Many people have a real or imagined problem with their bowels.
So when two linked systematic reviews recently landed on Bandolier's desk they were eagerly grasped for some answers. Alas - all is not as clear as it might be. The authors chose mean bowel movement frequency per week. One of the possible criticisms was that most of the studies were conducted in populations in which the control groups had more than 3 bowel movements a week when one definition of constipation is fewer than three movements a week. The search was based on the Tramonte article, widened to include a number of other databases and also non-English language papers.