Man has been practising colon cleansing for hundreds of years. The Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, dating back to 1500 B.C. (over 4000 years!) describes colonic irrigations and enemas, some of the oldest medical treatments on record.

Hippocrates described using donkey milk, honey, sweet wine, olive oil, and soda enemas, while Galen in the Middle Ages used seawater and herbal enemas. Jesus’ teachings describe the importance of internal cleansing using a trailing gourd as a way of administering a retention enema; these texts are over 2000 years old.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, medics and naturopaths like Arbuthnot Lane, physician to the British Royal family, John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., and John Tilden, M.D., promoted internal cleansing.Lane realised that as he performed bowel surgery and removed the diseased part of the colon, in some instances it resulted in the relief of diseases elsewhere in the body. This notion can be seen in the diagram, which is much the same as a reflexology chart but for the bowel and not the feet.

During the last 25 years of Dr. Lane's life, he turned from practising medicine to teaching nutrition and bowel care. He said the bowel was the most important organ in the body to care for!

Constantine Herring, a homoeopath from the United States, established Herring’s Law of Cure. He said “All cure starts from within out, from the head down, and in the reverse order as the symptoms appear.”. He believes that disease starts in the bowel, and if we take care of the bowel, we take care of the body and all its organs.

Today, people have become squeamish about talking about bowel habits, and we have adopted an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude. Dr. Bernard Jensen says, “In times past, knowledge of the bowel was more common, and people were taught how to care for the bowel.""Somehow, bowel wisdom has been lost, and the bowel has become a subject about which no one wants to talk.” With ever-more cost-conscious administrations, the colonic is being replaced in favour of cheaper pills and laxatives. Unfortunately, this is a short-sighted view, as people are continuing to suffer and can often end up requiring surgery, which is obviously not a cheap or satisfactory outcome.

The colon is also known as the large intestine and can measure about 5 feet long, though this can vary enormously and can be between 3 and 11 feet! Unfortunately for most people, our colons do not look like the perfect pictures we see in the anatomy books; most have long, bendy colons that can have “redundant loops,” which can delay transit time or cause waste and gas to become stuck.

The colon is the last part of the digestive tract, which starts in the mouth and ends at the anus. The colon is divided up into sections, including the caecum, appendix, ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon, sigmoid colon, and rectum.

The colon receives liquid-digested food from the small intestine, where much of the digestion and absorption of the nutrients have already taken place. The colon then starts to re-absorb digestive juices, water, salts, and bile back into the blood stream, leaving solid waste matter, which is then eliminated when we go to the toilet.

The colon is also home to billions of bacteria, which are essential to our health. The beneficial bacteria aid in our immunity to infections, cholesterol levels, and the regulation and production of some vitamins.

When the balance of beneficial bacteria falls to allow increased amounts of pathogenic bacteria to colonise, we call this dysbiosis, which can lead to unpleasant symptoms such as discomfort or excess gas or more serious illnesses such as diarrhoea or Vibrio cholera, which can cause death.

All the body’s organs depend on the colon being healthy; a poorly functioning colon can have repercussions throughout the rest of the body; it’s like not having any refuse collections; your house, street, or city will become a breeding ground for disease and infection, not to mention the stench!

Colonic hydrotherapy, also known as colonic irrigation, is a treatment that has been used for thousands of years all over the world to help cleanse the large bowel, or colon. It is a natural treatment that uses filtered water (the temperature will vary depending on the type of bowel being treated) introduced into the bowel under low pressure via the rectum using a speculum and disposable tubing.

The practitioner will start by introducing very small amounts of water into the colon and then letting it drain away. You will start off on your side and then may be asked to turn onto your back. The amount of water introduced is gradually increased, and abdominal massage is used to encourage the discharge of waste material and the natural muscular action of the colon.

When gas pockets are present or a bowel is sluggish, for example, we may use herbal implants to help overcome these problems and improve the colonic treatment. In some cases, it may also be necessary to implant probiotics at the end of the treatment; again, this is a very safe and painless procedure.

Colonic hydrotherapy is a much better treatment than an enema because it can reach the whole of the colon, not just up to the descending as an enema does. Dr. Norman Walker writes “It takes approximately 15 enemas to do what one properly administered colonic will do “.

The normal transit time of a healthy bowel, that is, from eating food to it being excreted, should be about 24 hours. In today’s society, it is closer to 60 hours for men and 70 hours for women! Colonics can help re-educate the bowel along with other therapies and dietary advice. Constipation is at record levels, with laxatives being the second most common.

Pharmaceuticals are being used, and 1 in 3 people suffer from bowel problems! Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in England, with 41,142 new cases being registered in 2009! NHS Choices website

Now shouldn’t we start thinking a bit differently about our bowels?

“The sum of the whole duty of man is to learn what is true in order to do what is right.” Dr. Norman Walker, Colon Health

 The key to a vibrant life!