Looking for natural constipation remedies or natural bloating remedies?
Try THIS #1 remedy to cure constipation and bloating naturally, including 5 ways how to use it (below) BEFORE turning to supplements.
CONSTIPATION REMEDIES & SUPPLEMENTS ARE OVERWHELMING
Walk down the medicine or supplement aisle of any convenience or grocery store and you’re likely to find hundreds of supplements and medications promoting “improved gut health.”
- Tums “banish bloating” and heart burn.
- Milk of Magnesia “settles your stomach.”
- Fiber softens stools.
- Miralax “helps you go.”
Even non-medication supplements boast promising (natural) results:
- “Boost digestion.”
- “Good gut bacteria!”
- “Cleanse your liver.”
- “Natural constipation relief.”
With all these claims and options, it’s easy to think that a magic pill can solve all your digestive woes.
Not so fast!
Before you dish out your cash to pills and supplements that may or may not work, there is one “magic pill” rarely promoted in “TUMs” and probiotic commercials: Your mind muscle.
THE POWER OF THE MIND TO CURE CONSTIPATION & BLOATING NATURALLY
Your mind is a powerful force to be reckoned with when it comes to overcoming anything.
For example: Sports statistics report that “sports are 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical.” (Vanderbilt)
Many athletes use the technique of “mental imagery,” or visualization, to up their game and perform at their peak. Others (including: Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, LeBron James and Olympic gold medal-winning volleyball players Misty May-Trainor and Kerry Walsh) use meditation to enhance their performance.
In medicine and research, this is often referred to as the “placebo effect.”
The Placebo Effect in Health & Healing
Placebo is defined as “a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect.”
The “placebo effect” happens in studies when subjects BELIEVE they are taking one pill or medicine, but it actually is a FALSE assumption. Like taking a cough drop instead of strong pain medicine to see IF the medicine is actually effective for another cohort of test subjects.
For instance: One study (Pecina et al, 2015) of 35 patients with “major depression” found that patients experienced “significant decreases” in depression symptoms when they took the placebo anti-depressants, compared to when they took the actual drugs themselves. Researchers concluded that outcomes reductions were linked to increased receptors in regions of the brain associated with emotion and stress regulation.
Another study of two groups of IBS sufferers also discovered the placebo to be stronger—even when both groups received no real drugs at all.
In the study, half of group received NO treatment. The other half of patients were actually told they’d be taking fake drugs (delivered in bottles labeled “placebo pills”), but also told that placebos often have “healing effects.”
The study’s results shocked even the investigators themselves: even patients who knewthey were taking placebos described real improvement, reporting TWICE as much symptom relief as the no-treatment group (Kaptchuk, 2010).
How Placebo Effect Works to Heal Your Gut
Contrary to popular belief, people don’t just imagine placebo responses.
Brain-imaging studies show that placebos cause measurable changes in brain signaling pathways (Marchant, 2016).
Say you have back pain and spontaneously decide to eat a Gummy Vitamin. Chances are you won’t feel better.
However, if you describe your symptoms to a doc or physical therapist, who then prescribes you the same Gummy Vitamin (unbeknownst to you, it’s pretty much just sugar), you believe that pill will have a healing benefit.
This belief that the doc knows best and has the “magic pill” then activates reward pathways in your brain, then stimulating the release of more endorphins—chemicals that make you “feel better” because you feel at ease.
Like sugar or morphine (painkiller), these endorphins bind to opioid receptors in your brain and cause pain relief—all because you BELIEVED that the Gummy Vitamin would work….And it does.
In other words: The “placebo effect” is not necessarily the “fake pill” or Gummy itself, but also the belief and hope a patient has for his or her outcomes surrounding that therapy.
Enter: The natural “cure” for constipation and bloating— Your POWERFUL mind.
The #1 Constipation & Bloating Remedy: Your Mind
Your brain and gut are connected. How you think influences how you feel.
From butterflies in your stomach when you get anxious about public speaking…to getting nausea at sight of blood or…constipation or bloating when you’re super stressed or anxious…
The “brain-gut” connection is real.
The Brain-Gut Connection
Physically speaking, your brain is connected to your gut, and your gut to your brain, via the vagus nerve (a nerve that sits on top of your stomach and runs straight up to your brain).
What we can learn from these facts? Your mind is the MOST powerful drug and natural constipation and bloating remedy.
Here are 5 ways to use this #1 natural constipation and bloating remedy (your mind) to improve your digestion (before turning to supplements):
- Mindful Eating. Before digging in without thinking at your next meal. Stop. Pause. Breathe. Take 1-2 minutes to give thanks for your food. Smell your food. Put your napkin in your lap. Set intention. Just be.
- Social Media & E-mail Detox. It’s stressing you out more than you think. If you are like 8 in 10 Americans, you are checking it within the first 15 minutes of waking, and from there, all bets are off: Letting the day happen to YOU, instead of YOU happening to the day. Before you get swept away by the fires and rapid responses required on email, or the comparison idols of social media, consider putting time limits or period around your email and social media checking (Such as establishing 1-2 times per day to check them— in a chunk of time; or vowing not to check it within the first 1-2 hours of waking so you can establish a morning routine instead, etc.)
- Guided Imagery. Imagine yourself digesting your food well. Not experiencing bloating. Fully eliminating your poop. Whatever issue you’re having with digestion, imagine the opposite.
- Power Breathing. Stop holding your breath throughout the day. Or getting flustered and anxious, breathing faster or intermittently. Set intention to breathe (particularly around that “time” you want to go do the doo, or post-meal when you tend to experience more bloating). Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth for slow 5-10 second inhales and exhales.
- Stop Telling Yourself “Always” and “Never.” “I am always constipated.” Or “I’m never going to feel better with all this bloating.” We are the stories we tell ourselves. Live a new story.
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