Constipation – a hard subject!

I was reminded today about the early days of my recovery and an unpleasant subject and that was constipation.

When your thyroid is low, the whole of your body slows down. My pulse dropped to an average of about 57 and my temperature dropped to 35.1 – bordering on hypothermic. Is it any wonder then that the remaining systems of your body also slow down, I found that I was not going to the toilet for 4 or 5 days at a time and when I did go….

No funny pictures were going to take away the pain!

The pain was terrible and it was no wonder that I got checked out for all sorts of other illnesses as my insides were really sore.
It wasn’t bowel cancer. Everything had slowed down so had my tummy, intestines, bowels and their ‘release mechanism’.

It’s such a difficult subject to talk about and of course it means people often fear the worst when it could actually be Low Thyroid. A possible simple diagnosis but as always there is a bit more to this story. I was getting really fed up with the situation and thought I’d better find a solution.

1) the more water you drink the more motilin is produced in your intestine which helps in the contractions of your intestine. Normally this would help, it didn’t.
2) More exercise to encourage movement – you trying telling people with low thyroid and ME/CFS to do more exercise and you may get a few harsh words back. We would if our body would let us!
3) Improve your diet and add fibre. Easy to do but then a bit difficult when avoiding all wheat products and fruit as the sugar upsets the careful balance you are trying to create.
4) Have a colon clense. Still not tried that one.
5) go on a detox diet, that helped me a lot but other options came up ‘trumps for me –
6) Acidophilus. You can get this as probiotic capsules that put back the beneficial bacteria into your gut. Better for me than the yoghurt drinks as these contain sugar. Just watch out if low thyroid that the tablets don’t contain soya, a banned product for you. Not recommending any brand/shop but look for these.
7) Fresh raw organic unpasteurised sauerkraut. Yes I am recommending this product, so much so that my local health shop now stocks it! It is with a warning though as it is uncooked cabbage which should be avoided if low thyroid. There is discussion that the process reduces the thyroid impact. However just search for unpasteurised sauerkraut recipies and you can use loads of different vegetables and make your own.

That final suggestion worked really well for me and I found an added bonus in that it got rid of my sweet tooth, which was a good thing.

It’s really important to get your gut working as well as it can otherwise, all the thyroid therapy in the world won’t make you totally well as half of it is probably not being used. You could be painfully flushing it all away.

I think a lighter topic next time…..

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