Larger fruit consumption helps constipation patients: socioeconomic analysis from 2005 - 2010 NHANES matched cohorts

We aimed to utilize a large-scale database to better understand its efficacy in this subpopulation group.

Constipation is one of the most common gastrointestinal complaints in the United States whose alleviation often requires multiple interventions and behavioral changes. Fruits are often one of the dietary recommendations for constipated patients, but their efficacy remains mixed.

We examined the nationwide cross-sectional study in the 2006 - 2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database. Patients over 20 years old were stratified into fruit-consumption and non-fruit-consumption groups. We excluded patients who had intestinal disease, colon cancer, celiac disease, and were pregnant. We used multivariable logistic regression to determine the association between fruit intake and constipation status as recorded in the database.

A total of 12,192 patients were included in our study. The average age was 50.5, and 49.56% of the population are Caucasians, followed by 26.43% of Hispanics; 9.84% had constipation; and 70.04% had fruit consumption. After adjusting for age, gender, ethnicity, education, marital status, poverty ratio, body mass index, food healthy index, physical activity, supplemental usage, medications, smoking, and alcohol usage, patients who had fruit consumption had a lower odd of constipation (aOR 0.83, 95%CI (0.72, 0.95), p=0.008). Further, patients who had larger fruit intake were likely to be less constipated. Post-propensity score matching revealed similar statistically significant.

Fruit intake, as well larger amount of fruit intake, was associated with lesser odds of constipation. Additional investigations in the fruit subtype, as well as the longitudinal relationship, are required to understand this relationship.