Laxitives everyday.!

[lilacben]

My daughter is 36 and is a size 8/10 she has had three children and keeps on about her huge stomach.!! yes it is a rounded tummy but nothing much. She has been trying to lose it amd make it flat. Exercise isnt working and I have now found out she has laxatives every day.! she has alwas had a toilet trouble and may go for a week or more without going. Her eating has alwas been bad, no veg or fruit. I keep telling her laxitives are really bad for her. Please could you tell me how dangerous it is?,

[daffy654]

Using laxatives(long term) as a way to lose weight can lead to heart failure.The temporary weight loss is due to the water in the faeces that is excreted.
This can lead to an imbalance of electrolytes...specifically potassium.Too little potassium in the body can cause irregular heart rhythms and ultmately heart damage and possibly death.

[4getmenot]

will give her a pot belly too from all the gasses. She needs to just east more fibre

[saxy_jag]

I think what daffy might mean, in a nutshell, is that long term laxative consumption makes you dehydrated - like the poor starving children we used to see in places like Biafra. With the distended bellies ... ?

I know how she feels, because I'm not a huge veg lover either. Instead I drink fruit juice and smoothies (yes, I know about the sugar, but that alone is not what makes you fat).

Drinking lots of water helps too - makes you wee a lot and helps you get rid of the excessive body fluid which can often make you feel bloated.

[Androcles]

It sounds to me as if she needs to address the issue of why a woman who is size 8/10 thinks she is "fat"! This is getting close to an eatiing disorder and the sooner you persuade her to address that, the more logical she will be about alternative methods of losing weight. This is more psychological than
than about eating!

[crazycathy2]

Perhaps she is remembering how she used to look before having her children?

I'm quite thin - wear a size 4 as a rule but I've got a rounded tummy I put it down to having my sons. I do exercise but I don't think it will ever go away. You just change shape after child birth.

I don't think you can take laxatives for any length of time without having some ill effect - every day is way too much - try to talk to her

[lilacben]

Thankyou everyone who have answered. She is under the doctor for post natal depression, although she is much much better in herself . This has been for the last 18 months now. I keep telling her how dangerous it is to take them infact today I was saying about the negitive side of taking them and she admitted she has also looked it up on the internet. Now she has got something from the health food shop that detoxes your body so is taking these now. I am very concerned about her. She gave up smoking for four months and said it was that that made her stomach get big. so she has now gone back to smoking as well. Her sister has had four children and she is about a size 14 as I was until I had a under activeThyroid. So having three children is bound to make you tummy bigger I would have thought.

[Ice.Maiden]

Constantly taking laxatives can damage the colon, damage nerve endings, prevent natural bacteria from working, cause dehydration, stop natural bowel movements - and eventually lead to the opposite - constipation - when the muscles no longer work on their own.
Exercise is the best way to shift a "baby tummy". I have 2 children, and am an approx. size 10. A healthy diet, exercise and drinking lots of water can help to maintain your daughter's figure, but some women never lose their rounded tummies after giving birth, so it's probably a case of learning to love herself the way she is. x

[Lorzy Lor]

i had my son nearly three years ago, am all most down to my pre-baby size 8, however i have a much more rounded lower tummy, but it wont shift. I definantly think it is just down to a womans body changing after having children.

laxatives will do her no good, as the above posts have mentioned, maybe she should try and get some councilling on her body issues, because, she will do her self halm if she continues to treat her body like this!

She needs to drink tons of water, like 2lts per day, and eat fiber and fruit at a minimum. she will bloat out for a couple of days, but her body will bounce back and she'll look and feel so much better.

poor you and your daughter. good luck

[Eve]

Some of the dangerous health effects have been given about but it is a miserable thing to get addicted to, however satisfying the initial effect may be. I thought letting her read some personal experience may help.

Your system can even become reliant on them to the extent that I've known people who have ended up with it being almost impossible for them to stop as their body has reconditioned itself.

If she is worried about her tummy in particular then the laxatives will only end up making her more bloated and uncomfortable.

I had an eating disorder and used to take them among other things. I had no idea the long term effect many of the things I did would have on my body.

It ruled the majority of my teenage life and into my early twenties, I can trace bits back earlier but definitely all through school, college and most of uni (at which point I was getting so many kidney problems I was warned if I carried on that they could fail).

I also became intolerant to lactose then gluten and it took me a long while for my system to be able to tolerate them again.

Even now at thirty it's never left me and I still have relapses, it's just far more under control than it was. More the occasional not too serious blip.

It may be coincidental, it may be related in part or in whole but years later I'm under the care of gastro having suffered horrible stomach problems from a child which they seem to think is inflammatory bowel disease with related inflammatory arthritis.

[Eve]

On top of the pain and discomfort and nausea I've had a number of stays in hospital, ulcers, fissures, vitamin deficiencies and similar and other problems. I'm on immunosuppressants, vitamin replacement therapy, anti spasmonics chronic pain medication, stuff to help the fissure and others. I have chronic diarrhoea most of the time and it's horrible.

At 30 I can assure you I'd much rather be spending my money on things other than prescriptions and such and not having to stress about being able to get to a loo in time or having to make excuses when in company as I need to try and relieve the horribly painful gas which builds up, having to escape early after some meals out due to the pain, discomfort and unpleasant after effects and having to stick anti-inflammatory anaethetic gel up my bum due to the recurrent fissure I have which is most likely caused by the chronic diarreah.

I try not to blame myself as I was ill, currently seeing a cognitive therapist to help with issues related to it, and I don't know if it is related (am too scared to ask my doctors as I'm not sure if I'll like the answer - they know the situation, I just don't know if I'm ready to ask the question).

Sorry to ramble on but hoped a bit of personal experience may help. It might seem like an easy answer but it's just so not worth it.

Hope this helps x

[lilacben]

Oh Jenna many many thanks for your reply. It couldn't be easy for you for all these years. I will indeed show my daughter all you have written and hope it will upset her as it did me. She needs to know what can,and does,happen if you go this way. Hopefully she will have a good rethink of how lucky she is. She has three beautiful children,9,7 and 2 and she must,I hope, think of them and what they would do if she was as ill as you. I really hope you will be ok and the treatment you are having will,very soon, make you better. Please ask the question and tell them about how you feel and all your problems. With help and to share it with them, would hopefully make a lot of difference. All my love to you. xxxxx