causing constipation. On the other hand, stress can cause constipation by disrupting the brain-gut axis.

3. Why does my constipation keep coming back?

Your constipation keeps coming back because you take tablets to push out the poop, but don’t work on targeting the key cause and resetting the gut rhythm.

4. Are Ayurvedic remedies effective?

Ayurveda focuses on preventing disease, and its approach to treating constipation includes a range of healthy choices to address the root cause. It doesn't focus solely on laxatives and immediate relief.

5. Can I take Isabgol daily?

You can take isabgol daily. However, it’s important to understand the root cause of constipation and restore gut health.

6. Is constipation a sign of weak digestion?

Constipation is a sign of underlying gut issues like a weak colon, dehydration, etc.

7. How long does it take to fix constipation permanently?

It might take 2 weeks to 6 months to fix constipation permanently, depending on the severity.