Ultra Simple Diet

gaman said:
I've been doing the diet again now for about 5 weeks straight after falling of the wagon for a few weeks. I had done it 5 weeks as well before falling off. I've been having some good results and have lost 40 lbs but I have one continual problem -- constipation.

I've got this senna that I take 3 times per day (470mg per pill) to help, and I also take 1 or 2 docusate sodium 100mg (stool softener) in the evening. That seems to help enough that I can get buy, although not smoothly, but the senna says not to take it for more than 7 days straight and I haven't found any warnings etc. related to the docusate sodium.

So I'm wondering if anyone has more info on the above 2 pills, and if anyone has had the continual problems like I have and has found some other way to help.

I drink lots of water every day (at minimum 96 ounces) and eat some form of beans and rice almost every day as well as chicken and veggies and the ultrashake in the morning.

Thanks.
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Magnesium could help you to solve that problem.
 
Quote from gaman;I've been doing the diet again now for about 5 weeks straight after falling of the wagon for a few weeks. I had done it 5 weeks as well before falling off. I've been having some good results and have lost 40 lbs but I have one continual problem -- constipation.

I've got this senna that I take 3 times per day (470mg per pill) to help, and I also take 1 or 2 docusate sodium 100mg (stool softener) in the evening. That seems to help enough that I can get buy, although not smoothly, but the senna says not to take it for more than 7 days straight and I haven't found any warnings etc. related to the docusate sodium.

So I'm wondering if anyone has more info on the above 2 pills, and if anyone has had the continual problems like I have and has found some other way to help.

I drink lots of water every day (at minimum 96 ounces) and eat some form of beans and rice almost every day as well as chicken and veggies and the ultrashake in the morning.

Thanks.
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Hi gaman, I had same problems for a long time, I was intolerant on rice until I balanced my diet. This is what helps me.
Here are ways to end constipation.

1. Become a vegetarian. Less meat and more produce guarantees easier bowel
movements.

2. Eat lots of fresh, uncooked fruits and vegetables. Salads are the answer.

3. Drink a glass of water, preferably warm, right after you awaken in the morning (this was so hard but worked in 10 to 15 minutes, water with lot of calcium carbonate do constipate if you are sensitive so careful with what water you use in morning, if I may suggest use water with more Magnesium, I'm drinking Donat Mg although is with CO2, I wait till CO2 evaporate and use it warmed to body temperature), If you are not on candida diet some fresh herbal tea will help you the best choice is green tea, chamomile & lavender tea, Xylitol is natural mild laxative as well.

4. Make a habit of sitting on the toilet for five minutes right after breakfast. Your body will soon get in the habit of an early morning bowel movement, preferably around 7AM because of natural bowel movement.

5. Adding fiber to your diet is easily accomplished by eating better snacks, nuts are excellent even when on candida diet, if not on candida consume Prunus domestic or plums especially effective is tea made of dried plums or prunes (3 dried plums left in hot water for 15 minutes, better if cut fruits on half and always remove the seeds).


6. Freshly made raw cabbage juice is even better. Juiced zucchini works equally well. One or two 8-ounce glasses will probably be enough.

7. A can of sauerkraut, juice and all, is a fine laxative.

8. 4,000 to 6,000 milligrams of vitamin C taken AT ONE TIME has a laxative effect. Adding two teaspoons of calcium-magnesium gluconate powder is even better.

9. You can encourage a bowel movement with a gentle abdominal massage. Generally, you follow the bowel. Begin in your lower belly, below and to the right of your navel. Move up, and then across. Then, move down your left abdomen and finish just above the groin area. Repeat this a few times, and in a while you will likely notice an urge to have a bowel movement. This is especially helpful for children. Do not massage if there is a pregnancy or any medical or surgical reason why you shouldn't.

10. Walking, yoga postures, bicycling and other light-to-moderate exercise is always helpful for regularity.

PS: If sensitive on plums, use cherries or peaches, if bored with fresh fruits or sensitive on fruit's acids, cook them, easy recipe is to gently cook fruits and when softened remove them from stove, when cooled to body temperature add a bit of xylitol to fruits and cooked juice, use both juice and cooked fruits.

Hope this will help.
 
Gaman,

Perhaps it's the lectins in the beans and rice that could be causing constipation. (You may want to do a forum search on lectins) I've read that soaking them can help remove some of the lectins or you may want to cut them out completely and see how you do. I've found that I have better movements since I stopped eating them. Are you taking a food enzyme to help you digest? Also exercise is beneficial in perking up a slow moving bowel.

Here's a site with more on lectins: krispin.com/lectin.html
 
gaman said:
I've been doing the diet again now for about 5 weeks straight after falling of the wagon for a few weeks. I had done it 5 weeks as well before falling off. I've been having some good results and have lost 40 lbs but I have one continual problem -- constipation.

I've got this senna that I take 3 times per day (470mg per pill) to help, and I also take 1 or 2 docusate sodium 100mg (stool softener) in the evening. That seems to help enough that I can get buy, although not smoothly, but the senna says not to take it for more than 7 days straight and I haven't found any warnings etc. related to the docusate sodium.

So I'm wondering if anyone has more info on the above 2 pills, and if anyone has had the continual problems like I have and has found some other way to help.

I drink lots of water every day (at minimum 96 ounces) and eat some form of beans and rice almost every day as well as chicken and veggies and the ultrashake in the morning.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Are you doing the morning shake? And, if so, are you using the 2 TBSP psyllium husks as suggested? If you are constipated, this should really help, or so I think.
 
Taking digestive enzymes helps a lot as well. I usually take one in the afternoon and one in the evening, and sometimes after a big meal as well. You should be able to find them at your local health food store.
 
Hi, gaman.

You've gotten lots of good advice to try. Senna can be pretty aggravating so it's probably a good idea if you're using it, do so only for a limited time.

Gandalf said:
Magnesium could help you to solve that problem.
Click to expand...

I found that magnesium glycinate made a huge difference for me. The product I use comes in 120mg capsules and I take 3 caps before bed each night.
 
When having trouble with constipation, all the suggested measures usually helped me. It is important to have regular bowel movements when detoxing, so one must avoid constipation at all costs, but not go also to the other extreme: having laxative or loose stools.

There is also coffee enemas as a detoxing purpose, which helps to regularize the bowel movements. This is something that even Hiromi Shynia, from the Enzyme Factor recommended. He has examined the colons and stomachs of over 300,000 patients, so we figured he knew what he was talking about ;) The important thing is to retain it at least some 15 minutes and to not use a lot at a time, the coffee only has to stay in the lower part of your bowels in order to be absorbed and do its job. If it goes to upper parts of your bowel, it can wash away minerals and create an imbalance, thus it has to stay only in the lower parts where it doesn't do this. People allergic to coffee, can have coffee enemas as it is not the same metabolism. A search about coffee enemas will bring up lots of information, its better to research about it to know what to expect, also since there could be some troubleshooting. In my case, coffee enemas brought painful cramping which diminished when I diluted more the coffee and when I did a few of them which helped to clear up a toxic load in my liver. Now I do them with no side effects at all, only good effects, and it keeps my bowels moving regularly.

More info here:

http://www.sawilsons.com/liver.htm

The Coffee Enema - A Liver Cleanser

Based upon Dr. Gerson's work.

More information is available in his book: A Cancer Therapy, Results in Fifty Cases.

Coffee enemas rapidly help remove toxins from the liver. They often provide quick relief when one is fatigued, sleepy, has headaches, or is just feeling poorly. They also help against spasms, precordial (heart, throat, chest) pain and difficulties resulting from the sudden withdrawal of all intoxicating sedation.

A coffee enema, when done properly, causes the liver to produce more bile, opens the bile ducts and causes the bile to flow. In this process, a toxic liver can dump many of its toxins into the bile and get rid of them in just a few minutes. This often gives great relief to all parts of the body, and often makes the difference between lying down feeling miserable and feeling good and being active. Coffee enemas are also effective in relieving pain. Patients with cancer, for example, may achieve relief from pain even when drugs failed.

At the start of the treatment and during "flare-ups", the bile contains poisons, produces spasms in the duodenum and small intestines, and causes some overflow into the stomach. This may cause feelings of nausea, which could result in the vomiting of the bile. If this happens, drinking a good quantity of strong peppermint tea will help was out the bile from the stomach and bring relief.

It is interesting to note that drinking a cup of coffee has an entirely different effect from that of using it as a cleansing enema. Drinking coffee causes the following problems: increases reflex response, lowers blood pressure, increases heart rate, causes insomnia and heart palpitations, over stimulates the adrenals, irritates the stomach, and leaves a toxic residue in the body. A coffee enema, when done properly will not produce these effects.

Preparing the Coffee Enema

Add 3 heaping tablespoons of ground coffee (organically grown coffee is absolutely essential*) to 1 quart of water (preferable distilled). Let it boil lightly for 3 minutes, then simmer for a total of 20 minutes. Keep lid on. Strain and use at body temperature.

The body should be lying down on its right side, with both legs drawn close to the abdomen. Breathe deeply, in order to suck in the greatest amount of fluid into the necessary parts of the colon. It also helps to let all of the air out of the lungs and suck the gut in and out while in this position.

The fluid should be retained for 12 to 15 minutes. It helps to have a clock or watch in view. Dr. Gerson found that all the caffeine is absorbed from the fluid within 12 minutes. The caffeine goes through the hemorrhoidal veins directly into the portal veins and into the liver.

*The chemicals found in commercially grown coffee could damage the liver when used as a coffee enema. Use ONLY organically grown coffee!
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http://www.sawilsons.com/cancersenema.htm

By Kristen Philipkoski
02:00 AM Oct, 30, 2002 EST

A study testing a controversial pancreatic cancer treatment that uses coffee enemas should by all rights be nearly complete.

But three years into it, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez has only 25 of the 90 patients he needs to complete recruitment for the trial.

His clinical trial has been stalled by economics, logistics and outright prejudice against the twice-daily enema regimen, despite a promising pilot study.

"I'm the first person to say it: In the oncology world I'm a very controversial guy," Gonzalez said. "But we're trying to do very serious research."

Because pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly types, it doesn't take long for researchers to find out if one treatment extends life longer than another. In the pilot study, Gonzalez's treatment more than tripled the 5-1/2 month life expectancy of pancreatic cancer patients on standard treatment.

Still, because the program is unusual, oncologists have not been chomping at the bit to refer their patients to the Gonzalez trial, which is being carried out by the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Many seem troubled by the coffee enemas.

"I respect his willingness to have his regime studied," Barrie R. Cassileth, chief of integrative medicine at Sloan-Kettering, told the New Yorker last year. "But the coffee enemas are ludicrous. He ought to just get rid of them."

But Gonzalez said they are an integral part of the program. Caffeine stimulates certain nerves in the lower bowel, he said, that trigger a neurological reflex that makes the liver -- the body's main detoxification organ -- work more efficiently.

He says he follows the program himself as a preventive measure, works 14 hours a day and feels great.

"I thought (coffee enemas) were yucky when I first started doing them -- I had to get used to them," he said. "But I felt so much better from the first day that I never looked back."

Gonzalez began his latest study in 1999 with a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health -- a coup for an alternative treatment. The NIH predicted he would sign up the patients he needed in three years, but it's taken Gonzalez much longer.

"In the United States it's hard for a therapy that represents not only a different paradigm clinically but a different paradigm economically," said Peter Chowka, an investigative journalist who has reported on alternative medicine for 25 years and served as a consultant for the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine.

Gonzalez's treatment includes two coffee enemas every day, plus about 150 supplements in pill form and a strict organic and vegetarian diet -- none of which are patentable and therefore are not potential blockbusters for drug companies.

You can't even buy the supplements used in the treatment at a health food store. Gonzalez has them specially made for the clinic.

"You're not going to go to the store and find 'Gonzalez Supplements' with my smiling face on them," he said.

It's not the kind of treatment most oncologists are accustomed to. But Gonzalez believes conventional pancreatic cancer treatment is much more unpleasant.

"When dealing with oncologists I always say, 'You give bone marrow transplants to patients, injecting toxic drugs and almost killing them,'" Gonzalez said. "Compared to that, coffee enemas are not that big a deal."

Another reason oncologists might prefer to send their pancreatic cancer patients elsewhere is that pharmaceutical companies often pay a "bounty" of around $8,000 per patient when doctors refer them to drug makers' trials.

"It's a very common practice, and the competition for subjects is fierce these days," said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. Study volunteers are not always told about this potential conflict of interest, he added.

The rationale behind the bounty is that the oncologist loses a patient and should be compensated for lost income. But Gonzalez believes the practice skews trials.

"I don't think it should be that way, although it's perfectly legal and legitimate," Gonzalez said. "We're not doing that. This is a government study and government studies don't do that."

However, Jeffrey White, director of the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Cancer Institute, said that financial incentives don't actually work very well: Less than 5 percent of cancer patients in the United States participate in clinical trials.

Surveys also show that about half of patients never hear about the trials. And when they do, only about half of those patients are willing to participate.

What really gets Gonzalez riled is that some researchers suggest the patients in his pilot study may have been healthier than those in other pancreatic cancer studies to start with, thereby skewing results. One National Cancer Institute website, for example, mentions this possibility.

"That's a pile of garbage," he said. "There's no such thing as a group of pancreatic cancer patients that lives a long time."

Outside labs performed the diagnoses and biopsies for the patients in Gonzalez's pilot study, he said. Of 11 patients, eight were in stage four, meaning the cancer had spread to other organs.

Such a diagnosis is almost always a death sentence. Only 4 percent of all pancreatic cancer patients live five years or longer, and more than 80 percent die in the first year.

Gonzalez was incredulous that anyone might believe he could handpick "healthier" cancer patients.

"I have this magical ability to find pancreatic cancer patients no one has ever been able to find? We can outsmart an entire pharmaceutical company in our puny little office with one other doctor?"

In the National Cancer Institute's largest study of 126 patients, none lived longer than 19 months. In Gonzalez's pilot study, two patients lived for four years and one for almost five. The median survival time was 17 months.

Although Gonzalez looked at just 11 patients, it was impossible to ignore the data.

Despite the promising evidence, some patients are not willing or able to comply with the demands of the therapy, which also requires that patients take some of the supplements in the middle of the night.

But at 78, Edmund Rubin of Sarasota, Florida, says he's happy to comply with the regimen. Rubin was diagnosed with liver cancer in 1990. He took an interferon drug for nine months, which caused constant flu-like symptoms. Despite the treatment, doctors found a second tumor behind his ear. Fifteen radiology treatments later, the tumor was still there and doctors gave him six months to live.

That's when he heard about Dr. Gonzalez's treatment.

"In six months I regained my weight and the second tumor completely disappeared," Rubin said. "I had a CAT scan and bone scan a year later and there were no signs of tumors."

Rubin has been in remission for 11 years and still faithfully adheres to the Gonzalez regimen. He calls it "labor intensive" -- he can spend up to six hours a day administering it. It costs him about $6,000 per year and, although it's not covered by insurance, he gets about $2,000 back from the IRS.

Gonzalez began developing his treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering School of Medicine in the early 1980s.

During this time, Gonzalez compiled data from an orthodontist who became famous for treating Steve McQueen's cancer with coffee enemas and nutritional therapies, William Donald Kelley. For five years, Gonzalez analyzed Kelley's data, and by the time Gonzalez finished his immunology internship, he had written a 300-page treatise on Kelley's therapy.

Gonzalez was called crazy and a fraud, but he says the data was compelling and that's what mattered. He opened his own practice in New York City in 1987.

Despite the criticism, Gonzalez has played by the book. He wanted the opportunity to test his treatment, and he's gotten it. But he may have to wait several more years for results.

"No matter what one thinks of his approach," Chowka said, "I think you have to give him credit for the way he's gone about trying to validate it -- by working closely with the NCI and the NIH and all that entails, and by adhering to the scientific method."
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http://www.sawilsons.com/enemascolonics.htm

Enemas and Colonics. Or, With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemas?

Enemas and Colonics.
Or, With Friends Like This, Who Needs Enemas?
By Vic Shayne, PhD www.nutritionresearchcenter.org

There are all sorts of articles and descriptions of enemas and colonics, so we won't go into the logistics of the practice. Instead, let's focus on whether these two practices are viable solutions to health problems and disease prevention.

First, for reference sake, an enema and a colonic are essentially the same thing, but a colonic reaches deeper into the bowel. The basic premise behind employing enemas and colonics is to
1. clean out the contents of the bowels and thereby detoxify the body of poisonous substances
2. ease digestion by taking stress off the bowel
3. relieve constipation
4. exercise the gallbladder
5. improve the condition of the intestines
6. indirectly heal the body and relieve symptoms

Generally speaking, water is the main ingredient of enemas and colonics. However, other substances are also suggested such as coffee, various herbs or chlorophyll solutions.

The use of enemas as a medical treatment is steeped in history. Cancer researcher Ralph Moss, PhD, writes: “The word itself comes from the Greek en-hienai, meaning to "send or inject into." The enema has been called "one of the oldest medical procedures still in use today." Tribal women in Africa, and elsewhere, routinely use it on their children. The earliest medical text in existence, the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, (1,500 B.C.) mentions it. Millennia before, the Pharaoh had a "guardian of the anus," a special doctor one of whose purposes was to administer the royal enema.

“The Greeks wrote of the fabled cleanliness of the Egyptians, which included the internal cleansing of their systems through emetics and enemas. They employed these on three consecutive days every month said Herodotus (II.77) or at intervals of three or four days, according to the later historian Diodorus. The Egyptians explained to their visitors that they did this because they "believed that diseases were engendered by superfluities of the food", a modern-sounding theory!

“Enemas were known in ancient Sumeria, Babylonia, India, Greece and China. American Indians independently invented it, using a syringe made of an animal bladder and a hollow leg bone. Pre-Columbian South Americans fashioned latex into the first rubber enema bags and tubes. In fact, there is hardly a region of the world where people did not discover or adapt the enema. It is more ubiquitous than the wheel. Enemas are found in world literature from Aristophanes to Shakespeare, Gulliver Travels to Peyton Place.

“In pre-revolutionary France a daily enema after dinner was de rigueur. It was not only considered indispensable for health but practiced for good complexion as well. Louis XIV is said to have taken over 2,000 in his lifetime.Could this have been the source of the Sun King's sunny disposition? For centuries, enemas were a routine home remedy. Then, within living memory, the routine use of enemas died out. The main times that doctors employ them nowadays is before or after surgery and childbirth. Difficult and potentially dangerous barium enemas before colonic X rays are of course still a favorite of allopathic doctors.”

Dr. Moss writes: “Coffee enemas were an established part of medical practice when Dr. Max Gerson introduced them into cancer therapy in the 1930s. Basing himself on German laboratory work, Gerson believed that caffeine could stimulate the liver and gall bladder to discharge bile. He felt this process could contribute to the health of the cancer patient.

Although the coffee enema has been heaped with scorn, there has been some independent scientific work that gives credence to this concept. In 1981, for instance, Dr. Lee Wattenberg and his colleagues were able to show that substances found in coffee-kahweol and cafestol palmitate-promote the activity of a key enzyme system, glutathione S-transferase, above the norm. This system detoxifies a vast array of electrophiles from the bloodstream and, according to Gar Hildenbrand of the Gerson Institute, "must be regarded as an important mechanism for carcinogen detoxification." This enzyme group is responsible for neutralizing free radicals, harmful chemicals now commonly implicated in the initiation of cancer. In mice, for example, these systems are enhanced 600 percent in the liver and 700 percent in the bowel when coffee beans are added to the mice's diet.

Dr. Peter Lechner, who is investigating the Gerson method at the Landeskrankenhaus of Graz, Austria, has reported that "coffee enemas have a definite effect on the colon which can be observed with an endoscope."

Another cancer researcher, Nicholas Gonzalez, MD, writes, “Coffee enemas have been discussed in the orthodox medical literature for the better part of this century. Many nursing texts routinely recommended coffee enemas, and the Merck Manual advocated coffee enemas as a stimulant in all editions from the first in 1898 through 1977. During the 1920's and 30's, coffee enemas were prescribed for a variety of conditions. In terms of their physiological effect, studies have shown that the rectal instillation of fluids will stimulate gallbladder contraction and emptying.” (Gonzalez)

It has been the experience of this author that enemas have had tremendous success in several case studies. First was the case of a woman in her late 40s, a college dean, who came to me with a severe case of arthritis in which she was unable to walk more than a block, was in constant pain and was progressively losing her health. I placed the woman on a Detoxification Diet adding BFood Complex, Green Nutrients and ProMin Complex (NutriPlex Whole Food Formulas products) and she did daily enemas with water followed by organic coffee. Within a few weeks she reported greater mobility; within a few months she was walking for miles without the use of a cane.

Another situation involved a 22-year-old young man with flu-like symptoms who was vomiting with diarrhea and a severe migraine-type headache without relief for five days. On the sixth day, still in pain without relief from symptoms, Acupuncture and herbs from a Chinese medical doctor did not help. I instructed him to a course of: Immune Support, CalMag Balance (both NutriPlex Whole Food Formulas) and of water enemas followed by three flushes with organic coffee. By the end of this session, all symptoms were eradicated to the complete amazement and appreciation of the patient.

The capability of detoxification with coffee enemas is not to be underestimated. But be certain to use only organically grown coffee, as the typical store-bought variety is laden with many toxic substances. The water used should be filtered and never tap water. Always be sure the temperature of the enema contents is not hot nor cold.

http://www.nutritionresearchcenter.org

References:
Moss, PhD, Ralph W., COFFEE: THE ROYAL FLUSH, The Cancer Chronicles #6 and #7, 1990, http://www.ralphmoss.com/coff.html

Nicholas J. Gonzalez, M.D., P.C., February 22, 2005, http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/history_of_treatment_txt.htm
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Thank you all very much for the helpful suggestions. I'm going to incorporate several of them to start with and see if that helps. The enema might be the last on my list LOL!

I've never heard of psyllium husks so I'll try to track some down. Also, I take magnesium citrate in the evening and some kind of magnesium chelate (Carlson Labs is the brand but I'm not home tonight so I don't know the specific molecule) in the morning.
 
Laura said:
I always put it in my shake. Nowadays this is the shake recipe:

1 cup rice milk
2 scoops rice protein powder
1 scoop vitamin c powder
1 scoop L-Tyrosine
1 scoop L-Arginine
1 scoop MSM
1 scoop L-Glutamine
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/4 cup flax seed oil
1 banana
3/4 cup of frozen blueberries or blackberries
Couple spoons of xylitol

Blend and drink for breakfast or lunch
Click to expand...

I am ready to try the "shake." Should I read scoop = tablespoon? Also, this version says "flax seeds" while the version at the beginning of this topic says "ground flaxseeds." Is there a preference or does it matter?
 
Megan said:
I am ready to try the "shake." Should I read scoop = tablespoon? Also, this version says "flax seeds" while the version at the beginning of this topic says "ground flaxseeds." Is there a preference or does it matter?
Click to expand...

If you've got a really high-powered blender, like a Vitamix or a Blendtec, whole flax seeds would be preferable since the seed hull will keep the omega oils from going rancid. I've found lower powered blenders, like hand blenders, may leave some seeds not fully ground, though making for a chunky shake. So if you're using a good blender I'd go for whole, but if not I'd go for ground. You could always grind them yourself in a coffee grinder, although that's adding a lot more work.

And I think "scoop" probably refers to the plastic scoop that comes with most powdered supplements. If what you're using doesn't have a scoop check the package for a "serving size" measurement.

Edit: clarity
 
Thank you, dugdeep! I made my first shake today and it was quite good. :) The serving size was 1 tablespoon, so that's what I counted as a "scoop." I did look for a scoop inside the container but I didn't see one. I will look again.

The package that the flax seed came in mentions that you can grind it in a coffee grinder, so I may try that.

This first shake seemed much more filling than I expected, so I counted the calories in it and it came to nearly 1000! (OMG) Fortunately, I had not had very much for lunch and I made this first shake in late afternoon (I will normally have them for breakfast or lunch), after spending much of the afternoon trying to help one of our house cats with her health issues by getting her out into the back garden for some exercise. She follows our other cat out, but she is too afraid to stay. This is what I get for not having children.

I have to be careful with the calories. I am over 6 feet tall, but I can gain weight on 2000 calories a day. The main problem seems to be the 1/4 cup flax seed oil -- 480 calories. The flax seed also contributes a lot -- 240 calories. The rest of the ingredients don't add up to all that much. I am thinking that I need to reduce the flax seed oil. I bought a form that has to be kept refrigerated and I wonder if it is more concentrated than the shelf-stable (and much more expensive) varieties. How can I tell?

I am not yet including any of the various supplements in the recipe. I am taking a medication that interacts with a lot of different supplements. If I don't take it or it doesn't work then nutrition may no longer be an issue for me; I am fortunate to be alive. The vitamin C in particular at that dosage is advised against, and I will have to ask about the others (and the clinic may not know). Hopefully I will only be on this stuff for 6 months or so.
 
gaman said:
I've been doing the diet again now for about 5 weeks straight after falling of the wagon for a few weeks. I had done it 5 weeks as well before falling off. I've been having some good results and have lost 40 lbs but I have one continual problem -- constipation.

I've got this senna that I take 3 times per day (470mg per pill) to help, and I also take 1 or 2 docusate sodium 100mg (stool softener) in the evening. That seems to help enough that I can get buy, although not smoothly, but the senna says not to take it for more than 7 days straight and I haven't found any warnings etc. related to the docusate sodium.

So I'm wondering if anyone has more info on the above 2 pills, and if anyone has had the continual problems like I have and has found some other way to help.

I drink lots of water every day (at minimum 96 ounces) and eat some form of beans and rice almost every day as well as chicken and veggies and the ultrashake in the morning.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

gaman said:
Thank you all very much for the helpful suggestions. I'm going to incorporate several of them to start with and see if that helps. The enema might be the last on my list LOL!

I've never heard of psyllium husks so I'll try to track some down. Also, I take magnesium citrate in the evening and some kind of magnesium chelate (Carlson Labs is the brand but I'm not home tonight so I don't know the specific molecule) in the morning.
Click to expand...

Take vitamin C every day using the titration method. Take 2 grams every hour until you feel a little "gassy" in your tummy. Then you know you have reached your limit.

Take Magnesium malate, 2 of them 3 times a day.

Don't knock the "coffee on the back porch" until you've tried it.
 
Gaman, I'd like to add to this list by suggesting squatting as a toilet posture. It can be difficult to get going, and you may have to build yourself some sort of apparatus to get in the correct position, but I can't emphasize enough how positive it is. In my own experience (have been doing it for about a month now), I find myself clean, clear and without any hint of constipation... It may be awkward, and slightly embarrassing even if you're alone (i.e. "what the heck am I doing?"), but trust me it's totally worth trying.

Here's the thread where it's discussed - http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=14547.0

And here's another site with some more info - http://www.toilet-related-ailments.com/squatting.html

fwiw...
 
Thank you Laura and JohnnyRadar. I'll look into finding that type of magnesium. I had some ascorbic acid powder and some buffered powder/crystals and was adding that to my shake but it seemed to be giving me a bit of heart/stomach burn. We just got in some ascorbic acid in capsule form so I'll start titrating that up. "Coffee on the back porch" :lol: -- is something I plan to try at some point regardless of how this issue is resolved.

JohnnyRadar, I read that thread on the squatting and it is very interesting, but I'm a very heavy guy and my right knee isn't so good so I may have to put that on the back burner until I lose (uhummm) several more pounds L0L.
 
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