Recently I've come upon a body of literature which promotes colon
cleansing as a vital aid to preventive medicine through nutrition.  In
particular, Dr. Bernard Jenssen in his book "Colon Cleansing for
Health and Longevity" -- the title actually escapes me, but it is very
similar to that -- claims that regular self-administered colonics,
along with certain orally ingested "debris-loosening agents", boosts
the immune system to a significant degree.

He also plugs a unique appliance called the "Colema Board", which
facilitates the self-administration of colonics.  It sells for over
$100 from a California-based company.  He also plugs Vitra-Tox
products as his chemical agents of choice: these include volcanic ash,
supposedly for its electrical charge, and psyllium powder, for its
bulkiness.

If anyone knows anything about colon cleansing theory, its
particulars, or the Colema Board and related products, I'd be very
interested to hear about research and personal experience.

This article is crossposted to alt.magick as the issue touches upon
fasting and cleansing through a "ritual" system of purification.

-- Eli

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Colonics were a health fad of the 19th century, which persists to this day.
Except for certain medical conditions, there is no reason to do this.
Certainly no normal person should do this.

Frequent use of{*filter*}s can lead to a condition in which a person is unable
to have normal bowel passage, essentially a person becomes {*filter*}ed to
{*filter*}s.  As I understand it, this is a very unpleasant condition, and it
would be best to avoid it.

No doubt the sci.med* folks are getting out their flamethrowers.  I'm
rather certain that the information you got was not medical literature
in the accepted academic/scientific journals.  So, the righteous among
them will no doubt jump on that.

Also, insofar as it doesn't conform to the accepted medical presumption
that it just doesn't matter what you eat, and that we can think of the
GI tract as a black box in which nothing ever goes wrong (except for
maybe cancer and ulcers), the righteous will no doubt jump on that too.

Then there'll be the ones who call your doctor a raving quack, even
though he, like Linus Pauling, is lucid and robust well into his
nineties--but nevermind about that.  He shouldn't charge for his
equipment and supplies, since they're no doubt not approved by the
FDA.  Of course, with FDA approval an MD or pharmaceutical company can
charge whatever they can get for such safe and effective treatments as
thalidomide.  But nevermind about that either.

Unfortunately, you dared to step into the sacred turf of Net.Medical.
Discussion without a credential and without understanding that the
righteous among them will make certain that you are suitably denounced
before dismissing you as a fool.

But maybe somebody without such a huge chip on their shoulder will
send you some reasonable responses by e-mail.

1/2 ;^)  

1/2 ;^(

Oh yes, I did have a point.  A few years ago an MD with a thriving
practice in a very wealthy part of Silicon Valley once recommended that
I take such treatments to clear up a skin condition.  (Not through his
office, I might add.)  Although I'm sure that's not conclusive, it was
sure an unusual prescription!

-r

The bacteria in your gut are important.  But colonic flushes are not the
way to improve gut function.  Each person has almost a unique mix of
bacteria in his/her gut.  Diet affects this mix as does the use of
antibiotics.  A diet change is a much better way to alter the players in
your gut than is colonic flushes.  Cross contamination has been a real
problem in some of the outfits that do this "treatment" since the equipment
is not always cleaned as well as it should be between patient "treatments".
Dental drills have me a little concerned about HIV infection and I've
picked a dentist that uses both chemical and autoclave sterilization of his
instruments(more clostly but much safer).  Full sterile technique is
also used just like that practiced in an OR(mask, gloves and gowns worn and
disposed of between patients).  Each visit costs me 15 dollars more than
the standard and customary fee so I have to pay it out of pocket.  His much
higher fees do not drive away patients.

I can not think of any good reason why someone should subject themselves to
this colonic flush procedure.  For very little, if any benefit, you
subject yourself to hepatitis, cholera, parasitic disease and even HIV.
Just ask yourself why someone might resort to this kind of treatment?
Could they be having GI distress?  Could this distress be due to a
pathogenic organism?  Could I get this organism if the equipment is not
cleaned properly between patients?  Do I really want to take this risk?
cooking.net">food for thought.

Marty B.

writes:

Recently, I completed a 2 week juice fast (with 3 days of water) and had
two colonics as part of it.  My motivation was primarily spiritual, to
de-toxify from all the {*filter*}I've been putting in my body (not like thats
enough to clean it all out but it did have an effect).  Personaly, I
didn't find it an uncomfortable experience (the colonic), lost about
15lbs of beer belly (which hasn't come back over the last month), and
feel great.  One of the things that prompted me to get the colonic was
seeing my 90 year old grandmother chair ridden from colitis (?) from
years of indulgence.

Not everything that goes in comes out, and personaly I don't mind giving
my body a hand once in a while.

Just my experience,

George Paap

I am my beliefs.
(which almost certainly are not those of my employer)

I've got a very nice collection of historical books on medical quackery,
and on the topic of massage this is a recurring theme.  Ordinary massage
is intended to make a person feel better, especially if they have muscular
or joint problems.  But -- like chiropracty -- there are some practitioners
who take the technique to a far extreme, invoking what seems to me to be
quack science to justify their technique.

In the case of massage, there is a technique called "deep abdominal massage"
in which the masseur is literally attempting to massage the intestines!
The notion is that undigested cooking.net">food adheres to the inner surface of the
intestines and putrifies, releasing poisons which cause various disease
syndromes.  By this vigorous and painful procedure, it is alleged that
these deposits can be loosened up and passed out.

I just can't believe this idea has any truth behind it!  The human intestine
is not a New York City sewer pipe!  And even if it were, you eat half of
a small box of Triscuits, and there ain't gonna be nothin' sticking to the
inner surface of your intestine  :-)

Mark, this is the most reasonable post that I've seen in Sci. Med. on the
topic of Colonic Flushing.  I'm in a profession that uses manipulation(a
very refined form of massage) to treat various human diseases.  Proving
that manipulation works has been extremely difficult(as the MD's delight in
pointing out).  The Osteopathic Profession seems to be making better
progress than the chiropractors in proving(scientifically) that their
techingues work.  The JAOA recently had a study on the use of manipulation
to relieve mensrual cramps in women with results that were as good or
better than drug treatment(using physiological measurements, and not just
the woman's preception of improvement).  This study was hailed by the JAOA
editors as the turning point in the profession's long struggle to prove
itself to the medical community.

I'm currently trying to get the AOA(American Osteopathic Association) which
has supported most of the Osteopathic research in the U.S. to also support
nutrition education and research.  I've pointed out, in a grant proposal,
that the founder of Osteopathic Medicine(A.T. Still) embraced both diet and
manipulation to set himself apart from the MD's of his time who were pushing
only {*filter*}(Still was himself an MD who got real dissillusioned with {*filter*}
during his service in the Civil War).  He decided that there had to be a
better way to treat human disease since he saw the cure({*filter*}) as being
worse than the disease.  Through his many years of study of the human body,
he developed his manipulation techniques that he then taught to his
students in the U.S's first Osteopathic Medical school.  We now have 17.
Still used manipulation to treat(and also diagnose) human disease but he
used diet to prevent human disease.  I'm trying to get the Osteopathic
Profession to return to it's roots and beat the MD's to the punch(so to
speak).  Both DO's and MD's in current medical practice have very little
understanding of how diet affects human health.  This has to change.

Martin Banschbach, Ph.D.
Professor of Biochemistry and Chairman
Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology
OSU COllege of Osteopathic Medicine

"You are what you eat."

Linus Pauling is not lucid, and has been out of touch with scientific
reality for at least 20 years.
IT should be pretty clear from this post that Wartman didn't need to
wait that long to be out of touch, period.

--


Parse this: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is(n't).

Interesting...  Since none of the usual suspects jumped in to flame
the original person asking the question, I figured things had gotten
better around here.  Even with this, things do seem much improved.

Thanks to all of you who were tempted to pounce on this thread but
refrained.

WRT Pauling, I heard him on the radio about a month ago.  He sounded
cogent.  His sentences parsed.  They had coherent semantics.  He seemed
very forthright about detailing the current orthodox medical view of
vitamins and his disagreements with that view, as well as being
informative about the evolutionary basis for our lack of ability to
synthesize our own vitamin C.

I could see calling his view unorthodox and unaccepted, and perhaps
even unacceptable.  But as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Witthoft's style
of ad-hominem attack is unacceptable.  I think Dr. Pauling would acquit
himself quite will in any scientific debate with our Mr. Witthoft.

As far as his jab at me, any 5-year-old with half a brain could do better.

Although I wasn't really aiming to start a flame war, but rather warn
the original questioner and register my disapproval at much of the {*filter*}
I've seen in this newsgroup, I suppose there are those without the wit
to see that.

So flame away if you must.  But don't be surprized if I don't answer.
A hostile debate with a closed-minded jerk is not my idea of a good
time.

At least the person who started this thread didn't get blindsided
And, for anyone else who remains socially impaired, that was my point.

-r