BlogEvolve.com

You can hardly turn on late-night television without being bombarded with ads for colon cleansing programs. Do these products really work as promised? Or are they based on outdated information? Here's what I tell people when they ask me:

Colon cleansing is based on an ancient Egyptian idea which taught that all disease was caused by rotting food in the bowel. Though science has disproved this theory handily, the idea found a new audience about 20 years ago when "natural" medicine once again came into fashion. Today, your supermarket shelves are stocked with dozens of herbal supplements, all claiming to help you rid your body of parasites, impacted fecal material and more. But let's look closer at how most of these products actually work.

The vast majority of colon cleansing products are fiber-based. Some have anti-parasitic herbs added and some may add natural herbal laxatives but, primarily, they're fiber. As fiber goes through the digestive system, it absorbs water and bulks up. (You can demonstrate this for yourself at home by taking a fiber capsule and placing it in a glass of water for a couple of hours.) This makes your bowel movements larger, more frequent and, generally, more comfortable.

Now, if you're a typical American you probably eat a typical American diet. Low in whole grains, low in fruits and veggies but high in processed foods and fat. In other words, you're probably consuming 1/4 or less of the recommended daily amount of dietary fiber. And, your colon is correspondingly sluggish.

But let's say that you decide it's time for a cleanse. Within the day, you go from one small bowel movement a day to two or three large, easy to move movements. And, perhaps for the first time in recent memory, you feel "finished" when you're done.

However, you're not really voiding your body of "built up" fecal matter--you're simply eliminating the fiber contained in the cleansing product. But most people don't realize this and that's why it's so easy to convince people that we're all walking around with "pounds and pounds of excess fecal matter" and why we all need a good cleanse.

What we really need is a better understanding of how our bodies work.

Bookmark/Search this post with:
| | | | | | | | | | |