Most of us have experienced constipation from time to time. The slow movement of the bowels has been associated with a lack of fiber in the diet and meat-rich diets. Meat of course, is extremely low in fiber, and also moves slowly through the intestines because of its high saturated fat and complex protein makeup. The intestines do not assimilate complex proteins—they need them broken down into amino acids or smaller polypeptides in order for the body to use them as nutrients. This requires significant protease enzymes and other digestive resources. For these reasons and others, animal meats tend to double or triple the time of passage through the digestive tract. This slow passage of meat diets typically causes putrefaction.

Putrefaction means that the food stimulates the growth of pathogenic bacteria colonies. These bacteria become stronger partially because meat is not a typical probiotic food. Probiotics do not like meat, as we’ll discuss further later on. Probiotics feed and thrive from vegetable fibers and complex carbohydrates. High fiber meals thus move through the digestive tract more easily for a number of reasons: Fibers provide food for probiotics. They bind to cholesterols and speed up intestinal fat metabolism (lowering blood cholesterol levels). Fibers also do not attract pathogenic bacteria populations.

As we’ll see from the research, probiotics speed up the passage of food through the digestive tract because they assist in the digestive process, and they help reduce pathogenic bacteria populations involved in the putrefaction process.

Italian scientists (Amenta et al. 2006) gave Bifidobacterium longum W11 + FOS or placebo to 297 chronic constipation patients undergoing a weight loss diet. Constipation was significantly reduced among patients in the probiotic group.

Researchers from the Taiwan’s Keelung Hospital (Bu et al. 2007) studied 45 children with chronic constipation. They gave the children a placebo, Lactobacillus casei rhamnosus Lcr35, or the laxative magnesium oxide. Those receiving either MgO or the probiotic had higher defecation frequency and treatment success than the placebo group. While there was no statistically significant difference in effectiveness between the MgO and the probiotic treatment groups, less abdominal pain occurred in the probiotic treatment group than the MgO group.

Scientists from Italy’s University of Bologna (Colecchia et al. 2006) gave 636 patients diagnosed with IBS with constipation either a placebo, or Bifidobacterium longum and a prebiotic for at least 36 days. Patients reporting no bloating increased from 3% to 27%, and reports of no abdominal pain went from 8% to 44% in the probiotic group. Severe symptom frequency dropped significantly, from 63% to 9.5% for bloating, and from 39% to 4% for abdominal pain among the probiotic group. Average stool frequency increased from 2.9 to 4.1 times per week among the probiotic group.

Researchers from the Helsinki University Hospital (Pitkala et al. 2008) gave live Bifidobacterium longum, live B. lactis or inactivated placebo to 209 constipated elderly nursing home residents. The live probiotic groups had significantly increased bowel movement frequency compared to the placebo group. The normal bowel movement level for the B. longum group was slightly higher than the B. lactis group, but each of the probiotic groups were higher than the placebo group.

We add that significant research (such as Sturtzel et al. 2009) has established that plant fibers like oat bran can also significantly decrease constiptation. Fiber plus probiotics: Even better.

References and more information are available from Probiotics – Protection Against Infection: Using Nature’s Tiny Warriors to Stem Infection and Fight Disease.