Following a recent report released by the surgeon general stating that over two thirds of the population is overweight, there has been a flurry of diet plans and weight loss schemes put forth on the internet and in magazines. One of the least desirable, and least effective, ideas to date is taking laxatives to lose weight.
Laxatives, like all medications, have a specific use in human lives. They are designed to relieve constipation by softening the stool with added water in the bowel and stimulating the muscles that line the bowel to help push the waste out. If taken on a daily basis, these drugs could limit or destroy the body’s ability to move waste matter through the colon and out of the body on its own.
The part of the digestive system that is affected by laxatives lies at the end of the line, after food has been digested to whatever extent it will be. This means that all of the calories consumed in a meal have already been absorbed into the body before any remaining material gets to this part of the digestive tract.
The bowel is open at both ends, meaning that it can only hold a finite amount of material. Even a high colonic could only flush out a certain amount of waste matter. Much of this weight would be immediately replaced as more waste comes out of the upper digestive tract into the bowel and makes its way to the rectum. Because laxatives typically only affect the lower one third to one half of the bowel, they could not force any more weight out of the body than a colonic.
The best way to attempt to lose weight is to make changes in one’s lifestyle concerning the amount and types of food consumed and the amount of exercise the body receives as a matter of routine. Reducing the number of calories taken in while increasing the number of calories used is the only real method of losing weight that can have any hope of succeeding.
Of course, the changes made must be at a fundamental level. One can not ‘go on a diet’ and starve oneself until the desired weight is lost, then resume the same old habits. The result would be a rebound in weight. The lost pounds would return and one would be back where he/she started from, if not worse off. Taking laxatives to lose weight is even more futile than starvation dieting and much more dangerous.