September 27/Amsterdam/HealthDay -- Many children in Western countries suffer from chronic constipation, and when the going gets slow, fiber seems to beat all other non-drug remedies, new research from the Netherlands suggests.
A review of nine studies with 640 children up to age 18 with functional constipation, which has no known physical cause, found that fiber supplements were somewhat better than placebos at reducing kids' abdominal pain and improving frequency and consistency of stools.