Oh, how my mother would have loved the mega-pharmacies we have today! A vitamin and supplement junkie, she was obsessed with keeping regular. I can just see her in her element going from aisle to aisle, looking for the next best thing to the trusted “Philips’ Milk of Magnesia”. If we missed a day making ‘bigones’, it was a tablespoon before bedtime … 

As a 6-year-old, this seemed perfectly normal – although I hated having the inevitable enema at my Granny’s. But when I turned 8, Mum gave up – she couldn’t cope with my screaming and promised never to insert the pink pump nozzle again! But I also learnt about the misery of constipation while listening in on her weekend mahjong sessions. Not ‘going’ daily caused so many problems, including ‘wind’, ‘acid stomach’ and painful haemorrhoids – the result of straining and sitting too long on the toilet. Peppermint sweets, antacids, laxatives, suppositories … Mum had them all, and was always on the lookout for the latest treatment promising to improve her toilet experience.   

In the ’60s and ’70s, one of the first questions GPs would ask was, “Did you do a BM (bowel motion) today?” They thought it was an important primary symptom. Dr Norman Walker – an early natural health pioneer whom I often reference – thought the same. As early as the 1950s, he stressed that:

[without] “cellulose or fibre from raw vegetables and fruit” and only eating foods “appealing to our palate”, the colon can no longer perform its function as our “intestinal broom or vacuum cleaner”. “Sickness and diseases follow when waste is allowed to accumulate.” 

Walker, N.W. 1940/1970. Diet & Salad, pp.26, 29, 11. Norwalk Press: Summertown, Tennessee. 

The common trend today is to satisfy our food cravings: we eat now and pay later. We haven’t moved on. Constipation, bloating, flatulence, acid reflux and haemorrhoids continue to plague us – and we go to pharmacies to treat the symptoms and not the cause. Here’s a useful factsheet on constipation from the NSW Dept on Health.

FLUID, FIBRE, FRUIT and FITNESS are the ‘4 F’s’ essential to keep the colon resilient and the body moving, reducing the risk of colon cancer. In 2023, an estimated 10% of deaths in Australia were from colorectal cancer. So If you’re 40 and over, PLEASE get a bowel screening test kit and send it off asap!!