Help I can't poop.
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Agree with @yerrag, Magnesium is often key with hard stools, especially when it's the chronic dark, hard and dry, even though i don't think that is the OP's problem in this case.
Full doses of milk of magnesia or "USP" grade epsom salt (Mag-Sulfate) as per package instructions. Or if you don't want that sudden effect you can microdose these several times per day with 1/4 or 1/5th doses. Other Magnesiums would work but their labels won't contain instructions on how to deal with constipation ... you'd have to look that up yourself or experiment.
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@monkey11 You don't necessarily need to take anything for it. Certain yoga exercises absolutely prevent constipation.
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I have no idea how PTH would influence magnesium. It may but in away where magnesium would be indirectly affected in the sense where CCBs would have a systemic influence where all are affected.
I can speak to my personal observation. I regularly monitor my acid-base balance where I test the pH of both my urine and saliva.
Despite my high blood pressure, when I am not taking bp meds, I see more of a state of balance where my body is given free reign to adapt optimally as it area fit to a given pathological influence, which in my case involves a recurring unresolved state of low-grade infection and exposure to lead toxin. One aspect is in the way my body strives to achieve a state of acid base balance.
I don't feel any arthritic pains in my joints. I don't have a problem with my bladder holding on to urine. However, I wake up often to pee at night, which I associate with water being produced as a product of redox reactions where antioxidants neutralize spillover ROS, which comes to my immune system creating ROS to try overcoming pathogenic microbes and toxins. Still, I look for ways to resolve the infection and toxic state in order to resolve the root causes. While the root causes remain unresolved, my body is remarkable in adapting to this unresolved state. A symptom of this adaptation to the unresolved state is hypertension.
When taking the calcium channel blocker, I see lower bp but I also feel the price I have to pay for the appearance of health in the form of lower blood pressure.
My urine and saliva pH testing would show a marked departure from my state of acid-base balance. The CCB interfering with the calcium channel is expressed clearly when my urine and saliva pH testing reveals a constant imbalance in acid base regulation. Unlike when I am not taking CCB's, my body is always unable to catch up in ridding itself of excess acidity during rest, which occurs at night. So, I would urinate more frequently during both day and night, and I would be peeing in my pants (and feeling old and incontinent) even at times when my bladder is not even half-full. My knees and ankles would feel sore as well, which I suspect is the effect of uric acid precipitating on my joints.
If not for taking furosemide and spironolactone, both being diuretics, I would be developing edema at my ankles and my waistline would bloat from ascites developing.
I should stop now, as the side effects from taking bp medication (so far I have mentioned amlodipine, furosemide, and spironolactone) can have me go on endlessly.
And I am going off topic somehow, but I only want to bring home the point that interfering with the calcium channel has systemic effects. It just isn't worth it to take calcium channel blockers to appear normal bp-wise while ignoring the effects on other areas which our doctors trivialize and even consider coincidental.
I tried to find some authoritative sources on the effects of CCB's, but I have difficulty doing that. My research skills are not as good as that of you and @Amazoniac 's, and what I find are mainly topics that are peripheral and not central to the issue. I suspect it is so because such research or inquiries are frowned upon by the establishment. Unfortunately, I have been spoiled by Peat doing the legwork for me, and I wished he had expounded in his writings on CCB's.
One thing one of his last newsletters mentioned was that when the body is doing osteoclastic activity, it cannot at the same time do osteoblastic activity. Osteoclasts break down bone to provide the body with calcium when the PTH signal is high. In this situation, no osteoblastic activity can be done. Bone building requires CO2, so it goes that during this time mitochondrial respiration is halted to give way to other metabolic pathways. These other metabolic pathways often involve producing acids, such as lactic acids and keto acids.
When the metabolic pathway becomes anything other than mitochondrial respiration, the body becomes acidic more and more. And all sorts of imbalances and pathology result, especially when it becomes a permanent and chronic feature.
Even when one has adequate mineral stores in the body such as potassium and magnesium, they are not utilized in the way they should be, because the general condition that permeates, as determined by an acid-base imbalance,
overrules the salutary nature of these substances. -
@yerrag How high of a BP are we talking about? I remember Ray saying high blood pressure as we age is an adaptive protective mechanism. Although I assume this has limits. I guess it would greatly depend on your age as well.
Have you tried ACE inhibitors instead of CCBs? The swelling sounds more like a RAAS aldosterone issue to me. Most ACE inhibitors are a little "softer" on the side-effect spectrum as well. A high-potassium diet can also help flush excessive fluids out. I say "high," but in reality just shooting for the RDA of 4 grams will likely be a big aid. You'd be surprised just how many people fall short of K's RDA on a daily basis.
As for the PTH-magnesium thing the only reason I mentioned that was based on the limited data I've seen on CCB's they seem to stimulate PTH. Or some of them do at least (the dihydropyridine class). And since magnesium helps modulate PTH similar to how dietary calcium does, you may be responding well to magnesium because it's helping to slow down the extracellular Ca concentration.
Not to get too far off topic myself, but this could have possibly been set in motion by unresolved hypothyroidism, which has been shown to decrease calcium excretion via renal impairment in humans. Once on thyroid replacement the problem should resolve itself, or at least get substantially better.
But in the event kidney's have reduced ability to get rid of calcium, and CCB's increase the extracellular Ca from PTH stimulation, you might be left in precarious situation where you actually feel better not taking the CCBs despite higher BP. And it would explain why you respond well to magnesium too, as it's ability to modulate PTH independent of calcium networks.
Lots of speculation though, would be nice to see some tests specifically measuring the TSH, PTH, 1,25-D, and calcium for a better understanding. If any (or all) are elevated it would be a little more clear of what's happening.
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My pooping mixture:
1 teaspoon fine baking soda (arm n hammer)
2 TBsp magnesium bisglycinate
2 teaspoons instant coffee
250 ml skim milk
pinch of saltrepeat if doesn't work
POOP TIME
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@Mulloch94 said in Help I can't poop.:
How high of a BP are we talking about? I remember Ray saying high blood pressure as we age is an adaptive protective mechanism. Although I assume this has limits. I guess it would greatly depend on your age as well.
Yes, it is an adaptive mechanism. And it is age-related but only insofar as with age one deals with the cumulative effects of a lifetime of unresolved chronic stresses that range from toxins, infections, and physical and even mental (emotional, psychological, and even spiritual) trauma.
So I have gone all the way to 240/160 and now I have been able to lower it to 185/120, without prescription meds. Through it all, no headaches. No nothing. When I had heart failure last year, it was due to a self-induced bronchitis that deprived me of a stable supply of oxygen that spiraled into heart failure, which now I am fully recovered from. Saying this as this is what my doctor and friends would tell me- that it was my high blood pressure. But I don't have to explain further as that is how lesser minds (I mean this) work as they can't separate wheat from the chaff.
Anyway, to make this short, the root causes I have already identified but working on removing these root causes requires more effort and I am halfway there as seen in the lowered bp.
I monitor many metrics at home, which is not something this forum (except a soul or two) is interested in, but suffice it to say that.these metrics confirm my better health when I'm not taking the prescription drugs.
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@Mulloch94 said in Help I can't poop.:
Have you tried ACE inhibitors instead of CCBs? The swelling sounds more like a RAAS aldosterone issue to me. Most ACE inhibitors are a little "softer" on the side-effect spectrum as well. A high-potassium diet can also help flush excessive fluids out. I say "high," but in reality just shooting for the RDA of 4 grams will likely be a big aid. You'd be surprised just how many people fall short of K's RDA on a daily basis.
I don't intend to try ACE inhibitors or ARBs or anything else in the AMA pharmacopeia. All are David Copperfield's masking as Jesus. All have side effects, as clearly just the CCB is producing edema and the doc would prescribe diuretics along with the CCB but he can't fool me. I know the Furosemide and Spironolactone is not to lower bp but to mitigate the edematous effect of CCBs. And then I would have cramps, and that would be the side effect of diuretics and that would be why they gibe me potassium tablets. And the doc would also prescribe statins as well as a blood sugar drug and a nitrate for angina. I never took the statins and the blood sugar drug as I don't have a problem needing those things. When I was taking the nitrate for angina, my plethysmographs (on my samsung s10) look worse than without them.
Just because Ray Peat likes some drugs such as ARBs does not mean they are good. Ray likes to tell us to take carbon anhydrase inhibitors to ensure more availability of CO2 but he never could convince me to as why doesn't he press his message to improve mitochondrial respiration to just simply produce more CO2 (in effect he considers it wasted effort as most people are too impatient to go about improving their metabolism- IMHO people are just used to taking drugs that resolve issues in an instant. Most people even in the bioenergetics community don't see magnesium, for example, as something whose stores you have to build for a year to really improve bowel movement, and just take magnesium expecting an instant resolution for constipation).
On potassium, I hear you. We're on the same level understanding the importance of having adequate potassium stores.
Potassium is a tricky subject. When ournblood potassium is high, doctors tell us to stop eating foods rich in potassium. It's mind-blowingly stupid or unthoughtful of them to mislead us to think that. Serum potassium is high because the ecf is very acidic, and the cellular potassium lining the membranes have to leave the membranes to exchange for hydronium ions in the blood - in an effort to lower the highly acidic ECF. Why is this blood acidic? One reason is that the CCB is causing this acidity. But this is something people don't know because they never are interested in testing their urine and saliva. I've proven this by sharing how this is done in RPF, and no one is interested. They love only to hear from gurus and not from an interloper whose ideas make sense but have no designer label.
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@Mulloch94 said in Help I can't poop.:
Notto get too far off topic myself, but this could have possibly been set in motion by unresolved hypothyroidism, which has been shown to decrease calcium excretion via renal impairment in humans. Once on thyroid replacement the problem shou
I haven't been hypothyroid since 2017. I check my QTc (a metric used in ECGs as a proxy for hypothyroidism in measuring heart muscle relaxation time) daily and it isn't hypothyroid. also, my temperature is good. Not only that, my stable and normal blood sugar is confirmed by OGTT )Oral glucose tolerance test) curves which I use in place of the highly imprecise and irrelevant HbA1c all people here use (in deference to the medical tyranny of AMA) and my acid-base balance is optimal. Having good blood sugar and acid-base balance is, in my humble opinion, a hallmark of a very good mitochondrial metabolism.
I have taken care of the basics so as to have a firmer base to tackle my issue with hypertension. Without which I would always be secondguessing what is causing my high bp.
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@Mulloch94 said in Help I can't poop.:
But in the event kidney's have reduced ability to get rid of calcium, and CCB's increase the extracellular Ca from PTH stimulation, you might be left in precarious situation where you actually feel better not taking the CCBs despite higher BP. And it would explain why you respond well to magnesium too, as it's ability to modulate PTH independent of calcium networks.
The kidney is the least of my concern. I have posted many times in RPF on why the use of serum creatinine as a basis for determining kidney health is bogus. I believe it's one of the biggest lies or myths in medicine. It's because I use the creatinine clearance test based on collecting urine for 24 hours to help determine the glomerular filtration rate. The results are better than something that really is an estimate (the e in eGFR clearly means that) based on age, sex, race - which I consider highly unusable in a setting where science means anything.
I believe that the main cause of kidney dysfunction is simply poor acid-base balance. This leads to internal calcification, towards the development of fibrosis. If we just know how to keep our acid-base balance, many issues that vex us would be a non-issue. Kidney dysfunction is one of them. Cancer another.
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@yerrag
Lowering a raised blood pressure does absolutely nothing, unless it is exceptionally high. All modern BP medication have a high incidence of stroke and heart attacks, plus a lot of other nasty side effects. The ALLHAT study found that amlodipine is no more effective than water pills in preventing deaths. Fortunately, there are easy safe ways to dramatically lower BP without drugs. Here is an article that I wrote that you may find of benefit: -
@Dr-John-H Thank you very much for writing and sharing that article with me. It validates in many ways my approach towards dealing with my hypertension, and gives me additional insights in continuing my efforts to lower blood pressure naturally.
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@yerrag Your Welcome!
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@yerrag Yeah that's a pretty serious BP at 240/160. Definitely not the "slightly elevated" adaptive BP of old age. Are you sure you've eliminated any possible hypothyroidism? Checking the QT interval is very hit and miss, simply because there's so many things that can distort that (not just hypothyroidism). And the symptom itself may not show in everyone who is hypothyroid. What about your blood lactate levels? Which will indicate a metabolic dysfunction if elevated. In my experience hypothyroidism, or TSH (more specifically TRH), is a big cause of hypertension. My BP wasn't the greatest until I got on thyroid replacement. TRH can act a lot like adrenaline, pushing the heart rate up while inducing vasoconstriction. Of course all sort of downstream abnormalities will manifest themselves, like altered calcium metabolism. And why magnesium might help this (albeit only acutely until thyroid is corrected).
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Yes, those are very high bp values but it wasn't until I took some pretty strong proteolytic enzymes that my bp held steady at around 180/120 for many years, remaining at a steady state equilibrium levels. I can trace the rise to what I suspect to be the removal of plaque at my blood vessels, which led to the release of dormant bacteria trapped before, which was like a Pandora's box being opened. I could see my wbc go up in my CBC blood test, with most of the wbc being neutrophils.
A lot of talk about hypertension is devoid of mention of infection, as that is the result of the predominant influence of the monochromatic medical establishment on our thoughts and language, a lot of which is incomplete if not misleading or at best, an obfuscation that misleads rather than leads to useful and helpful discoveries that truly solves problems by addressing the root cause.
It took me years (4-5 years) to understand the nature of this low-grade infection (meaning it does not cause a fever) that is chronic internally. I had to conclude that the ibfection originated from my periodontal condition, which beneath the gums is hard to totally eradicate and is a serious source of a bacterial-fungal symbiosis that is vary pathogenic, having claimed 5 of my teeth, and continues to slowly claim more teeth until all my teeth are gone as I get older.
The first thing to do was to improve my oral health, using means that are not in the dental mainstream (surprise surprise) in order to out an end to the continual translocation of this infection to my blood vessels from the periodontal crevices.
Having achieved that, I could focus my efforts on containing this infection that exists in my blood vessels. Since these efforts are not dentally or medically sanctioned by mainstream practitioners, I had to be in my skunk works, sabotaging this pathogens dentals medical alliance in my own internal milieu.
The method I employ is another topic on its own, but I was successful with that and my bp is no longer at 240/160. It is back to the 180/120 levels. More work needs to be done, and I'm still actively engaged. What remains may be lead toxicity, and in the RPF forum I had talked about this in the use of a substance called Emeramide, which I got from China because our FDA drags its feet as usual even in the face of evidence that would have spurred apes to meaningful action.
I had a minor detour in my efforts last year, where the side effects (mucolytic action) in the lungs created a perfect storm with a self-induced mistake in my use of as essential oil (cinnamon bark) which caused my alveoli/bronchi/lungs to lose its ability to clear the phlegm, thus causing my lungs to lose the ability to properly exchange gases (expel CO2 and take in oxygen). The supply of oxygen being very critical to upkeep of our existence, this led to a series of chain reaction culminating in heart failure which thankfully, the hospital ER and ICU and my attending cardio was able to resolve and I was subsequently released. It took some tweaking on my part to recover fully, as you would know the medical establishment cannot do its job well enough when it comes to making a patient truly recover fully.
It is a testament to my underlying good metabolism that I can recover rapidly, I mince no bones about it. During that time that led to heart failure, no doubt I wouldn't be in a condition where my thyroid levels are optimal. But recovered, my thyroid levels are very good.
But my preference for using proxies instead of a complete thyroid panel is due to practical reasons. First of all, a useful and complete thyroid panel (inclusive of rt3, is too expensive and impractical if you need to use it regularly to keep tabs). Secondly, in the jungles like the Amazon, doctors are just as effective diagnosing hypothyroidism using the Achilles tendon reflex, which only involves the use of a neurons hammer (based on Broad Barnes). I would prefer the use of this method, except I need a second party to hit me on the Achilles tendon, and that adds another element of uncertainty. My use of a personal home ECG device is a compromise, but one that will do. It can calculate the QTc, which measures the speed of relaxation of heart muscles. But I often see this calculation to be wrong, and AI manually calculate off the ECG graph. AI barely pass the ECG, sometimes I fail, which means my thyroid is fine, but can be better.
But I also monitor my acid-base balance and my blood sugar stability, which, when I have no major underlying issues in which my body fails to adapt correctly (my high bp being a good example of adaptation) has always been optimal. I can sense when my knees ache, I am acidic. I can sense when my OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test) curves deviate from what an optimal curve looks like, I am heavier and thicker around my waistline.
I can do all these by myself, without spending on an ill-trained doctor which I have no desire to engage in an argument because I don't want to waste my time on a lost cause of enlightening a fully-decorated doctor who slaved away in his internship learning very little useful other than saving people from sentinel moments but fail miserably in having patients that don't ever go back because he's done a bang-up job (a great job I mean- truly deserving of recognition by knowledgeable peers).
By the way, my temperature is always at or above 37°C, which I cannot say of many of the attending doctors I shake my hands with.
This is a long post, but there is too much detail and I don't post often because it just takes a lot of time. As I'm not keen on giving incomplete answers that leave more questions than answers in its wake.
I know, but this flies in the face of a culture that thinks and answers in soundbites. And prefer a Reader's Digest version of novels and glue themselves to binge watching instead. Or a short one-page summary by adrm Axe or Dr. Mercola. And could never be convinced why sugar is not bad.
But you're not that. And I appreciate your questions, and for allowing me to explain.
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@CO3 said in Help I can't poop.:
My pooping mixture:
1 teaspoon fine baking soda (arm n hammer)
2 TBsp magnesium bisglycinate
2 teaspoons instant coffee
250 ml skim milk
pinch of saltrepeat if doesn't work
POOP TIME
I literally solved the issue here but you autists can't help yourselves
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@monkey11
Hey bro if all else fails:
Lie face down
have fat friend belly flop on your backIt is suggested to take off pants and whitey tighties for this.
good luck OP
