The importance of staying regular

products such as white bread, pastries, or cakes, switch to a wholemeal flour, and replace your sweet treats with fruit. You can add soluble fibre to your diet, by including ground flaxseed, oat bran, psyllium husk, slippery elm powder, and pectin.

Support the bowel microbiome

The beneficial bacteria in your colon feed on vegetable fibre. The best way to improve the balance of gut bacteria is to eat a wide variety of fruit and vegetables, covering all the colours of the rainbow. Fermented foods can be a great addition to improve your bowel microbiome. These foods include yogurt, kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, miso soup, and kimchi.

Exercise

Daily exercise such as walking can help to stimulate the bowels; aim to move your body daily.

When nothing is moving

For extra support, try chamomile tea, bitter green leafy vegetables or prunes to stimulate bowel movement. When all else fails, herbal laxatives are much more gentle than conventional ones, you can get these at a health food shop or from a naturopath.

Whole Naturopathy can help provide you with natural products and dietary advice to keep your bowels moving regularly as well as treating any issues that may arise as a result of constipation.

This advice is general in nature and not intended to be prescriptive. For individualised prescriptive advice, please see a naturopath or other health care practitioner.

Kathryn Messenger

BHSc (Naturopathy) kathryn@wholenaturopathy.com.au

Suite 1, 24/1880 Ferntree Gully Rd

Mountain Gate Shopping Centre

Ferntree Gully, Victoria

THIS IS A HUGELY PERSONAL POST and if women’s menstruation makes you feel uncomfortable,

STOP READING NOW !!

Last week my beautiful 19-year-old daughter underwent a 5-hour Surgery for Endometriosis

After 4 long years, she will finally be able to live a life FREE of pain.

Endometriosis is a chronic condition, which can be debilitating, and is likely to get worse over time without management or treatment.

1 in 9 Australian women are confirmed as having the disease, though it is suspected many more are living with this “silent cancer” which takes, on average, 7 years for women to be diagnosed.

What Is Endometriosis

Endometriosis is a disease in which tissue, similar to the lining of the uterus, grows outside the uterus. It can cause severe pain in the pelvis and make it harder to get pregnant. Endometriosis can start at a person's first menstrual period and last until menopause.