Not without reason constipation is considered the mother of all diseases. It is usually the first faulty condition of the body brought about by irrational living and is the cause of most sicknesses. Constipation is the inability of the alimentary canal to completely eject the undigested remains of food. What is the cause of that? To understand it we must once more go back to the life of primitive man and see what we can learn from it. There was no such thing as constipation known in early times, the same as there is none in animal life today, with, perhaps, the exception of domesticated man-fed animals.
As we all know the food we eat is first digested in our stomach, then in the small intestines, where it is turned into a smooth liquid called chile. The digestible part of the chile is sucked in through the walls of the small intestines, first into the lymphatic system, and then into the blood. The indigestible remains of the chile are passed into the large intestines where they stay until voided. All intestines have muscles shaped like rings and these, by contracting and expanding (the so-called peristaltic motion) push the food down through the whole alimentary canal. The intestinal muscles are not very active and are usually aided in their work by our external motions, physical work, deep breathing, bending, walking, et cetera.
When we lead a sedentary life, or do not sufficiently exercise our body, the peristaltic motion is weak and the waste matters are retained in the intestines longer than necessary. After the food has been digested it has to be voided, otherwise it goes through decomposition, and is partly reabsorbed into the blood. Whereas the primitive man moved his bowels freely at nature’s call, the modern man cannot do it, and of necessity always retains it for some time according to his social convenience. To aggravate this condition manifold the modern man feeds on a diet of concentrated, refined foods containing no roughage to push the rest of the food through the intestines. White bread and other refined grain products, meats and sugars are examples of highly concentrated foods which constitute the bulk of our present-day diet. These foods stick to the walls of the intestines, clog their little pores, and block the passage of the digested food into the blood.
The latter carries the retained poisons to various parts of the body and, trying to get rid of them, puts them in out of the way places where they accumulate in the form of boils, tumors, stones, pimples, cancers, and similar malignant growths.
The putrefied mass in the intestines also forms gases which are absorbed partly into the blood stream, causing more poisoning. Some of the gases are voided by the sufferer causing inconvenience, embarrassment ,and direct harm to the anus. Hemorrhoids and fistula of the anus are often caused by continual voiding of gases. These gases also back up from the intestines into the stomach, cause belching, and also pain, by distending the stomach and intestines. In the mouth they cause bad odors and a bad taste which cannot be camouflaged or relieved by any of the hundreds of commercial breath remedies on the market. These gases permeate every cell of the body and cause immeasurable harm.
When our body is thus stuffed up with fermented poisoned food, it cannot take any more of it and, as a result, we lose our appetite. However, as a matter of habit, we usually continue to eat. If eating does not work we try to bolster our appetite with medicines or alcoholic beverages and force ourselves artificially to continue taking food. The result is still more constipation, more fermentation of food, more gases, and sickness.
To remedy constipation the average person will take a commercial laxative of which there are many on the market. The folly of taking these purgatives is evident when you are familiar with the principles upon which they are based — either the taking away of great amounts of water from the tissues and forcing this water into the colon, or producing spasmodic motions of the intestines in order to shake off the debris glued to the inner surface. Out¬side of the harm these violent methods incur they do not cure constipation because as long as the person continues to consume more of the wrong foods the same faulty condition will persist. The cause of the trouble has not been removed and the constipated person will go on being constipated the same as before.
The primitive man of ages past had none of the above-mentioned negative influences to contend with. He ate only when hungry and digested his food thoroughly; he used natural foods containing plenty of roughage; his continual physical exertion supplied all the peristaltic motion needed so that constipation had no place in his life.