Colon Cleansing Scam

Typical Colonic Clinic Room

Hi, this is James again, and I wanted to use this article to give you a little information about what colon cleansing is and what colon cleansing products are supposed to do. Before reading this article, I recommend you first read my last article HERE.

Colon cleansing is a form of alternative medicine that focuses on “flushing” the colon and lower intestinal tract to remove toxins and fecal waste. There are basically two forms of colon cleansing products: colon hydrotherapy and oral cleansing supplements.

Colon hydrotherapy (also called colonic irrigation or colonics) is the injection of water, usually mixed with herbs or other ingredients into the rectum. Oral cleansing supplements are dietary supplements usually comprised of herbs, dietary fiber, or laxatives. Colon cleansing clinics will most often utilize colonics as their preferred method of colon cleansing, while most of the products available online and over the counter at retail drug stores are the oral variety. There are, however, “enema kits” available from these retailers as well.

The use of colon cleansing dates back to the ancient Egyptians, who believed that waste would accumulate within the intestinal tract and rot. The decomposition would breed toxins that would then travel to the circulatory system and cause fever and other symptoms. These beliefs were adopted by the Greeks, who took it a step further, believing that these toxins would create an imbalance in the human body. For more information about the Greeks Humorism, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism.

Colon cleansing and the theories developed by the Egyptians and the Greeks actually appeared to have some scientific evidence to back it up through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Then in 1919, a Journal of the American Medical Association article titled Origin of the so-called auto-intoxication symptom marked the beginning of the end for colon cleansing and the “auto-intoxication” theory in the medical community. Advances in medical science provided more and more evidence to suggest that not only do colon cleansing products do nothing to “detoxify” the body, but that the use of these products can actually be harmful to your colon and digestive tracts.

Despite this evidence, colon cleansing is still alive and well in the alternative medicine community, and has recently gained increasing popularity. Colon cleansing products currently represent a multi-million dollar industry. Companies that manufacture and sell these products claim that their products can cure headache, irritability, loss of appetite, irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, constipation, obesity… One of the most popular of these products is Bowtrol. You can check out their products and their claims HERE.

So, the bottom line is: Are any of these claims true? Do colon cleansing products live up to their claims? Are they dangerous? I will explore these questions in my next article. See you then!

J

Hello. This is James, and I’d like to welcome you to Colon Cleansing Scam. In this first article, I wanted to just give you an idea of how Kathy and I first got involved with colon cleansing. If you read my About Me page, you already know a little about me and Kathy and a little about why we came to investigate colon cleansing products. I will go into a little more detail here.

First, about me: I suffered a few injuries while working as a service plumber for about 18 years. These injuries caused pretty severe spinal problems in my neck and back, as well as hip problems. With these injuries, it is very difficult to get any real exercise. Cooking regular meals is difficult, because I cannot stand for longer than a minute or two at a time, and I usually need a cane to walk. Kathy is so busy with school that she rarely has time to cook.

I was feeling sluggish a lot and gaining weight. I was always tired. Kathy told me, over and over, that all of the pain medications and stuff were building up in my body and I should look at some kind of product that can flush the residue out of my system. She had heard a lot about colon cleansing products and how they are supposed to help detoxify the body and remove build-up in the bowels. I was also having problems with diarrhea, and she said a colon cleanse would help that as well.

Now, Kathy started looking into colon cleansing products for a different reason – constipation. Her busy schedule made it hard for her to get enough exercise as well. She was not eating right which was causing her to have constipation. It was Kathy that first started looking into and finally trying colon cleansers. She actually tried a few of them before finding one that didn’t make her feel “icky”. The one she liked was called “Bowtrol” (in case you are interested, click the name to get more info about them). It did seem to help her with her constipation, and that added some weight to her argument that I should try it as well.

Now, there is more to the story here than “she tried Bowtrol and it worked”. Is colon cleansing a scam? This site is called “Colon Cleansing Scam” for a reason, and we will get to that reason a little later.   Right now, I need to get to a doctor’s appointment. Take care and I’ll see at the next post.

Thanks for reading,
James