Colon Detox

Modern medicine finds the concept of bowel toxicity and colon detox quite foreign yet at the beginning of the 20th century the subject was discussed at length by 57 British doctors at the Royal Society of Medicine in London. where a 380 page report is still on file.

Colon detox or detoxification simply means cleansing the colon and has been the basis of natural medicine for many years. The colon is a muscular organ that consists of about five foot of large intestine or bowel and functions as the body’s waste disposal system. It is one of the most neglected and misunderstood major organs of detoxification of the body.

A colon detox can help a colon that has suffered from lack of proper care resulting in problems such as gas, pain, constipation,  diarrhoea, diverticulitis and colon cancer. The colon receives the waste from the small intestine where food is digested and absorbed. Modern refined diets, rushed meals and stressful lifestyles result in lack of fiber, poor digestion and slow progress of food and waste through the digestive system.

Modern diets lack fiber

Dennis Burkitt, an English doctor who practiced in rural Africa for many years, noted that Africans who ate a high fiber diet had no bowel problems while people who ate a lot of meat, fat, sugar, refined and processed foods suffered with constipation, diverticulitis, appendicitis, irritable bowel, anal fissures, hemorrhoids, colon polyps, and colon cancer.

They also suffered with a whole host of other problems that were not obviously connected to the bowel. But he noticed that rural Africans suffered the same conditions and diseases when they adopted a Western diet.

The lack of fiber, processed foods and slow transit time causes an alteration in the balance of good bacteria in the bowel which allows an increase of the so called bad ones resulting in bowel toxicity. Undigested food and waste sitting in the intestines is fermented by certain bacteria and yeasts.

The gas and acids produced as a result irritates the bowel lining which produces more than normal amounts of unhealthy mucus that can adhere to the wall interfering further with the bowels natural muscle movements.

A colon detox can help many problems

An effective colon cleanse helps to remove the waste matter and hardened mucus that has built up over the years. Naturopathic doctors have noted that many of seemingly unrelated problems such as varicose veins, hiatus hernia, gallbladder disease, skin problems, joint and muscle problems, arthritis and allergies improve considerably or completely disappear when a colon detox has been done.

This can be explained by the fact that toxins from the bowel enter the blood stream, bind to cells causing a disturbance in metabolic function and tissue damage. Once the bowel toxicity is cleansed away by a colon detox then the body has a chance to repair itself.

Many people have to do several cleanses of varying intensities to thoroughly cleanse out the bowel depending on the previous diet and bowel habits.

What is involved?

If you are going to do a colon detox than it is best to clean the entire digestive system. This involves taking fiber like psyllium husk powder, flaxseed powder, oat or barley bran to sweep out the debris and help the bowel to move the waste out more quickly together with herbs that help break down any thickened mucus layers adhering to the gut wall. Some include Bentonite or other clay that attracts toxins and metals lodged in the bowel to itself to detox them.

Other methods involve enemas or colonic irrigation sometimes called colonic hydrotherapy or colemas which is a colonic irrigation that can be done at home. But these will only wash out the colon so they are often combined with a oral herbs to cleanse the small intestine as well.

The best cleansing takes place if there is little or no food in the digestive tract so food restrictions or juice fasting is recommended. If you have never done any cleansing before then it is best to start with agentle less restrictive colon detox and work up to the more complicated colon and body cleansing.

Finally no colon detox should be done without replenishing the good bowel bacteria through an intensive course of an oral high potency multistrain probiotic or an implant following an enema or colonic.