I'm the one who posted the very frustrated series about nothing working for me. In the past(even the recent past), epsoms did not work, and over the past 5 months I've been using cascara sagrada, which then suddenly stopped working. (for all of the many other things I've done, including diet etc etc, my earlier post is lower on this page).

Well in sheer rebellion, as the cascara blend quit doing anything, I stopped it cold turkey. A few days later, tried two heaping spoons of epsoms in the middle of the night when I was up and couldnt sleep, just for the heck of it. It worked the next morning, and two more times that day, and one of those was nicely formed, not runny. ??!! Why did suddenly epsoms work?

My theory is threefold: 1) I had taken extra magnesium that same day. Much more than ordinary doses. Magnesium is released from the body the same day, the body doesn't hold onto it well the way it does calcium, so taking it recently and daily may affect the workings of epsoms. In the past, I took good levels of magneium, but maybe not quite enough, or didn't happen to have taken any that day. 2) maybe all those weeks of using the cascara did clean out enough layers to where now epsoms will do something. 3) I took the epsoms late evening/or middle of night, and maybe there is something about the Liver Cleaning house at that time (I read that somewhere) that affects the efficiency of the epsoms.

Note that I took two heaping spoons full all at once, no small amount.

The following night, I woke up in the middle of the night and so tried this again. Two heaping spoons full. That was last night, and this morning I'm happy to say that again I had a movement, although a bit runny.

Stannarad, I remember you had posted that epsoms don't do anything for you. Maybe some of this info could be helpful to you?

I'll try to keep posting with progress to see if this experience speaks to anyone going through similar things. If epsoms continue to work, I'll try tiny amounts of a psyllium mix - have ALWAYS wanted to experience the placque removal that the psyllium blends are supposed to bring about. funny thing to wish for for Christmas! ;-)