ok I just had to chime in and try to solve this John Wayne thing once and for all. I hope after reading this no one should have any reason to bring this up as an argument for disputing or proving the need for internal cleansing.

Also anyone who says colonic hydrotherapy is harmful to the body are the ones who need a severe reality check. I understand the desire to combat propaganda, and yet the critics of internal cleansing are just as guilty, saying often that the pressure is enough to make someone explode..um ok. If one wants to argue its lack of necessity, or its tendency for people to use it as an excuse to not practice healthful living (don't agree here largely) then those are points of argument. Firstly I argue the article, then I go into this issue a bit more.

heres the article "disputing" the myth of John Wayne/Elvis

[www.snopes.com]


Personally I can see that there is a lot of unhealthy paranoia surrounding the issue of internal cleansing at large. Before you take solace in this article however realize that.

basically the writers/supporters of this article are highly defensive over the issues of

- Disputing that Humans are not evolved for Animal eating
- Disputes even the idea of a "goo and glue" diet
- Uses the term 'died of natural causes'


firstly, it says:

>>It is possible for fecal matter to become impacted and lodge in the digestive system.

so there you go. it then goes on to dispute the overexaggerations of claims by "vegetarians".

it bases its entire argument on the fact that a single man had severe pain with an *obstruction* of 1 lb therefore John Wayne's unexamined body could not possibly have 80 lbs of obstruction. great logic there...
Think about any obstruction you could possibly have in your body, if it was large enough to obstruct anything, say a windpipe or a blood vessel, how heavy would it need to be. Ancient waste is heavy, if it is scattered throughout the colon it can be a significant amount.


>>The medical examiner's office had no reason to hold an autopsy since Wayne had obviously died from natural causes

>>Nobody had the chance to perform an autopsy on John Wayne, much less to "run his gut" and weigh the amount of fecal material found within. (Wayne did undergo surgery for an intestinal blockage about a month before his death, but that blockage was caused by the spread of the cancer that was killing him, not by an accumulation of waste products.)

ok, so there was blockage, but that was just cancer, big deal.

This part about Elvis is crucial to understanding how bogus this article is.

>>"This claim was somewhat true about Elvis Presley (in concept if not in actual quantity), but not for the reasons we're led to believe. According to an account based on the report by the four doctors who performed the post-mortem examination of the entertainer:
The colon is approximately five to seven feet in length in a person Elvis's size and should have been about two inches in diameter ... however, Elvis's colon was at least three and a half inches in diameter in some places and as large as four and half to five inches in diameter in others ... [T]he megacolon was jam-packed from the base of the descending colon all the way up and halfway across the transverse colon. It was filled with white, chalklike fecal material.
This account makes it sound like Elvis was a prime example of the hazards of the "goo and glue" diet, but his poor eating habits (greasy, cholesterol-laden foods such as cheeseburgers, french fries, bacon, fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, ice cream) were far less responsible for the condition of his colon than other factors, such as his congenitally twisted ganglionic fold, his overuse of laxatives, and, primarily, his prolonged drug abuse. As one of the autopsy doctors described, "When you take downer-type drugs, depressants, narcotics, a lot of them, most of them, have the concomitant effect of slowing down the digestive system. In other words, the locomotive action of the bowel quits working, so it gets packed with food, and then it gets packed with more food. And it sits there distended and full of food, and that causes the colon to stretch." In other words, it was drugs, not meat, that caused the severely impacted condition of Elvis' colon."

um ok, so it goes back on its beliefs and says, yes this is possible, just not meat and glue that are culprits? Give me a break. If you are remotely involved in some of the core beliefs of raw food, you realize that pretty much all 'foods' people eat ARE excitotoxins and drugs, and that they all affect the bodies system negatively in one way or another. Again even the hygienists believe this results in cellular toxin build up.


>>None of this is to say that treatments such as colonic irrigation have absolutely no therapeutic value, or that most of us wouldn't do well to change our diets to cut down (or possibly eliminate) our intake of meat, or that the morality of killing animals for food is not open to debate. The point is, however, that no one soberly considering these issues should allow himself to be influenced by the type of propagandistic misinformation contained in Internet anecdotes such as these.

I agree with this. As I've said before, the muccoid plaque issue itself is a somewhat faulty reasons for thinking about the way internal cleansing can benefit our health. It has less to do with impacted wastes IN the colon from a lifetime of poor eating, then it does in facilitating clearing out wastes that get stirred up from eating a healthy raw cleansing diet. In which case, if neglected can become impacted inside, and result in problems, especially those that result in folks coming to the boards curious about why they've developed an iron deficiency, or are chronically weak, or any number of deficiencies or problems, after eating the most nutritious foods on the planet, for years.

heres something Dave Klein ( a leading Hygienist) says about internal wastes. Of course his approach to fixing the problem is different, still this proves that even those with a purely 'natural' approach recognize there are internal problems. of waste accumulation and enervated intestinal tracts.

Its in reference to people getting stomach aches after eating watermellons.

1. Their bowels were backed up -- the energizing, high water content melon stimulates peristalsis and their gut springs to life and tries to evacuate rapidly, and can cause cramping.

2. Watermelon and all melons need to leave the stomach quickly because they require no digestion in the stomach, and when the sugary, high water content fruit mixes with the contents of their small intestine, gassy, fermentive and peristaltic reactions will happen if they are not clean inside.

3. If their small intestine is backed up with a lot of solid food and an overgrowth of bacteria, the melon may get backed up and cause painful gas as it ferments.

4. Many people have enervated bodies and bowels, including the stomach. Chronic overeating on heavy foods and not enough rest will do that. When we put a large amount of melon in an enervated stomach, it may just lie there, making us feel weighed down and the stomach can feel overwhelmed, causing that distressful feeling you are talking about. Those people need to clean out via a short fast and eat more simply and, in some cases, get more exercise to improve muscle tone and food transit, and eat less melon until they are healthier.


The problem with the hygenic argument is it is always in the form:

"Will cleanses remove the cause(s) of these problems? " of cource not, again this is always the logic that people are trying to magicly cure or to take an easy way out when in reality it is the reverse.

my belief is internal cleansing is not a pre-requisite for beginning a more healthful diet. it is an adjunct in a healthy lifestyle (especially is one is not doing things gradually) People have a build up of waste in their bodies and not their colons.

heres a different perspective.

>>Our bodies are comprised of millions of cells. These cells have been forced to inflate and expand in size to accommodate all the waste stored in our bodies from years of poor eating. The waste is stored as gaseous carbonic acid. Once the harmful foods have been eliminated completely from your diet, the body doesn't have to work on those processed ingredients anymore and immediately starts improving your cellular chemistry. Your oversized cells contract, shrink, and they begin to pour out that gaseous waste. This 'outpour' detox can be very uncomfortable. People get sick, feel ill or moody, and go through intense cravings for foods they used to eat. Usually we blame the diet, become convinced it's not working and start suspecting it could even be dangerous, and then we either quit or cheat.

>>There have been many cases of big-bellied people eating a Standard American Diet for many decades. Some tried the 100% Raw Food diet. At first, the results are fantastic. They lose 50 pounds and have incredible energy. As time goes by and the detox goes deeper, these same individuals lose energy, don't feel well, get a runny nose, and their face starts to look older. They are bathing in their waste, even if the bowels are emptying three times a day. They need colon hydrotherapy to keep up with all that is being excreted by the cells. If they are not able to do colon hydrotherapy, I would highly suggest they get off the CLEANSING 100% Raw Food diet.

>>Colonics remove the solid waste from our colon, but that is not the main objective. Many colon machines have a viewing window where you can look at what is coming out of your colon during the session. In addition to solid waste, you can also see many tiny bubbles leaving the body. The bubbles are that carbonic acid gaseous waste! That is what we are most interested in getting rid of. There have been many examples of people's rings falling off their fingers during a colonic. Why does this happen? Our fingers are comprised of thousands of cells. That solid matter, our finger, is a puzzle piece of cells. Remember, our cells have expanded and become bigger to accommodate that carbonic acid gaseous waste. When these clogged people did a colonic, they 'unclogged the sink' and that gaseous waste was free to leave their cells. This release of carbonic acid allowed the cells to shrink and become smaller, which shrunk their fingers, causing the rings to fall off. They deflated! You can sometimes see when people are kind of inflated and need to get this done.

from Matt Monarch's blog How to go Raw

Pistachio on the irrelevance of colon surgeons observing pink clean colons:

>>I understand the reasoning about seeing pink tissues, barring tumors/growths,etc during surgeries and colonoscopies.

>>However using that as a reference to prove the point being made has its limitations, since prior to these procedures, patients are given laxatives to remove wastes primarily to improve visibility during the procedure. These laxatives are not high psyllium/high fiber since the goal is not to cleanse based on the principles of the folks who promote colon cleanse products. Therefore, the stools passed as the patient is eliminating would not be the same type/consistency as someone on a high fiber laxative/cleanse and would not prove or disprove the existence of accumulated rope-like long term fecal accumulation or mucoid plaque nor prove or disprove whether the person has accumulated cellular waste that would benefit from products being sold.

>>I'm aware of the dramatic claims of old fecal material hanging around for years and weighing several pounds and that the products being touted are specially formulated to remove it, since ordinary laxativea and enemas supposedly can't.

>>On the other hand, I too have had the opportunity to observe colonoscopies and endoscopies (the tube or scope inserted from the mouth to see the upper gastrointestinal system). I've never seen seen old fecal material hanging around as far as the scope was advanced in the colon/small intestine. On the contrary, it was a beautiful pink from the throat down and from the colon up, except for any abnormal conditions that may have been found.

>>That doesn't mean that the body does not have stored waste and toxins that shouldn't have been hanging around. From personal experience, I have had fantastic results using herbal based cleanses. The point I was trying to make is that quoting someone who saw colonoscopies and surgeries and who said that there wasn't any of the 'gooey' stuff present as evidence that it does not exist
is of limited weight, because by the time they saw the intestinal mucosa, that patient drank laxative(s) to clear out waste before the procedure.

>>Though not practical nor realistic, the question would be to see what was harboring around before the chemical or herbal laxative was given.

>>Wishing you vibrant health

So don't believe the hype on either side. If you are experiencing ever increasing joyus health, keep doing what you are doing. If you are not, if you are irritable, have low energy, still have bouts of cold/flu type symptoms, or are simply not eliminating effortlessly at least a few feet a day, I suggest taking a major reality check and looking at where your system is at, and how quickly you have been in some cases, as I like to say:"abusing your body for the better".

Wishing you vibrant health and healthy conscious (realistic) choices myself.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2007 04:42PM by anaken.

You've given us a lot to think about Anaken.

Great post. Thanks.


khale

Anaken, I learn so much from your colon & internal wastes posts, Thank you!

Im definitely skeeved about the idea of getting a colonic though... everytime I read your posts I wonder if there are any other ways to get rid of the gaseous wastes??? Exercise? Zeolite?

I dont want anything in my butt unless there's absolutely no other way to get rid of these wastes.

Thank you again for all your information!!!

Thanks Khale, I'm glad someone reads this stuff...haha

Sunshine, I have no experience with Zeolite, I'm not much up to date on this sort of thing

as for exercise...I think in many ways being active goes along way, not just in health, but sure...in clearing out deposits. Especially if one is eating alot of fruit...exercise would be pretty...um..crucial (at least in the early stages)

all the hygenic stuff of course, rest! (TONS, probably way more then you think), sunshine (especially ON the abdomen), staying away from harmful substances/relationships. making a commitment to a certain level of health, and not backtracting/cheating.

all go a long way.

But Sometimes I think it is misleading, because doing all these positive things is exactly what speeds things along. Like ive said in various forms. it ISN'T the meat and potatoes folks, in some cases it can be the people doing all the right things (but maybe at too fast a speed comparatively...to a lifetime) that are really in need of the internal stuff.

Some people want to say how great they are doing, and how great their 'program' is. but usually you can tell by looking in their eye, or from their tone, or even their composition: too thin/too inflated, that something just ain't right.

So really, I don't have an answer for you other then, do what works for you.

I think your physical concerns are a bit...misguided. Theres lots of stuff out there..herbals, bulking agents, home enemas, salt flushes...etc...but these all seem like less then ideal approaches to me then working with a professional (and some could be downright harmful in their sucess or failure, particularly the salt ones). Its hard, because you can hear all kinds of sucess stories from folks over the internet, but you really don't know what is going on, how much is placebo, how much really is a 'cure' or mask of symptomology like regular meds etc...

Another advantage of working with someone, is that often these are folks who have really been around the scene, who have worked with all sorts of people, even those have followed hygiene for decades, and for whichever reasons..are IN DEEP. So generally, you get a wider perspective on things, if you want.

but yeah I guess I'd say, tons of sleep, exercise, sun, lack of stress, staying hydrated...all good.

saunas are also really good



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2007 03:53AM by anaken.

Anaken, all your posts have totally convinced me to be open to the idea of a colonic. At least I know now, that if Im doing everything right and still feel less than optimal, then a colonic is the likely solution. I'm totally going to try it. Your posts just make total sense.