Will taking laxatives make a person lose weight?
The common belief is that laxatives will make you lose weight, this is absolutely not true. A laxative performs its duty in the colon not the stomach, so by the time the food reaches your colon all the calories from the food have already been absorbed so taking a laxative is a waste of time. There are however a lot of medical risks that accompany the abuse of laxatives, some of them are of a serious nature.
Laxatives may come in different forms, from food to other forms of drugs like pills and can be taken orally or as a suppository. These weight loss laxatives are used to stimulate bowel movement, thus expelling undigested food from the body. In routine medical examinations, laxatives are used to clear the colon in preparation for rectal examinations. During digestion, the nutrients and fats in the food are absorbed quickly in the small intestines. When the digested food goes to the large intestines, it is already stripped of the fats and calories supposedly to be removed by the laxatives but laxatives work on the lower intestines by inducing the intestinal muscles to contract and force out body waste. This defeats the purpose of using laxatives for weight loss because what the body expels is waste not fat. People taking laxatives to get rid of body fat are ignorant about the nature and purpose of laxatives and its effects on the body. They are taken by the idea that because laxatives fo
