I never hear younger people complain about constipation unless they have a specific digestive problem. The older people I know (let’s say over sixty) seem to be obsessed with what foods “bind them up” and with their bowel movements. What is it that physiologically causes this?
Probably the meds they’re on. Plus old people have nothing else to talk about.
Sedentary lifestyle, slower metabolism, congestive heart failure will all cause one’s digestive tract to slow way down. The stomach still works well and continues to pass food into the intestines but the colon just slows down.
Some of it is medications, especially diuretics and narcotic painkillers - these cause the intestines to have trouble moving feces through.
Some of it is diet - tooth and mouth problems, including ill fitting dentures and a slower metabolism make them not as hungry and not as likely to eat crunchy fibrous fruits and vegetables when they do eat.
Some of it is income and access to grocery stores - being on a monthly fixed income and/or having to wait for a monthly or bi-monthly ride from their senior living apartment to the store makes it more likely for them to eat shelf-stable processed foods, also lower in fiber.
Some of it is limited mobility and/or a sedentary lifestyle - our guts rely on us walking and moving to aid in peristalsis.
Some of it is a decrease in muscle tone that’s a normal part of aging.
Most of these things are fixable; I’ve got a couple of elderly patients with pretty good to excellent diets who move their bodies daily. They don’t have issues with constipation.
What old people talk about is not really a physiological answer.
As I understand it, though, medications can be a reason, though far from the only one.
The aging process slows bowel peristalsis, according to this site. This means that the stool spends more time in the bowel and more water is absorbed from it before its journey ends. Other factors mentioned are inactivity, failure to drink enough water (a problem for the elderly as bladder elasticity decreases with age and they seek to avoid frequent bathroom trips), and diverticulosis, present in roughly half the over-60 population.
My 96 year old father has constant problems with this. For ALL the reasons listed above. Seriously, he has them all, history of congestive heart failures, medications (he takes an ungodly number of pills per day), inactive, low appetite, etc, etc,
Not a laughing matter, it’s actually life-threatening.
Great. Another thing to look forward to.
Just remember to eat cherries. 
Oh yes! Problem solved!
Seriously, my aunts have bigtime problems with constipation. And, this is probably TMI, but when I stayed with them for a week, I did, too. So it must be their diet. They eat LOTS of veggies but all heavily cooked in Indian spices, no raw fruit or veggies.
In addition, frailty can hinder walking to the bathroom, and then the person will consciously or unconsciously reduce drinking water.
Congestive heart failure patients may be required to drink less water in order to reduce fluid retention and ease pressure on the heart. My dad was instructed to take in something like “two quarts per day or less”.
Yeah, my Mom’s house has a bathroom upstairs near the bedrooms or downstairs in the basement.
Does it matter if the vegetables are cooked or not? I was under the impression that dietary fiber doesn’t just disappear when the vegetables are cooked.
I always wondered why they don’t just eat those Olestra chips; they seem to have the opposite effect of constipation on most people.
With age, everything works less well.
I don’t think the fiber disappears or anything, but I have no problems with my diet, and i have problems on their diet, ergo, must be something wrong with their diet.
Dehydration, which can also cause constipation, is a big problem in the elderly too. In many cases, their hunger and thirst mechanisms don’t work the way they used to.
It doesn’t just disappear but a large part of dietary fiber is stuff that’s identical to starches composition-wise: branching chains of sugar. Starches branch in such a way our body can digest it enzimatically, this kind of fiber has branches our bodies cannot break out enzimatically; these funky branches can still be split (if the part broken off is small enough it is now digestible) by the extreme pHs found inside the digestive tract or by cooking (cooking in high or low pHs will hydrolize more). At the same time, the starches which are considered “food” (i.e., those the human body can digest enzimatically), specially the most complex ones, will be less absorbable the less they’ve been cooked.
Crunchy vegetables have more unabsorbable/long-time-to-digest large molecules left than those which have been turned into mush.
TLDR: some things which are officially “fiber” become food if cooked enough, some things which are officially “food” won’t get absorbed if they haven’t been cooked a lot.
Interesting, Nava.
What they mainly eat - and I continue to post about this because I am interested. I’ve never had constipation except that one week:
What they mainly eat are cooked veggies, so cauliflower, cabbage, peas, potatoes, carrots, in heavily spiced concoctions, with onions and oil (too much oil, probably). Also flatbread (roti), yogurt, and lots and lots of Indian tea (has milk and cardamom). Also dahl sometimes, lentils, that’s where they get the majority of their protein.
What they do not eat - no red meat, no fish, chicken is a super rare food. Very little water, which is where I think the majority of the problem is coming from. I drink 2 glasses of water with every meal, and they kind of think drinking water with every meal is for kids.
On the one hand their food is pretty good for losing weight, as with the spicy food, you tend to eat less. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem all that healthy - no fresh veggies, no fruit as I’ve said, and they do take a lot of pills.
I think you’re right about the water; there should be plenty of fiber there.
I had the same problem visiting overseas relatives: they drank a single, tiny, glass of hot tea with their meal. That’s it. Even in the middle of summer heat. I asked for a cup of water to drink, was given this: :dubious:
:dubious: and then given this: a single, tiny, glass of hot water.
I have a water bottle on my desk at work that gets refilled who knows how many times a day; big difference!