Fecal Impaction Vs Constipation
Even though both constipation and fecal impaction may seem like they’re basically the same thing, there are some key differences between the two…
Consipation
Can be caused by a colon slowdown, unhealthy stool consistency or problems with parts of the body involved in having a bowel movement
Results in stools that are difficult to pass
Noticeable symptoms such as straining and pain during bowel movement
Is a recurring problem that gets worse with time
Has been linked to colon cancer, gallbladder cancer, ovarian cancer and breast cancer
Fecal Impaction
Can cause a colon shutdown, serious damage to your digestive tract and can lead to life-threatening bowel perforation
Stool becomes completely stuck and is impossible to pass
Silent internal damage such as ulcerations in the digestive lining and bowel wall breakdown
Gut injury progresses quickly until a major complication occurs
Has a high mortality rate from complications such as bowel perforation, peritonitis and sepsis
Despite these differences, there is one crucial thing that connects both constipation and fecal impaction…
They are both part of a serious long-term condition called a
Functional Bowel Disorder
- This condition is so common that most people will develop it at some point in their life
- It is so persistent that once you have it, it can relentlessly damage your gut for decades
- It is so deviously silent that it can push your digestive tract to the point of organ failure without you ever noticing
- It is so potentially dangerous that it is responsible for many hospitalizations and deaths worldwide each year
So, let’s see how a functional bowel disorder starts in our gut and how something as common as constipation can turn into a deadly problem like a fecal impaction.
How constipation turns into a serious disease
To understand the link between constipation and fecal impaction, we first need to understand the difference between a disorder and a disease…
- Disorders happen when a certain part your body becomes impaired either because the tissue starts to look different (structure) or that part of your body begins to act different (function).
- Now imagine if the tissue’s structure or function gets so impaired that it begins to interfere with your life and puts your health at risk – that’s a disease.
Constipation is a disorder
(Functional Bowel Disorder)
Fecal impaction happens when that disorder starts turning into a disease
(Stercoral colitis, stercoral ulceration, megacolon, peritonitis)
Both are part of the same dangerous condition that progressively breaks down your digestive tract
Constipation happens in the early stages when your digestive tract begins to slow down either because of age, diet, lifestyle, medications or other causes. While a gut slowdown may not seem like a big problem on its surface, it can prove deadly because it opens the doorway for your intestine to develop a functional bowel disorder. Once this disorder has taken a foothold in your gut, it increasingly disrupts your digestive tract’s function until it either shuts down or experiences extreme trauma (perforation).
Though it would be the ideal to treat your functional bowel disorder at this early stage, there are two reasons why most people don’t end up doing anything about it:
- The digestive tissue injuries caused by a functional bowel disorder are usually silent and often go unnoticed
- The only obvious sign of this disorder – constipation – is almost never taken seriously by most people
This allows your gut damage to continue uninterrupted and your bowel disorder to move on to the next stage…
Fecal impaction happens when your bowel disorder turns into an outright disease. By this point, your colon has lost so much of its function that it has largely been brought to a grinding halt. The stools that your digestive system makes at this stage are so large, hard and dry that they simply can’t move along your gut anymore. These stools stretch your soft GI tract so much that the blood vessels inside it get closed-shut and your digestive tissue starts dying from a lack of oxygen.
Now your disorder has entered an aggressive phase where your colon goes through 9 stages of fecal impaction damage and your digestive tract progressively breaks down from the inside-out.
Unless this disease process is quickly interrupted, you can end up with a perforation and sepsis, which can be fatal.
And this is why constipation should never be ignored or taken lightly. It is often your only clue that a dangerous condition is currently underway in your gut and is actively harming your digestive tissue.
And if you already have a fecal impaction, this means your bowel disorder has progressed so far that your risk of experiencing life-threatening complications is very high.
Just consider these disturbing statistics…
These facts tell us a few critical things:
- Our digestive tract is prone to developing a functional bowel disorder
- This disorder often starts silently early in our life and gets worse with time
- Even if you have occasional constipation, the disorder has already started degrading your gut function
- As your gut function keeps declining, occasional constipation will turn into chronic constipation
- By the time you develop a fecal impaction, your bowel disorder has reached an advanced stage
- The longer you wait, the higher your chances of dangerous complications like a bowel perforation
- A bowel perforation poses an extremely high risk of death even if treated immediately in a hospital
This shows how relentless a functional bowel disorder can be. Not only does it have the capacity to devastate your health and your life, its destructive influence seems to be almost unstoppable.
Now that we know how serious a fecal impaction is, let’s take a close look at what a fecal impaction really is. As you’re about to find out, a fecal impaction is a far bigger problem than your stools simply being stuck and unable to be expelled. You’ll also find out how treating it is not easy as one might imagine
