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Constipation and gut

What changed when I got my fluid intake up properly

Started 3 July 2025 · 14 replies · 141 hearts · read 2k times

OdessaLviv, UA · 3 July 2025
about a year ago

A question rather than an update: What changed when I got my fluid intake up properly

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with.

I would like to hear timescales more than remedies. Knowing how long other people's lasted would turn this from an open-ended thing into a bounded one.

Something is going on and I would like to know whether other people have had it, mostly so I know whether to raise it or wait it out.

No advice needed if you would rather not. Recognition is genuinely enough.

47

LeniLeipzig, DE
#1

Mine has never entirely gone and it is now a background thing I manage rather than a problem I have. That is an honest place to have arrived.

7

PerryCardigan, UK
#2

Somebody in this circle told me to stop being polite about it with my GP and describe it precisely, and the appointment went much better once I did.

8

GwythFishguard, UK
#4

Building on what Perry wrote rather than answering the original question.

I had already had a complicated gut before any of this and I would say the general advice mostly did not fit me. Bringing it to somebody who knew my history was what worked.

10

VeraRiga, LV
#5

Mine alternated, which confused me and turned out to be extremely common. I had assumed it was one thing or the other.

6

PoppyLeeds, UK
#6

You have said something a lot of us have not managed to. Thank you.

12me too 9

HarlanDenver, CO
#7

Poppy has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

I found magnesium helpful and I would say plainly that I checked with a pharmacist first because of another medication I take. Please do check.

8

IvorLlanelli, UK
#8

The timing of things mattered more than the things themselves for me. Same fibre, spread across the day instead of in one go, completely different result.

11

XanBerlin, DE
#9

The thing I would flag is that severe pain with it is a different question, and worth ringing about rather than reading about.

10me too 4

TeganNewport, UK
#10

Harlan has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

Movement helped mine more than anything I ate. A twenty-minute walk after dinner, nothing strenuous, and it made a noticeable difference within a week.

12

OdessaLviv, UA
#11

The bloating was the bit I found hardest, more than anything else. It made clothes uncomfortable and I felt ridiculous mentioning it and it was genuinely miserable.

9

LeniLeipzig, DE
#12

Prunes. I am sorry. Prunes, and I resisted them for two months on the grounds of dignity.

7

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal
#13

Stepping in to say that three replies have described three different timescales, and all three are honest. Bodies vary and that is not a failure of anybody's account.

19

TamzinPoole, UK
#14

Gently disagreeing with Odessa, or rather adding the other half of it.

My experience is that this settles for most people and lingers for some, and I am in the lingering group, and it is still manageable.

9