Thursday, March 5, 2009

Pregnancy - Constipation During Pregnancy

Posted by Carri:

No one wants to talk about this, but it is a very common and irritating part of pregnancy. The reason behind this problem is that our digestion slows down during pregnancy to accommodate the pregnancy. Another common reason is because of the synthetic iron in many prenatal vitamins and iron supplements. So here are a couple simple and natural ways of helping this very uncomfortable problem. My favorite and most effective and easy solution is a large fruit smoothie with 2 tablespoons of ground golden flax seeds. My smoothie is usually just frozen fruit and apple juice. I use a coffee grinder to grind down the flax seeds. You don’t have to grind them, but they absorb better and easier. Make sure you get the golden flax seeds. They taste better and work better too. Another simple solution is to start taking a natural prenatal vitamin. You can get these at any health food store. Other helpful solutions are to drink a lot of water, eat healthy greens and foods, and exercise.

2 comments:

  1. I recommend adding greens to the fruit smoothie (thus making it a "Green Smoothie"). This adds a lot more nutrition, readily absorbable plant-based protein as well as fiber, to get things moving. A great resource for Green Smoothies is "Green for Life" by Victoria Boutenko. The Green Smoothies make it easy to get great nutrition in those first few weeks when nausea strikes and nothing seems palatable. You can use any kind of greens; spinach, romaine, collards, kale, etc The fruit masks the taste of greens, they are absolutely delicious, easy and super nutritious!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome suggestion Hannah! Thanks so much for the thorough and information info! I may have to check this all out, and I'm not even pregnant hee hee!

    ReplyDelete