Dear Friend, When I started my medical practice, back in the "olden days," most of my patients complained and worried about constipation. Judging from today's advertising for a plethora of laxatives and fiber supplements, I assume this is still a common concern. People seem to have some bizarre notion they are going to explode and die if they don't have a daily bowel movement. Rest assured that in 40 years of practice, I never saw this happen to a single person.
It is true that some elderly patients can develop a fecal impaction, which may need to be surgically removed. But this condition is more common in nursing homes among immobile patients. Constipation is not the scourge it is made out to be, neither "toxic accumulation" nor cancer is related to constipation. This is a marketing ploy by colonic engineers who have frightened millions of people into their plumbing chambers with the grim news that "death begins in the colon." In an article, published in the British Medical Journal, Dr. James Wharton of the University of Washington School of Medicine remarked on the prevailing "wisdom" of the 1800s regarding constipation. Back then it was the medical consensus that constipation was "the foremost disease of civilization, a universal affliction in industrialized societies that engendered the full range of more serious human ailments." A popular diagnosis of the times was "autointoxication," a poisoning of the body resulting from a backup of sewage and, presumably, seepage of toxins into the bloodstream. This powerful imagery sold a lot of laxatives and colonic cleansings. It isn't surprising that doctors and the general public had some odd ideas a hundred years ago. Their scientific knowledge was extremely limited compared to today's standards. What does seem strange is that, in spite our advanced knowledge, we continue to buy into ideas that are just as ridiculous as theirs, and a lot more dangerous. Consider modern myths like the Great Fiber Caper, the Cholesterol Paranoia, and the Fluoride Fiasco: What did the old doctors do that was as bad as any of this? So what should you do if you’re all stopped up? Just relax. You won't do yourself, or your colon, any good by worrying about constipation. In fact, you're probably making it worse. Give it some time. Your bowels will move when they're good and ready. Folate follies Vegetarians have always claimed they get all the folic acid they need from vegetables. Well, they don't. A study performed by Dr. Silvina Choumenkovitch, a nutrition researcher at Tufts University in Boston, showed that blood samples taken from vegetarians after folic acid supplementation had a 38% higher level of folate than samples taken before folic acid fortification. Folate levels in the people studied were increased from 87 percent to 96 percent of the acceptable range after supplementing with folic acid. The original objective of folate fortification was to protect against neural tube defects, a type of birth defect that affects the brain and spinal cord and causes conditions like spina bifida. However, the benefits go far beyond the prevention of relatively rare birth defects, good as those benefits are. Folic acid is one of the nutrients that aids in the conversion of artery-hardening homocysteine to the non-toxic cystathionine. Anyone, including vegetarians, that eats a diet devoid of fresh meat, fish or other animal protein and fat, may see a dramatic decrease in cardiovascular disease by adding folic acid supplements to their daily regimen. Getting to the heart of it, William Campbell Douglass II, M.D. **************************************************** To start receiving your own copy of the Daily Dose, visit: _http://www.douglassreport.com/dailydose/freecopy.html_ (http://www.douglassreport.com/dailydose/freecopy.html) Or forward this e-mail to a friend so they can sign-up to receive their own copy of the Daily Dose. **************************************************** ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
