27
Colon Cleansing: “I’ll Take Exhumed Science For $100″
Posted by admin | Posted in Colon Cleaning | Posted on 27-02-2009
Thanks to our schooling, most residents in the U.S. have learned the basics of how the heart pumps blood through the body, and how to resuscitate someone who’s had a heart attack. We know sex leads to pregnancy and that can get you infected with transmissible viruses. These are some very important things to know, but doesn’t it seem strange that the average American really has no idea of how the body turns food into poop? Well, we know certain things of course: what you eat can effect how your stomach feels, that food has calories, and that if you don’t eat enough fiber you spend longer on the toilet. Why don’t we know more about our gastrointestinal tract? Maybe because it was not as interesting in 10th grade as the reproductive system and usually when you are young nothing dramatic or life threatening happens with it other than temporary things like hunger, stomach aches, diarrhea or throwing up.
[Disclaimer: We here at useyourbraindiet.com do not claim to be medical professionals. We are researchers and unpaid ones at that, so to prove that, in this article, rather than using more mature and disgusting terms such as bowel movement, stool, or feces, we will instead use the more immature and less disgusting terms like poop and going to the bathroom.]
Most people get the mouth through stomach part, so we’ll skip that. The food gets broken down in the stomach, and further broken down by enzymes from the liver and pancreas. The broken-down food is absorbed through the small intestine. As the food passes through the small intestine, the nutrients are absorbed. When the nutrients are pretty much gone, the liquid remains are passed into the colon.
The colon (also called the large intestine) is last in line, absorbing water and storing waste material until you are ready to go to the bathroom. A myth about the colon is that it gets build-up that won’t come out on its own, as advertisers of detoxifying products would have you believe it is somehow like a gunky pipe that needs some drain cleaner to make it right. This isn’t true. Imagine how you would feel if you were a colon and someone said that about you.
Colon cleansing has been around since the ancient Egyptians. They believed in a concept of auto-intoxication (basically the body making itself sick) as they imagined the food ingested into the body to be digested by the process of rotting. It isn’t too hard to imagine… poo smells bad and rotten food smells bad, logical conclusion for an ancient civilization. Hey, it beats “eat this Mercury, it’ll make you feel good”. The auto-intoxication concept spread to the Greeks and is even alive today, despite its inaccuracy. (Remember “bleeding” someone was once a medical treatment too.) The idea finally transformed into a more modern belief that the intestines store toxins the body is incapable of disposing of… toxins that require outside intervention to flush away. It’s been about 80-90 years since this “science” was abandoned. At this point, colon cleansing products are the only ones still promoting this idea, medical doctors don’t support it. You wouldn’t know this because almost every site on the internet writing about basic colon function are actually sites that promote colon cleansing products or practitioners. So unfortunately, many people looking for information can be mislead into thinking colon cleansing is an important part of keeping their colon healthy.
Why should you avoid colon cleansing or colon irrigation?
First of all: because you don’t need it. Maybe you are constipated every now and then and need a laxative… that isn’t the same as needing to flush your body of toxins. Your colon sheds its cells every few days, basically self-cleaning. Flushing it may disrupt natural healthy bacteria and its ability to function optimally.
Second of all: because you can hurt yourself. Really? Prolonged or intensive cleansing programs can lead to anemia, malnutrition, and even heart failure. Regular use of enemas can foster dependence, and hamper your ability to do your business on your own unassisted.
Third of all: this is included because some products out there are not pushing their product as a detoxifier as much as a diet (or part of) a diet-to-lose-weight solution. Flushing out your system is not going to help you lose weight, sorry. It’s just going to get rid of the nutrients that were being processed to nourish your body.
Our theory on why people still buy this: the laxative or self-irrigation angle gets used to promote fad diets because a dieter is already a person who is emotional, and who can see the immediate results of using the product when standing on the scale. Often those numbers are what matters to the dieter, not whether the weight difference is a loss of fat, muscle, water or poop.
