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(Foreword: The following information is provided as is, and should not be construed as an endorsement of any kind of the items mentioned. Furthermore, all readers should ask for the advice of a doctor when making choices concerning health. The writer is not a doctor and is providing the article from research obtained from third party sources.)

A very recent study done by the drug company Boehringer Ingelheim has established the fraction of people worldwide affected by constipation to be 12%. A total of 13,000 people were surveyed. Other studies quote lower figures (as low as 2%!) but nevertheless even at this low figure, most of the medical establishment would agree that constipation is a widespread affliction.

One explanation for why the statistics are so inconsistent is that constipation has historically been a poorly-defined condition. The poor definitions are due the fact that constipation varies quite a bit between patients. Frequency of bowel movements, time spent straining at the toilet and hardness of feces are but three examples of patient-reported symptoms that vary wildly from person-to-person. Some attempt has been made by both U.S. national agencies and private groups (such as the Rome Foundation) in unifying our definition of constipation. Nevertheless, diagnosis is made difficult by such variations.

Diagnosis of disease is followed by the monumental goal of pinning down the primary cause in each patient. Diagnosis is easy if there are many other tell-tale signs, such as those found in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. In another subgroup, patients may suffer from nerve and muscle damage that are the culprits of constipation. But for a very large group, physicians will be unable to find a cause. In this large group, the condition is simply called “idiopathic constipation”.

The first step a patient diagnosed with idiopathic constipation might take is high fiber therapy, whether or not the patient’s self-reported intake of fiber seems to be sufficient. The reason for this is that high fiber therapy is accessible and gentle on the patient. There are two ways to carry out the treatment, one by increasing intake of foods high in insoluble fiber, the other by dosing with specific amounts of fiber supplements. The advantage of high fiber therapy is that the success of the therapy also confirms the diagnosis.

There are several other natural remedies which are not fiber-related, examples of which are anthraquinone herbs such as senna. However, one should never succumb to the idea that a natural treatment is a safe one automatically. The Federal Drug Agency (FDA) recently forced some natural remedies off the market for safety reasons. As a result, manufacturers can no longer market aloe vera and cascara medications as constipation remedies. Nevertheless, other remedies are available.

One other option is therapy via one of the many prescription drugs for constipation. A number of these overlap with over-the-counter laxatives. A very small handful are advanced, “targeted” drugs which affect the digestive tract in specific ways. In recent times, unique approaches such as electrode-assisted biofeedback have been studied as possible medical therapies. The field of constipation remedies seems poised for great changes in the coming decade.