Thread: Health Benefits of Colon Cleansing

Originally Posted by BigDyl

I have heard there is alot of "stuff" in general inside your intestines and colon that makes it harder for your body to digest vitamins and things you eat during the day. This could lead to higher levels of body bacteria and other things that don't make you feel as well as you could.

What is your opinion of colon cleaning? Is it worth it?


Discuss.

You just want someone to probe you....don't you.

Here's one option, seems like a more natural way: here's the link

Think I'll wait a while before replying to this thread.

Its controversial.

Originally Posted by min0 lee

You just want someone to probe you....don't you.

Anyone?

I think it's a bunch of shit

Moderators warning: cease and desist from these peanut gallergy comments, please. Next time, I axe your post.

I decided to use a little different approach to answering this question. I asked myself: self, what medical application would colon cleaning be used? And self answered: radiographic studies (x-rays) of the colon. Doh!

So then I went to my good friends at PubMed and asked the oricular search engine to find me the lastest. Here's what we found:

Electrolyte disorders following colonic cleansing for imaging studies.

Gutierrez-Santiago M, Garcia-Unzueta M, Amado JA, Gonzalez-Macias J, Riancho JA. Med Clin (Barc). 2006 Feb 11;126(5):173-4.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: An adequate bowel cleansing is needed prior to radiologic and endoscopic procedures. However, it may have a number of adverse effects, including abnormalities of calcium-phosphorus homeostasis. PATIENTS AND METHOD: This was an observational prospective study in a hospital practice setting. We included consecutive inpatients (n = 47) subjected to a barium enema or colon endoscopy. Prior cleansing was done as indicated by the attending physician by using a low-salt oral poliethylenglicol (PEG) solution, oral sodium phosphate or a phosphate-containing enema. RESULTS: PEG solution frequently caused mild increases in serum sodium, and decreases in serum potassium. Oral phosphate caused a significant increase in serum phosphorus and parathormone concentrations, whereas it decreased serum calcium. Mild hyperphosphatemia was found in 57% of cases, and hypocalcemia in 36%. Phosphate enema also increased serum phosphate, causing mild hyperphosphatemia (33% cases). Although in the whole subgroup of enema-treated patients there were no significant changes in serum calcium, mild hypocalcemia was found in 27% cases.

CONCLUSIONS: Bowel cleansing procedures, particularly those using oral phosphate salts, frequently induce hyperphosphatemia and other abnormalities in serum electrolytes. Although usually transitory and without overt clinical consequences, clinicians should be aware of this potential risk, especially in elderly patients and those with impaired renal function.

Oral sodium phosphate solution: a review of its use as a colorectal cleanser.
Curran MP, Plosker GL. Drugs. 2004;64(15):1697-714.

Oral sodium phosphate solution (Fleet Phospho-soda, Casen-Fleet Fosfosoda is a low-volume, hyperosmotic agent used as part of a colorectal-cleansing preparation for surgery, x-ray or endoscopic examination. The efficacy and tolerability of oral sodium phosphate solution was generally similar to, or significantly better than, that of polyethylene glycol (PEG) or other colorectal cleansing regimens in patients preparing for colonoscopy, colorectal surgery or other colorectal-related procedures.....PHARMACOLOGICAL PROPERTIES: After the first and second 45 mL dose of oral sodium phosphate solution, the mean time to onset of bowel activity was 1.7 and 0.7 hours and the mean duration of activity was 4.6 and 2.9 hours. Bowel activity ceased within 4 hours of administration of the second dose in 83% of patients. Elevations in serum phosphorus and falls in serum total and ionised calcium from baseline occurred during the 24 hours after administration of oral sodium phosphate solution in seven healthy volunteers. These changes were not associated with significant changes in clinical assessments. The decrease in serum potassium levels after administration of oral sodium phosphate solution was negatively correlated with baseline intracellular potassium levels.

---> Sodium phosphate-associated adverse events were mostly gastrointestinal (including abdominal pain/cramping, abdominal fullness and/or bloating, anal or perianal irritation or soreness, nausea, vomiting or hunger pains), although dizziness, weakness/fatigue, thirst, chest pain, chills, headache and sleep loss were also reported.
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Okey dokey. So if you look at over the counter colon flushing products, they typically have a bulking agent, a salt (magnesium and calcium phosphates or oxides), an "herbal detoxifier" and a "probiotic tonifier".

The idea is to "loosed accumulated mucilage plaque" and to restore healthy bacterial action (hence the probiotics).

Now, the first dozen or feet or so of intentines are handling acidic residues, mostly as a liquid slurry. Tha acidity is neutralized as it passes further on in the colon, and by the time you have fecal bacterial present, much of the liquid has been absorbed and with it, nutrients, the remaining residues are largely unavailable, with respect to bacterial extraction of nutrients, by the time the extracted material becomes solid waste.

So its hard fo rme to see, if you have a diet correct in bulking/fiber agents (mostly natural soluble fiber from whole grains and insoluble fiber in fiberous vegetables and some fruits) that provide the working (absorptive) end of the gut microbial community with food (probiotics) to promote healthy gut function, that you would need to clean your proverbial clock with severe cleaning agents.

If your diet has been low in fiber and you have constipation, feel free to try these expensive treatments, but it be just as well if you are proactive in hydration and diet management, and use an occasional probiotic and even some natural prebiotics (active mixtures of microbial isolates to occasionally reintroduce some of the more prominant of the various (25-40) strains of fermentative and facultative anaerobes housed in the business end (absorptive/microbial bioconversion reactions) of the colon) as supplements.

Its not so much what these cleansers purport to do (remove accumulated mucilage) as what they do (mild intestinal upset, temporary ion imbalances, mild dehydration) that suggest they are expensive elective treatments that may do very little to remove the impacted residues they claim to treat.

Personally, I would invest in probiotics for my diet, to put supplement dollars to most effective use for gut maintenance.

You may clean out alot of the bad stuff but you also clean out alot of the good stuff.

Your body naturally cleans out bad stuff. There is no need.

Solution Call The Plumber !!! Lol

Originally Posted by min0 lee

Moderators warning: cease and desist from these peanut gallergy comments, please. Next time, I axe your post.

Wow. That sounded a bit Draconian

Five out of thirteen posts in this thread are shit filler (no useful content).

Draconian would be to axe it without further comment.

Originally Posted by BigDyl

Is it worth it?

Of course it is. You must do it.

It may help your sex life Big Dyl, and we all know the health benefits of a good sex life.

Might want to look into a hydrotherapist for a one time cleaning. Once in a year would not hurt, but like trouble said consistency will cause electrolyte imbalances. It will also cause your good flora to be lossed. There is the theory of mucoid plague that Dr Bernard Jenson is very familar with. My freind did the cleans and lost over 15 lbs in a matter of 7 day, but again he did fast and did note that will a "cleanse Kit" pf herbs and special nutrient powders he did notice volume of feccal matter was greater then normal. So he did gain alot of energy and waist did drop a few inches, more clear headed thinking. So it does help get the waste of. Prep similar to colonscopy only get the top layer, but fasting and "colon" cleansing may help to reduce the harden matter under neath.

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/fecalcolon.asp

Metamucil, or any other kind of psyllium fibres can clean it I thought?

It's true that there are a lot of bad things that your body disposes of naturally, but half the shit some people eat are not "natural" and obviously the body doesn't have full ability of getting rid of it.

Anyway, the amount of shit that your shit passes through should be cleaned every once in a while. I have heard that sometimes people have weighty colons when they die, as much as 80 lbs worth!!

John wayne had 60 lbs in his colon at autopsy and Elvis had 40 lbs of shit in his colon. So it had been reported.

But HAN, there have been numerous report of Elvis sightings...he and his colon are doing jest fine, probably.

*squint* John Wayne was a life long smoker, get real. He may have had a full colon, but he had no lungs left.