A common experience that most people have with constipation is that if they ignore their problem long enough, it usually does manage to resolve itself. In other words, when constipation is left untreated, the majority of people do eventually end up having a bowel movement.

On its surface, this might trick you into thinking that the problem has the tendency to go away on its own without causing any significant harm.

However, what most people don’t realize is that the whole time you’re constipated, your gut experiences long-term digestive tissue damage. That’s because a fecal mass that remains in your large intestine for a prolonged time loses more water (through reabsorption) and adds more bulk mass (from new, incoming stool).

This means the longer you wait to pass your stools, the bigger, drier and harder your fecal mass gets and the more damage your digestive tract experiences.

It is also during this waiting period that your gut develops a functional bowel disorder. Remember, a functional bowel disorder is a dangerous long-term condition that traps your digestive tract in a constant cycle of digestive muscle slowdown and digestive tissue breakdown.

What’s alarming is that this cycle of damage continues even after you evacuate your bowels. That’s how a functional bowel disorder manages to keep your digestive tract in a constant state of injury, never allowing it to fully heal.

This is why it is so vital to not only treat your constipation as early as possible but also focus on reversing the underlying functional bowel disorder so that your gut can finally repair itself from the persistent damage it has been experiencing.

Conclusion

• If you’re constipated, your colon and rectal tissue are being actively damaged
• The longer you remain constipated, the greater the digestive tissue injury
• This damage also causes your digestive tract to develop a functional bowel disorder
• This bowel disorder causes your colon to constantly make larger, harder, drier stools
• As this disorder progresses, your constipation will turn into a chronic problem
• Each time you get constipated, the damage adds to previous internal injuries
• Always take your constipation seriously, treat it early and focus on reversing the underlying functional bowel disorder that causes it

Have you ever swallowed a piece of food that wasn’t properly chewed and happened to be a bit too big to easily go down your food pipe? The pain and discomfort you experienced was probably instant and likely left your throat sore for some time.

The same thing happens when you are constipated, except you don’t usually feel the tissue injury in the lower intestine.

Note that your colon is just as sensitive as your esophagus and slow-moving stools are just as damaging to it as slowmoving food through your gullet. The only difference is that you don’t feel the damage of a slow-moving, large fecal mass because our digestive tract doesn’t have the same sensory features as our throat. This allows the injury to go unnoticed and prevents the sufferer from treating the problem with any urgency.

When a large stool pushes hard against the inside of your digestive tract for a prolonged period, it causes inflammation in its sensitive mucosal lining. If this pressure isn’t quickly relieved by moving the fecal mass forward, the digestive tract can start developing severe colitis, ischemia and ulcerations, eventually breaking down from the inside-out

This damage also causes your digestive muscles to weaken which further slows down the movement of your already stranded fecal mass. This means the next time stool comes through the same segment of your digestive tract, it will move slower, grow larger and cause greater injury.

Unless your constipation and fecal impaction treatment revives your sluggish colon muscle contractions and heals your digestive tissue injuries, your gut will continue to experience growing impairment and increasing injury with each new bowel movement until you end up with a medical emergency.

Conclusion

• Our large intestine isn’t meant to stay stretched for any longer than a brief moment
• During constipation, the digestive tract stays distended for too long and this breaks down our gut tissue
• The damage from a stuck fecal mass also causes a long-term weakening of digestive muscle contractions
• A weaker, slower digestive tract constantly makes bigger stools, which stretches the gut even more, causing additional damage
• This gut impairment continues silently until you eventually experience serious GI trauma (perforation)
• When treating your constipation, it is critical that you not just improve your stool transit times but also revive your digestive muscles contractions

The damage of constipation doesn’t just start each time your stools get stuck or stop when you have a bowel movement. The damage tends to linger and gets progressively worse with time and there’s one key reason for this…

It takes longer for our digestive tract to heal than it does for us to have a new bowel movement

The window of healing for a digestive tissue injury is so small that by the time new stools come by, they interrupt the healing process and add further to the previous damage

Unlike other parts of our body that can be rested when injured, the very nature of our digestive tract makes it impossible for us to give it a complete break and allow it to fully heal. The fact that our body needs constant nourishment means that regular eating keeps our digestive tract working no matter what it’s condition.

Even worse, fasting doesn’t seem to help with constipation or fecal impaction driven damage because it further slows down your digestive muscle contractions which can end up aggravating the problem.

This explains why even small digestive injuries tend to grow with time and why an injured gut never seems to properly heal no matter how regular your bowel movements get.

The only way to truly restore the digestive tract in such cases is to not just limit new injuries by preventing repeated bouts of constipation but also to use an aggressive treatment approach that quickly repairs your gut within its small window of healing opportunity.

Conclusion

• Digestive tissue injuries take time to heal
• Each time new stools pass by the site of injury in your gut, the healing process is interrupted
• Digestive tract damage tends to grow with each new bowel movement
• To fully reverse this damage, your treatment has to heal these injuries within the short window between bowel movements

When it comes to constipation, many sufferers rely on this flawed rationale that if it’s common, it can’t be that dangerous. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this fallacy is one of the main reasons why so many conditions start out with easily ignored symptoms and eventually turn into deadly diseases.

Take for instance, bleeding gums. By some estimates almost half of all adults 30 or older experience bleeding while flossing or brushing their teeth. Though this symptom is often disregarded as being common and harmless, evidence now shows that people with bleeding gums have a higher chance of ultimately developing dementia, atherosclerosis and even strokes.

The same goes for kidney failure where your only early symptom might be some mild leg swelling or diabetes where your only initial signs might be increased thirst and frequent urination.

The truth is, we are only inclined to take a symptom seriously if its effects are dramatically visible (rash, ulcers, etc.) or the effects are physically obvious (severe pain, extreme fatigue, etc.) Unfortunately, both these warning signs are absent during constipation.

The symptoms of constipation tend to be just subtle enough and just manageable enough to bear without raising any alarms or triggering any serious concerns. However, this doesn’t reflect the true magnitude of the damage that is happening in your gut right now and the serious long-term health risks that are going to arise from this internal damage.

It is crucial to realize that the health of our digestive tract hangs in a very delicate balance which can be permanently tipped-over at any time and at any age. What may start off as occasional incidences of mild constipation can set-off a decades-long domino effect which continually degrades your digestive function and progressively breaks down your gut. With each new episode of constipation your digestive tract gets pushed one step closer to a major complication that can one day threaten your very life.

That’s why it is so important to not fall into the same trap as others and delude yourself into a false sense of calm thinking that your constipation problem happens far too infrequently or is too mild to actually be harmful. No bout of constipation is ever harmless – if anything it is your only sign that your gut is experiencing ongoing damage and may have already begun its long march towards an eventual shutdown.

Conclusion

• Commonness should never be confused with harmlessness
• The damage of constipation adds up over time no matter how occasionally it happens
• Each time you get constipated, a domino effect starts and damages your gut over a prolonged period
• Each new incidence of constipation increases the chances of it becoming a chronic problem
• Once you have chronic constipation, you become much more likely to develop fecal impactions
• If you have a fecal impaction, your chances of developing a bowel perforation are much higher
• Bowel perforations have a very high mortality rate even when emergency treatment is received

When severe constipation sufferers first learn about fecal impaction, their usual instinct is to distinguish whether what they have is technically constipation or a fecal impaction.

The reasoning behind this is that if what they have really is a fecal impaction, then their health could be at risk and immediate treatment becomes necessary. However, if their problem turns out to just be constipation then they can take things a bit easier because they’re not in any immediate danger and the problem is likely to take care of itself.

This is a common mistake that deceives many people into a false comfort zone and increases their chances of eventually developing grave complications.

In reality, there is no such defining line that clearly differentiates severe constipation from a fecal impaction. It is more of a continuous spectrum where long-term gut damage starts much earlier with mild, occasional constipation and keeps getting worse with time.

No matter where you are along this path of increasing severity, it is important to remember that the root cause of both constipation and fecal impaction is the same – a condition called a functional bowel disorder which starts silently and constantly pushes your gut towards increasing organ malfunction and failure.

From a disease perspective it isn’t that important to differentiate where on the constipation spectrum you currently are because the same bowel disorder is at work during each stage, relentlessly damaging your digestive tract.

However, from a treatment perspective there are two things you should keep in mind…

First, the earlier you treat your constipation, the easier it is to bring it under control and the lesser the extent of the damage to your digestive tract.

Second, while constipation treatments often don’t work for a fecal impaction, fecal impaction treatments do work well for constipation. That’s why it is always best to use an effective fecal impaction treatment when addressing your constipation, no matter how mild or severe it is

Conclusion

• It’s not so necessary to define whether your problem is specifically constipation or a fecal impaction
• There is a lot of overlap between both conditions and the underlying damage process is the same
• Since constipation tends to eventually turn into fecal impaction, it should be treated just as seriously as a fecal impaction
• Constipation treatments don’t work well for fecal impaction but fecal impaction treatments work well for constipation
• When in doubt whether you have constipation or a fecal impaction, always use a fecal impaction treatment because it addresses all the necessary therapeutic goals for both problems

Though the prevalence of chronic constipation is higher in older populations, studies show that constipation itself is not a physiological consequence of normal aging. Simply put, just getting older is not reason enough to develop chronic constipation. Your digestive tract has to develop the hallmarks of a disease for it to malfunction in this way.

Typically, there are 11 things that can initially trigger this kind of malfunction in your gut, most often including a poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, certain medications etc. However, once your digestive function is thrown off by these initial triggers, the problem takes on a life on its own and continues to get worse even if you fix the original trigger.

For example, many cases of chronic constipation start because of a diet that is low in fiber. Without enough roughage, your stools become hard and your digestive tract becomes unable to easily pass the fecal material through. The longer a fecal mass remains immobile, the harder it gets and the bigger it gets from adding more incoming stool. This damages your digestive tract and causes your gut to lose its muscle tone.

Once your digestive muscles weaken, your condition transforms into a new, more serious problem. The weak digestive contractions make your gut permanently sluggish. Now, even if you address the initial cause and increase the fiber in your diet, your stool’s movement will still be slowed down, once again causing them to become larger and drier.

Notice how your gut is now trapped in a self-sustaining cycle of stool slowdown and gut damage even if you take away the initial cause (low fiber diet). The condition has gone from something simple and fixable (low dietary fiber) to a much more complex, harder to fix problem (weak digestive muscle contractions).

This isn’t just your body getting older, it’s a disease process at work.

By realizing that your constipation is part of a long-term bowel disorder and not just a normal part of aging, you are likely to address the problem early, directly and effectively. In fact, people that are well informed about the underlying disease process of constipation are far less likely to ever suffer from the serious long term health risks of having an impaired gut or end up in an emergency room from major complications of a fecal impaction.

Conclusion

• Constipation is not a natural consequence of getting older
• It is caused by a disease process that increasingly damages your gut with time
• You should treat your constipation with just as much seriousness as you would any long-term
• disease that can put your health and your life at risk
• People that are aware that their constipation is the result of a long-term bowel disorder are more likely to treat it properly and overcome it permanently

Research indicates that the damage of fecal impaction can go far beyond just injuring your digestive tract and can affect many other organs, including…

A wave of new clinical research has also begun to reveal that the long-term gut impairment caused by constipation can even affect many additional aspects of our life, including…

All this is in addition to also increasing your risk of many types of cancers, infections, fistulas and hernias.

There’s almost no part of our body that is free from the influence of our gut and anything that affects its function has a dramatic effect on our overall life. However, despite the massive impact that our digestive tract has on our health, it’s usually hard to notice how much of a toll an ailing gut is taking on us.

That’s what makes both constipation and fecal impaction so dangerous because their damage is not only relentless, it’s also silent. The sufferer usually remains completely unaware of how much they’ve lost to the disease over time in terms of reduced organ function and lowered quality of life

The only time you’ll ever realize how an impaired gut was burdening you and your organs is when you finally revive its health. At that point virtually every aspect of your being will come roaring back to life:

• You’ll feel younger and more energetic again
• You’ll think clearer and see improvements in your memory
• You’ll sleep better and wake up far more refreshed
• Your emotional health will get significantly better
• Most strikingly, you’ll suddenly see dramatic improvements in areas of life you weren’t even aware were being affected by your gut impairment

This is why it’s so essential to recognize constipation and fecal impaction as not just “digestive problems” but “life-altering problems” and treating both these issues has remarkable benefits that go way beyond just improving your gut function – it can end up changing your very existence.

Conclusion

• The health of our gut is closely tied to the health of all our organs and how we feel, think and act everyday
• The gut impairment caused by constipation and fecal impaction has a very damaging effect on these organs and our daily life
• Treating your underlying functional bowel disorder not only relieves your constipation and fecal impaction, it helps repair your gut function
• Restoring your gut function has an equally revitalizing effect on all organs that were being affected
• By reviving your digestive tract, you will also notice a significant change in many other areas of your life you didn’t previously realize were being affected by your poor gut health

We are all born with a certain amount of lifespan for each one of our vital organs. The function of our organs revs up during childhood, reaches its peak early in our life and then slowly starts declining around the age of 30.

For example…

You can think of it as our organs having varying extents of “mileage” left until they experience failure. We can use up this mileage quickly or slowly depending on how much strain we put on the organ during our life. The more stressed an organ, the faster it exhausts its remaining functional life.

Constipation puts an extreme amount of stress on our digestive tract and burns through its remaining functional life much faster than it would due to aging alone.

Having a fecal impaction is even worse because it indicates that your digestive tract has basically shut down and has very little operational life left unless its lost function is somehow rescued through proper treatment.

Remember, a constipated or impacted gut is a rapidly aging gut and regardless of your chronological age, physiologically you are at least as old as your oldest vital organ because if it fails, so does your body.

This highlights why every effort should be made to not just quickly treat your constipation and fecal impaction but prevent them from ever happening again. This will limit the shortening of your gut’s life and prevent it from premature failure.

Conclusion

• Our organs have a limited amount of functional life in them and they experience a gradual decline in working capacity around the age of 30
• Our gut also experiences this functional decline with age as is seen with the high prevalence of digestive disorders in the elderly
• Constipation and fecal impaction accelerate this organ decline and quickly use up our digestive tract’s remaining working life
• This not only leaves very little digestive function for your older years; it prematurely ages you and sets you up for serious health issues in the future

In many ways, the constipation you experience during early adulthood and middle-age is very different from the constipation you experience during old age. Constipation during early adulthood and middle-age is a much more tolerable problem that barely affects our daily life because our digestive system is still functioning relatively normally.

However, consider what happens to our digestive system when we get older:

• Your appetite begins to decline because of hormonal changes and the loss of tasting abilities
• Your ability to swallow is reduced due to of poor esophageal motility
• Your lower esophageal sphincter loses tension, causing acid reflux
• Your stomach becomes less elastic, empties slower and produces less protective bicarbonate
• Your pancreas secretes less protease and lipase
• Your liver’s detoxification abilities decline and its rate of protein synthesis goes down
• Your gut’s microbial balance gets thrown off and your chances of digestive infections goes up
• Your small intestine becomes less efficient in absorbing critical nutrients like calcium, folic acid and iron
• Your large intestine’s lining repair slows down and DNA changes promote colon cancer development

All these things combined put an enormous strain on your body when we get older and you begin to feel the constant distress of your impaired digestive system struggling to carry out normal functions.

Now imagine the enormous burden that constipation adds onto your already labored and faltering digestive system.

The feeling of having a stagnant gut that is persistently backed-up takes a major toll on your physical and mental wellbeing. What may have once seemed like a mundane and tolerable problem, now begins to feel unbearable.

Research indicates that not only is chronic constipation very prevalent in old age, it significantly reduces your quality of life during that time.

Clinical studies now show that being constipated when you’re older tends to be much more debilitating and can affect your life in multiple ways:

In other words, the older you are, the more devastating constipation is. No matter how mild or occasional your constipation may seem right now, it is likely to eventually turn into a chronic problem that torments you every day when you’re older

This underscores why you should never ignore your constipation. By acknowledging the oncoming threat and taking steps to treat it properly, you can avoid the preventable suffering that afflicts a majority of the elderly.

Conclusion

• As we get older, many parts of our digestive system begin to malfunction and that puts a tremendous of strain on our body
• Constipation adds significantly to this strain and is a source of constant distress in the elderly
• This is why constipation is much more debilitating and unbearable when you’re older
• By using an effective treatment strategy that prevents constipation well into old age, you avoid the unnecessary anguish that is so common among the aged

All our organs have the ability to take on some degree of repeated stress and still bounce back to their previous state – this property is known as the organ’s reserve capacity. The more reserve capacity an organ has, the more “cushion” it has to handle metabolic stress without getting permanently impaired.

Clinical evidence shows that people with higher organ reserve capacities live longer, healthier lives. This is certainly also true of people that have a greater gut reserve capacity. Take for instance a country like Japan where people enjoy the highest life expectancy in the world, it is no coincidence that their population also has higher gastrointestinal reserve capacities than the rest of the world.

Having ample gut reserve capacity insulates you from premature aging and even premature death. However, if something were to reduce the reserve capacity of your digestive tract, it would not just shorten your life but also make you vulnerable to diseases.

Constipation happens to be a condition that depletes your digestive tract’s reserve capacity, taking away a vital safeguard which protects your gut from daily stress, microinjuries and common digestive health problems.

Once repeated bouts of constipation have exhausted your gut’s reserve capacity, even minor issues begin to permanently lower its function. This leaves your digestive system with less and less working ability as time goes by, contributing to faster aging, poor health and a shorter life.

Once repeated bouts of constipation have exhausted your gut’s reserve capacity, even minor issues begin to permanently lower its function. This leaves your digestive system with less and less working ability as time goes by, contributing to faster aging, poor health and a shorter life.

• The signs of heart failure only become apparent once we’ve lost about 50% of our cardiac function
• We can lose 70% of our liver function and still not notice any obvious symptoms
• Kidney failure symptoms only reveal themselves once you’re down to just 15% of your renal function

The same is true of our gut.

We often can’t tell when constipation has completely drained our digestive tract’s reserve capacity and brought it to the point of organ failure until we develop a fecal impaction. At that stage our gut’s function has essentially collapsed and this has extreme repercussions:

• Your gut will now be less able to defend itself against tissue damage and injuries
• Any functional loss your gut continues to experience will likely be permanent
• Your colon will be more likely to keep experiencing increasingly severe fecal impactions
• You will be more likely to suffer from dangerous complications from your fecal impactions
• You will also be more likely to develop other serious, chronic digestive disorders
• Your digestive tract will also be less likely to return to a healthy state even in the absence of repeated constipation

This emphasizes why it is so important to preserve your gut’s reserve capacity for as long as possible by treating and preventing your constipation as aggressively as possible.

But what if you have already depleted your gut’s reserve capacity and have lost so much of its function that you have now developed a fecal impaction? The only way to avoid long-term risks to your health and your life is to employ a long-term therapy that provides continual healing and protection to your incapacitated digestive tract. Doing this will ensure that you are able to bring back its lost function and maintain it well into old age.

Conclusion

• An organ’s reserve capacity is its ability to take on repeated stress without getting impaired
• Once your organ’s reserve capacity has been used up, its function begins to get permanently compromised
• Constipation takes away your gut’s reserve capacity, making you susceptible to premature aging, disease and premature death
• By the time you develop a fecal impaction you have not just used up all of your gut’s reserve capacity, your digestive tract has reached the point of organ failure
• The only way to restore your organ function at that late stage is through a long-term therapeutic approach that provides continual healing and protection to your gut

Despite the wide availability of many types of over-the-counter constipation treatments on the market today, studies show that constipation sufferers are often dissatisfied with the lack of effectiveness of these products. Even when people do find a particular OTC product to be somewhat helpful, they often report their results to be unpredictable and their relief to be incomplete.

Patients are frequently left with the difficult decision of choosing between products that are safe but ineffective and products that are slightly effective but very harmful.

• Stool softeners (emollient laxatives) – Though considered safe, research indicates that they provide no significant benefits when clinically compared to placebos.
• Fiber supplements (bulk forming laxatives) – TClinical evidence is now revealing that the benefits of these products may be overstated and increasing dietary fiber can even make your chronic constipation symptoms worse.
• Hyperosmotic laxatives and saline laxatives – Not only do these products tend to have adverse side effects like flatulence, bloating, cramping and diarrhea, they also are not effective at relieving all the symptoms of chronic constipation.
• Enemas – Whether they use water, saline or oil, enemas can cause a potentially life-threatening perforation of the rectum either because of rectal wall weakening, device tip trauma or even simply being in the wrong position when the enema is performed.
• Stimulant laxatives – Though these products have shown to have a higher efficacy than milder laxatives, they have serious safety concerns such as causing damage to your epithelial cells and injuring the nerves and muscles that line your gut which can end up making your colon even slower in the long run.

Another key drawback of common over-the-counter constipation treatments is that they take a very short-term and superficial approach to solving what is really a complex, long-term condition. Since none of these products address the underlying functional bowel disorder that is at the root of your problem, none of them actually prevent your constipation from constantly recurring or from getting worse with time.

This narrow therapeutic approach is also the reason why products that might alleviate a particular symptom, often end up worsening others and why patients have to frequently move on to trying a combination of various therapies to see satisfactory results

Note that if your goal is to see fast, long-lasting and complete relief from both your constipation and fecal impaction, there are 10 things you should look for in your treatment. Any product that addresses all 10 of these therapeutic goals will not just help you see immediate results, it will go on to stop your underlying functional bowel disorder and repair the damage your gut has experienced so far.

Conclusion

• Common OTC constipation treatments either use an ineffective or unsafe approach to get your stools moving again
• These products provide limited, short-term relief for what is a complex, long-term condition
• Laxative and enema use has been linked to a progressive weaking and further slowing down of the digestive tract in the long run
• This is why most constipation and fecal impaction sufferers see their condition become more frequent and increasingly severe with time
• The only way to quickly and permanently overcome both constipation and fecal impaction is to rely on a treatment that accomplishes 10 specific therapeutic crucial goals

When our digestive tract begins to develop a functional bowel disorder, it’s peristaltic reflexes slowdown, which causes our stools to gradually become larger, drier and harder. We usually don’t notice these changes until the stools get so large that our gut has a hard time propelling them forward.

That’s when you experience constipation.

Note that the fecal mass which is stranded in your colon became larger, drier and harder because of its prolonged presence in your large intestine. It is still possible for some of the new incoming stool that might be relatively softer and has not yet had a chance to grow larger, to squeeze past the hardened fecal mass and make its way into your rectum.

In such a situation you will still be able to have a bowel movement but your stools will appear narrow and stringy.

Even when your stools begin to completely obstruct your gut and you develop a fecal impaction, it is still possible for liquids from newly digested food to slip past your lodged fecal mass. This can often lead to accidental leakages of both solid and liquid stools (fecal incontinence) and also cause something known as paradoxical diarrhea.

It seems almost counterintuitive that the worse your fecal impaction gets, the higher your chances of sudden or unexpected bowel movements. However, once you know that this is a sign of severe gut blockage, you are more likely to take these symptoms seriously and treat the problem promptly.

The best thing you can do in such a situation is to ensure that your treatment doesn’t just focus on softening and evacuating new stools but also helps you safely move your wedged fecal mass out of your body.

Conclusion

• When your gut develops a functional bowel disorder, it slows down the movement of stools through your colon
• The longer your stool remains in your colon, the bigger, drier and harder it gets
• When your stools finally get so big that they begin to get stuck in your colon, new stool that is softer and has more water can slip past the large fecal mass
• This can lead to narrow stools or accidental diarrhea
• If you are experiencing stool leakage (solid or liquid), it is a sign that your fecal impaction is severe and you should treat the impaction immediately
• Your treatment should get your stuck fecal mass moving again without adding to the colonic and rectal load to prevent a perforation

Constipation is one of the few conditions where the patient often relies on internal sensations to self-diagnose their problem. However, there are two main reasons why trusting these sensations can actually backfire:

• Digestive symptoms and rectal sensations tend to be vague and misleading. – Studies show that the sensations we feel during constipation prevent us from figuring out the true cause of our problem and trick us into choosing ineffective treatments. Here’s why:

Constipation is not one specific condition but a general term used to describe a wide range of symptoms

The experience of these symptoms is very subjective and everyone “feels” constipation differently

This causes a lot of misunderstanding between patients and doctors when diagnosing the cause of their constipation

These sensations often misguide the patient, which results in them making poor treatment decisions

In short, our sensations give us an inaccurate picture of what is happening inside our gut during constipation and relying on these sensations can lead us to use the wrong treatment.

Take for instance the most commonly diagnosed type of constipation – normal transit constipation. Patients with this type of constipation often describe their stools as being hard and dry. However, upon medical testing their stool consistency often seems to be normal, contradicting their claims.

Now imagine if these patients simply relied on their sensations to decide what treatment to use? They’d likely choose a stool softener which would have limited to no benefit for them.

This shows how our symptoms or even the lack of them can deceive us

That’s why regardless of what sensations you are feeling and what those sensations are indicating, you should choose a broad treatment which targets all possible underlying causes of your constipation. This ensures that you will be able to treat the root of the problem even if it’s not apparent to you and see immediate results that last.

• Constipation and fecal impaction can damage the nerves in your gut and rectum, diminishing your inner sensations. – A common experience that many chronic constipation and fecal impaction sufferers have is that they go from feeling the constant urge to pass their stool to eventually losing this urge no matter how full their rectum gets.

Somewhere along the line of going from mild constipation to a fecal impaction, the patient loses the ability to sense how badly obstructed their colon or rectum truly is.

This happens because the impacted stool compresses the nerves around your gut, causing neuropathic damage. One of the critical nerves that experiences such damage is the pudendal nerve which plays an important role in helping your rectum sense when it is full. Damage to pudendal nerve causes excessive accumulation of stool in your rectum which further promotes recurrent fecal impactions.

This traps you in a vicious cycle:

Note how simply relying on your inner sensations when you have a fecal impaction keeps you in the dark about the growing damage inside. In other words, not feeling any symptoms can itself be a sign of advanced digestive tissue injury and doing nothing can result in you suffering from a major life-threatening complication, like a bowel perforation

The best way to avoid such an emergency is to never depend on your symptoms to tell you how serious your situation is. If you suffer from chronic constipation or have ever had a fecal impaction, always be vigilant and aware that an underlying functional bowel disorder is constantly damaging your digestive tract. Your goal should be to interrupt this disorder’s relentless attack on your gut through a comprehensive treatment approach regardless of whether you have any symptoms or not.

Conclusion

• Our gut and rectal sensations give us a distorted picture of what is really going on inside our digestive tract
• These sensations may point to a particular cause but these signs are often wrong
• The treatment you choose should go beyond just relieving your symptoms and should address all major causes of constipation and fecal impaction
• Constipation and fecal impaction can cause nerve damage in your gut and rectum, taking away your ability to sense when you are dangerously obstructed
• This means even if you don’t have noticeable symptoms, you should be vigilant about fecal impaction damage and use a treatment that doesn’t just help you have a bowel movement but also repairs this damage

Here’s a statistic that may surprise you…

1 in 5 patients that are admitted to the hospital from a serious fecal impaction complication report having normal bowel movements before their emergency. This shows that fecal impaction complications don’t just happen when you are in the middle of an impaction

These medical emergencies can happen at any time.

Remember, a fecal impaction doesn’t just suddenly happen one day without any prior issues with your digestive tract. It is the result of a long-term functional bowel disorder breaking down your gut over time.

By the time you develop your first fecal impaction, your gut has already experienced so much damage and lost so much of its function that it has essentially been brought to the brink of organ failure. At that point, your gut becomes so weak that it teeters on the edge of developing a perforation and even minor additional injury can end up causing a lifethreatening tear in your digestive tract.

Yes, that means even if you have resolved your fecal impaction, your gut remains so vulnerable that the normal passage of stool can end up perforating your colon, requiring immediate surgery.

Let’s see an example of how someone with normal bowel movements can suddenly end up in such a critical situation:

This is just one example among many other ways you can suffer from a life-threatening bowel perforation even if you are not currently in the middle of a fecal impaction. However, you can protect yourself from these potential dangers by simply knowing that as a fecal impaction sufferer your gut is not only weak and vulnerable but also under constant attack from an underlying bowel disorder.

The best way to minimize the ever-present risk of a major complication is to choose a treatment that not only helps you pass your impacted stools but also continues to heal your digestive tract long after. This will ensure that you reverse the years of damage your gut has experienced and prevent a sudden medical emergency that is so common among fecal impaction sufferers.

Conclusion

• Fecal impactions are the result of a long-term functional bowel disorder that causes continual damage to your gut even when you are not in the middle of an impaction
• Once you’ve had your first fecal impaction, your digestive tract has already become so weak that it can develop a perforation at any time
• Almost 20% of fecal impaction sufferers that develop a bowel perforation are not impacted at the time of their emergency
• Even if you are not currently impacted and your stools seem to be moving fine, it is important to repair the years of damage your digestive tract has experienced so far
• The best way to avoid a major complication is to choose a treatment that doesn’t just dislodge your stuck stools but also regenerates your digestive lining, reinforces your digestive wall and improves your gut microbiota

Most sufferers wrongly assume that a digestive tear would never happen to them or that they would immediately seek treatment if it felt like their gut was about to perforate. This is one of the biggest misunderstandings that has led many fecal impaction sufferers to suddenly end up in a life-and-death situation.

While our digestive tract shares a similar type of tissue to the inside of our mouth, it does not share the same sensory features. You might imagine that you would be able to easily sense if a large stool stretched your colon to the point of tearing but you would be wrong. You most likely wouldn’t feel any obvious pain and would probably go about your day completely unaware of how close you were to calamity.

But doesn’t our gut have the ability to sense when we are constipated or severely impacted? So, shouldn’t that sensation also tell us if we were about to experience a bowel perforation?

Not really, because the sensation of being constipated originates from the rectum and while our rectum does have the ability to let us know when it is being stretched, this isn’t where the majority of perforations happen. The most common location along your digestive tract where stools tend to get stuck is the sigmoid colon, which is further up from the rectum does not have the same sensory signaling capabilities.

Now, consider this…

Your rectum is 2 – 2.5 inches wide and if your stools are getting stuck here, there is a good chance that there could also be stool stuck at your sigmoid colon which is only 1 inch wide – less than half the width of your rectum. Even worse, this segment of your colon makes sharp S-shaped turns which is difficult for large, hard stools to traverse.

Finally, consider what happens during the later stages of fecal impaction damage where the nerves around your rectum get injured, taking away your gut’s last, indirect warning system that lets you know that your gut is being stretched by a large fecal mass. You are now left completely in the dark and it simply becomes a matter of time before a major complication occurs. Ironically, since it is the lack of symptoms that is the hallmark of advanced fecal impaction damage, you have no way of knowing what danger you are facing until a medical emergency unexpectedly occurs.

The only way to stay clear of this deadly risk is to never wait for obvious signs of gut damage because you many never see them. Most important of all, be sure to use a treatment that not only normalizes your stool consistency but also provides prolonged gut healing and repairs the nerve damage around your rectum. This will target your fecal impaction on multiple fronts and protect you from serious complications in the future.

Conclusion

• Bowel perforations have a high risk of mortality even if immediate treatment is received
• These perforations often happen unexpectedly, without any clear warning signs
• When it comes to fecal impaction, the lack of symptoms can be a sign of advanced gut damage
• That’s why you should never delay your treatment even if you don’t feel any symptoms
• The most common site of bowel perforations is around the sigmoid colon which is only half as wide as your rectum
• So, if stools are getting stuck in your rectum, they are definitely getting stuck at the sigmoid colon and damaging it
• To lower your risk of a bowel perforation, be sure to use a treatment that improves the consistency of your stools, provides extended healing for your digestive tract and reverses the nerve damage to your gut