G'day.
Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand.
Thanks for checking out my video.
We're going to talk about today the five good drinks for constipation.
It's surprising how many people I see on Skype, in my practice, that actually are constipated.
It's really, really amazing.
So let's talk about different kinds of beverage approaches you could use for improving how
your bowel functions.
So there's different approaches here.
Some people take laxative kind of approaches, where they're going to really swallow pills
or drink things to really just evacuate the bowel.
That's not really what we're talking about here.
We're not talking about a magnesium hydroxide or magnesium citrate kind of a drink, because
that will work.
If you take enough magnesium or Vitamin C, you're going to really help that bowel work
properly.
A really nice drink to have, in my opinion, is lemon water, especially if you add a little
bit of fennel, powdered funnel or powdered cumin into it.
So just water, glass of water, the juice of half to a whole lemon, put a bit of cumin
powder or a bit of ... There's different powders you [inaudible 00:01:10].
Fennel's quite tasty.
Mix that in there because fennel and cumin really help to improve gut function.
They dispel gas, they reduce bloating, and they also improve the motion of ... passage
of stool through the bowel.
Chewing on fennel seeds is quite good for doing that, too.
So lemon water, a bit of cumin powder or fennel powder, stir it up, and then have that as
a drink first thing in the morning.
Very good thing to do.
So that's the first one I would say, would be a lemon water drink.
The second thing I really like are vegetable juices.
I love having a vegetable juice at least once per day, and my favorite combination would
be the green Granny Smith apple, a celery stick, and a piece of carrot.
That's going to really help the digestive system considerably if you do that, especially
if you don't just use a juicer that squeezes and gets the juice out of the vegetables and
you throw the pulp away, because you want the fiber.
The fiber's the important part of really helping to improve the bowel tone.
So try that approach.
A small green apple, a small carrot, and a celery stick.
Nice combination.
Even better when you've got a bit more experience, is you add a little bit of spinach to it,
okay.
So that's number two drink, would be the vegetable drink once per day.
When you start with vegetable drinks, I recommend that you dilute them about 50 water, good
quality water, 50 juice, because they can be a bit strong when you start them.
In my Candida Crusher book, I wrote about the three different stages of juicing.
You've got the intermediate vegetables and fruits you can juice ... sorry, you've got
the beginners, you've got the intermediate, then you've got the advanced, which are the
real bitter things.
So bitter things like grapefruit and things like that, artichokes.
There's a lot of bitter vegetables that you could ... Bok choy, broccoli, you can even
juice, but they're quite bitter, and unless you're already experienced, it can make you
a little bit sick or gassy or [bloaty 00:02:57].
So you may want to start with the green apple and celery and carrot.
That's quite a smart approach.
The intermediate one would be more beetroot, for example.
That's quite a good intermediate thing to add into a drink.
Stools may turn a bit red, but beetroot also really helps with bowel function.
So the vegetable juices is number two.
Vegetable juice number three, which is super powerful, if you want to get a bit of spinach
... One cup of spinach contains four grams of fiber, I've written down here.
That's a lot of fiber.
A lot of fiber.
So spinach just juiced on its own, and take a shot of straight spinach juice, some people
do that.
Or you can throw a couple of handfuls of green spinach leaves in a Vitamix or a NutriBullet
or something like that, and blend it right up into a drink, and then you could either
dilute that with water or have that neat.
Having it neat's very, very strong, a bit like wheatgrass.
It's a powerful drink, full of chlorophyll, full of folic acid, a lot of magnesium, potassium
in there, so it's going to really make you feel good, but it could create a bit of a
detox reaction if you're not used to it.
So drink number three would be the more powerful approach, would be basically a spinach shot
or a spinach drink.
Prune juice is a good one that I recommend.
That's number four.
So what you do with prunes, just buy a packet of prunes, put three or four of them in cup,
just a big cup.
This cup's, for example, probably too small.
My cup of my green tea here.
That's probably too small for you.
You might want a little bit bigger one.
I would put three or four prunes in there, pour boiling on top, and then you're going
to leave that, probably for about a good five, 10 minutes.
Give it a stir.
You could take the prunes out, pop the pips out of the prunes, put them back in, or you
could blend ... take the pips out and then blend the whole thing and it'll go a nice
dark color.
So prune juice is excellent.
It's very high in different fibers, but also it's got sorbitol in it, a sugar that really
helps to make the large intestine move quite well.
So that's almost like a semi sort of laxative kind of a bowel moving drink, is a prune drink.
So that's drink number four, is prune.
The other one I really like is apple, apple or pear, so that's number five.
You can either juice pears or juice apples, or do a combo.
Also you could put a little bit of cumin or fennel, even a little bit of ginger in with
this.
It's quite tasty.
You could put a tiny little bit of manuka New Zealand honey in that if you want.
That gives it even more taste and flavor, and apple and pear are excellent for constipation.
Those kinds of drinks, they work quite well.
Of course there are approaches like psyllium.
You could mix that through water, you know, the psyllium husks.
You could put ground flaxseed.
You can mix that in a drink and things like that.
But my favorite out of all of these would be the lemon water because I have that every
morning.
I think it's a fantastic drink.
It cleans the liver up.
It helps to keep parasite and bacterial numbers down.
It alkalizes the body, yet it stimulates the stomach.
It improves the GI function, upper GI function.
It's a very good cleansing drink.
If you can't get constipation working through these kind of drinks, you may need a gall
bladder or liver cleanse or flush, so look at some of my videos on liver gall bladder
cleansing and that will explain a bit further.
That could be why.
Stress is a big reason why people are constipated, so please be mindful to chew food properly
and understand that stress slows the bowel right down.
That could be your problem.
Thanks for tuning in.
Click on the link below if you haven't got my free candida report.
Thank you.