For children to continue studying and exercising, it’s important to eat well and get plenty of sleep. Children who spend their early childhood years on short sleep schedules have difficulty concentrating in class when they enter elementary school. They lose concentration after 10 to 20 minutes and tend to wander around. Constipation is another factor in behavioral problems, along with sleep. Survey results from the Japan Toilet Research Institute, a nonprofit organization, reveal that some children suffer from constipation. Constipation accounts for 16.6% of all children. Furthermore, 20.7% are at risk of developing constipation. Constipation can lead to physical, mental, and social inconveniences in class.
On the other hand, regular bowel movements can help children concentrate and study more efficiently. Even though 80% of 6-year-olds eat breakfast, only about 30% have a bowel movement in the morning. So, what can be done to improve constipation? By the next morning, easily digestible food remains will have reached your large intestine. When you eat food, easily digestible foods will be excreted within 7 to 9 hours. Your stomach is empty in the morning. When breakfast enters your empty stomach, your stomach notifies your brain that food has been eaten. When breakfast enters your empty stomach, your intestines begin peristalsis to expel the digested and absorbed remains. Peristalsis begins, and your intestines try to push out the remaining food. It’s best to have enough remaining remains to fill your intestines when pushing out the remaining food. If you sleep for about 10 hours, your body will be ready for excretion. The importance of sleep and diet is clear here.
Constipation makes it difficult to concentrate on work, making it difficult to perform well. On the other hand, not being constipated allows you to concentrate on work and achieve better results. Constipation can cause abdominal pain, loss of appetite, chronic fatigue, hemorrhoids, and rough skin. It actually reinforces stress. Holding in stool hardens it, leading to constipation. It’s not uncommon for constipation to cause intense abdominal pain. Repeated stool holding leads to increasingly hard stool. Medically, children with constipation are at a higher risk of urinary tract infections. Holding in stool during childhood can lead to “chronic functional constipation.” Once a child is predisposed to this condition, many continue to experience it into adulthood. Furthermore, constipation has recently been linked to depression and dementia.
This knowledge about stool has also led to a deeper understanding of sleep. Rather than emphasizing early bedtime, it’s important to develop the habit of waking up early. The human body clock is said to become sleepy around 14 hours after waking up. It’s important to “wake up” your child at around 6:00 AM, even if it’s a bit of a hassle. Waking them up at 6:00 AM will lead to sleepiness around 8:00 or 9:00 PM. This is the time to get them to bed. If you continue waking up at around 6am for about two weeks, you will establish the habit of going to bed early and getting up early. At the same time, you will also establish a system that will help relieve constipation.
