Intestinal Motility Research Analysis

Things To Know & Note

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The Human Effect Matrix looks at human studies (it excludes animal and in vitro studies) to tell you what supplements affect intestinal motility

Grade	Level of Evidence [show legend]
	Robust research conducted with repeated double-blind clinical trials
	Multiple studies where at least two are double-blind and placebo controlled
	Single double-blind study or multiple cohort studies
	Uncontrolled or observational studies only

Outcome	Magnitude of effect ? The direction and size of the supplement's impact on each outcome. Some supplements can have an increasing effect, others have a decreasing effect, and others have no effect.	Consistency of research results ? Scientific research does not always agree. HIGH or VERY HIGH means that most of the scientific research agrees.	Notes
Senna alexandrina	Strong	Very High See all 10 studies	Senna Alexandria is a reference drug for its laxative effects, with comparable efficacy to oral polyethylene glycol (PEG; used before colonoscopies) and lactulose, but more cost-effective than the latter
Yacon	Notable	- See study	The one study to assess intestinal motility (speed of food transit from stomach to anus) has noted a near halving of time, suggesting that yacon increases intestinal motility.
Curcumin	Minor	- See study	May increase intestinal motility
Psyllium	Minor	- See study	Increases intestinal motility due to being a bulk laxative, but is unlikely to have a strong laxative effect.

All comparative evidence is now gathered in our A-to-Z Supplement Reference.

The evidence for each separate supplement is still freely available here.