Living Vegan For Dummies - Alexandra Jamieson [162]
Chronic constipation is not only uncomfortable and unhealthy, but it also can be dangerous. It can lead to pressure inside the veins, which often leads to painful hernias or varicose veins.
The best ways to naturally avoid and treat chronic constipation involve your diet, movement, and hydration. Before I get to diet, let me emphasize that chronic constipation is much improved with daily physical exercise. Walking, bike riding, swimming, dancing, and weight lifting are all useful for clearing out constipation’s effects. And aiming for six to eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day will ensure that you’re properly hydrated.
Getting fiber into your diet helps ease constipation and reduces cholesterol levels. And guess what? Animal foods have no fiber! A vegan diet, on the other hand, is naturally fiberfull. The recommended daily fiber amounts for men are 30 to 38 grams a day, and women should get 21 to 25 grams a day. To get to the recommended daily amount, take a look at this sample menu:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with 1 cup raspberries (12 grams)
Lunch: Vegan lentil soup mixed with 1 cup brown rice (19 grams)
Dinner: Steamed Artichoke with Sautéed Tofu (10.4 grams)
You can easily exceed your daily fiber recommendation with little effort. Consider having three or more servings each of high-fiber whole grains and steamed vegetables each day. Starting your day with a breakfast of fruit and oatmeal or a vegan bran muffin is easy and full of fiber.
Some folks may develop dental problems as they age. Painful teeth and gum disease can make eating some high-fiber foods difficult. Raw vegetables and crunchy whole foods may be great for the constipation counterattack, but if eating them is too difficult for you, many other high-fiber vegan foods can be cooked and still offer the fiber benefits. Table 24-1 shows some of these foods.
Table 24-1 Soft High-Fiber Vegan Foods
Food
Serving Size
Amount of Fiber (g)
Split peas, cooked
1 cup
16.3
Lentils, cooked
1 cup
15.6
Black beans, cooked
1 cup
15
Lima beans, cooked
1 cup
13.2
Artichoke, cooked
1 medium
10.4
Peas, cooked
1 cup
8.7
Raspberries
1 cup
8
Pearled barley, cooked
1 cup
6.0
Quick oatmeal, cooked
1 cup
4.0
Pear, with skin
1 medium
5.1
Apple, with skin
1 medium
4.4
Broccoli, boiled
1 cup
5.1
Turnip greens, boiled
1 cup
5.0
Brown rice, cooked
1 cup
3.5
For true poop-perfection, aim for one good bowel movement a day. A healthy stool isn’t too loose and shouldn’t be difficult to eliminate. Pushing and straining can lead to other bowel problems like intestinal obstructions, fainting, or even cardiac attack, so balancing your diet and water intake will be a big help.
The modern sitting position on a toilet often makes going to the bathroom difficult and incomplete, which can lead people to force and strain. The human body releases feces better in a squat position. However, it can be difficult for baby boomers to get into that proper position. So, in order to naturally improve your elimination and ease constipation, consider buying a squatting platform for your toilet. Several companies make these chairs that easily fit around a standard toilet.
My sign’s not Cancer: Using a vegan diet to reverse cancer
A plant-based diet can help the human body recover from and reverse the course of many cancers, including colorectal cancer which affects mainly seniors. This fact alone should inspire many thousands of baby-boomers to try a whole-foods, vegan diet.
Emmy Award–winning cooking-show hostess and author Christina Pirello often tells her personal story of overcoming leukemia with a macrobiotic-style vegan diet. On the opposite end of the vegan diet continuum, a raw-foods diet also has cured countless people of their cancers. Both the Living Foods Institute in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona help people who are interested