From my point of view the most amazing part of this whole experience
was that the chiropractor did not recommend any dietary changes
whatsoever. His patients were achieving great success from colonics
alone. I had thought dietary changes would be necessary to avoid
having the same dismal bowel condition return. I still think
colonics are far more effective if people are on a cleansing diet
too. However, I was delighted to see the potential for helping
people through colonics.
For me, the most interesting part of this colonic school was that I
personally was required to have my own barium enema and X-ray. I was
privately certain that mine would look normal, because after all, I
had been on a raw food diet for six years, and done considerable
amount of fasting, all of which was reputed to repair a civilized
colon. Much to my surprise my colon looked just as mangled and
dysfunctional as everyone else's', only somewhat worse because it
had a loop in the descending colon similar to a cursive letter "e"
which doctors call a volvulus. Surgeons like to cut volvululii out
because they frequently cause bowel obstructions. It seemed quite
unfair. All those other people with lousy looking colons had been
eating the average American diet their whole life, but I had been so
'pure!'
On further reflection I remembered that I had a tendency toward
constipation all through my childhood and young adulthood, and that
during my two pregnancies the pressure of the fetus on an already
constipated bowel had made it worse resulting in the distorted
structure seen in the X-ray. This experience made it very clear that
fasting, cleansing diets, and corrected diet would not reverse
damage already done. Proper diet and fasting would however, prevent
the condition of the colon from getting any worse than it already
was.
I then realized that I had just purchased the very tool I needed to
correct my own colon, and I was eager to get home to get started on
it. I had previously thought that I was just going to use this
machine for my patients, because they had been asking for this kind
of an adjunct to my services for some time. I ended up giving myself
over a hundred colonics at the rate of three a week over many
months. I then out of curiosity had another barium enema and X-ray
to validate my results. Sure enough the picture showed a colon that
looked far more 'normal' with no vulvulus. That little "e" had
disappeared.
What Is Constipation?
Most people think they are not constipated because they have a bowel
movement almost every day, accomplished without straining. I have
even had clients tell me that they have a bowel movement once a
week, and they are quite certain that they are not constipated. The
most surprising thing to novice fasters is that repeated enemas or
colonics during fasting begins to release many pounds of undeniably
real, old, caked fecal matter and/or huge mucus strings. The
first-time faster can hardly believe these were present. These old
fecal deposits do not come out the first time one has enemas or
necessarily the fifth time. And all of them will not be removed by
the tenth enema. But over the course of extended fasting or a long
spell of light raw food eating with repeated daily enemas, amazing
changes do begin to occur. It seems that no one who has eaten a
civilized diet has escaped the formation of caked deposits lining
the colon's walls, interfering with its function. This material does
not respond to laxatives or casually administered enemas.
Anyone who has not actually seen (and smelled) what comes out of an
"average" apparently healthy person during colonics will really
believe it could happen or can accurately imagine it. Often there
are dark black lumpy strings, lumps, or gravel, evil smelling discs
shaped like sculpted hemispheres similar to the pockets lining the
wall of the colon itself. These discs are rock-hard and may come out
looking like long black braids. There may also be long tangled
strings of gray/brown mucous, sheets and flakes of mucous, and worse
yet, an occasional worm (tape worm) or many smaller ones. Once
confronted however, it is not hard to imagine how these fecal rocks
and other obnoxious debris interfere with the proper function of the
colon. They make the colon's wall rigid and interfere with
peristalsis thus leading to further problems with constipation, and
interfere with adsorption of nutrients.
Our modern diet is by its "de-"nature, very constipating. In the
trenches of the First World War, cheese was given the name 'chokem
ass' because the soldiers eating this as a part of their daily
ration developed severe constipation. Eaten by itself or with other
whole foods, moderate amounts of cheese may not produce health
problems in people who are capable of digesting dairy products. But
cheese when combined with white flour becomes especially
constipating. White bread or most white-flour crackers contain a lot
of gluten, a very sticky wheat protein that makes the bread bind
together and raise well. But white flour is lacking the bran, where
most of the fiber is located. And many other processed foods are
missing their fiber.
In an earlier chapter I briefly showed how digestion works by
following food from the mouth to the large intestine. To fully grasp
why becoming constipated is almost a certainty in our civilization a
few more details are required. Food leaving the small intestine is
called chyme, a semi-liquid mixture of fiber, undigested bits,
indigestible bits, and the remains of digestive enzymes. Chyme is
propelled through the large intestine by muscular contractions. The
large intestine operates on what I dub the "chew chew train"
principle, where the most recent meal you ate enters the large
intestine as the caboose (the last car of a train) and helps to push
out the train engine (the car at the front that toots), which in a
healthy colon should represent the meal eaten perhaps twelve hours
earlier. The muscles in the colon only contract when they are
stretched, so it is the volume of the fecal matter stretching the
large intestine that triggers the muscles to push the waste material
along toward the rectum and anus.
Eating food lacking fiber greatly reduces the volume of the chyme
and slows peristalsis. But moving through fast or slow, the colon
still keeps on doing another of its jobs, which is to transfer the
water in the chime back into the bloodstream, reducing dehydration.
So the longer chime remains in the colon, the dryer and harder and
stickier it gets. That's why once arrived at the "end of the tracks"
fecal matter should be evacuated in a timely manner before it gets
to dry and too hard to be moved easily. Some constipated people do
have a bowel movement every day but are evacuating the meal eaten
many days or even a week previously.
Most hygienists believe that when the colon becomes lined with
hardened fecal matter it is permanently and by the very definition
of the word itself, constipated. This type of constipation is not
perceived as an uncomfortable or overly full feeling or a desire to
have a bowel movement that won't pass. But it has insidious effects.
Usually constipation delays transit time, increasing the adsorption
of toxins generated from misdigestion of food; by coating and
locking up significant portions of colon it also reduces the
adsorption of certain minerals and electrolytes.
Sometimes, extremely constipated people have almost constant runny
bowels because the colon has become so thickly and impenetrably
lined with old fecal matter that it no longer removes much moisture.
This condition is often misinterpreted as diarrhea. The large
intestine's most important task is to transfer water-soluble
minerals from digested food to the blood. When a significant part of
the colon's surface becomes coated with impermeable dried rigid
fecal matter or mucus it can no longer assimilate effectively and
the body begins to experience partial mineral starvation in the
presence of plenty. It is my observation from dozens of cases that
when the colon has been effectively cleansed the person has a
tendency to gain weight while eating amounts of food that before
only maintained body weight, while people who could not gain weight
or who were wasting away despite eating heavily begin to gain. And
problems like soft fingernails, bone loss around teeth or porous
bones tend to improve.