Colonic irrigation for bloating, in Brunswick

What people come in with

Bloating that has stopped being occasional. A stomach that is flat in the morning and tight by evening. Clothes that fit at breakfast and do not by dinner. The particular discomfort of trapped wind that will not move. And, often, the frustration of having already cut out three foods without much to show for it.

It is the most common thing said at the front desk about this service, and it is the one people are usually most self-conscious about raising. Nobody in this building finds it remarkable.

What a colonic does about it

Two things, and the second is the one most people do not expect. Warm filtered water empties the large bowel of waste that is contributing to the fullness. Alongside that, your therapist massages your abdomen through the whole session, which encourages trapped gas to move along — and gas, rather than volume, is what makes a bloated abdomen feel tight rather than merely full.

The massage is a practical argument for a closed system. Someone qualified stays in the room for the entire session, working on your abdomen and adjusting temperature and pressure as they go. In an open system you are left alone to administer it yourself, and nobody is massaging anything.

Three kinds of bloating, and which one is yours

Food and transit. Things sitting too long, fermenting, and producing gas. This is the one a colonic addresses most directly, and where people are most often satisfied with a single session — particularly after a holiday, a stretch of eating badly, or a change of routine.

Hormonal. Bloating and fluid retention that track your cycle rather than your meals, worst in the week before a period. A colonic can make the abdomen more comfortable without touching the reason it recurs every month. Hormonal patterns are everyday naturopathic work, and two of the naturopaths here also run the colonics — so the same person can do both.

Something underlying. IBS, an intolerance, or a pattern nobody has investigated yet. Here the useful step is finding the trigger, and a colonic is comfort in the meantime rather than progress. If your bloating is new, is getting worse, comes with blood or with weight you did not mean to lose, tell us — that needs investigating first, and we will refer you with a letter of our findings rather than book you in.

A colonic clears what is in the bowel now. Whether the bloating stays away depends on what was causing it — food, hormones, stress or something underlying that has not been looked at — so a session works best as a reset alongside working that out, rather than as the answer on its own.

What the session is like

A full hour is booked for you and the treatment itself runs thirty to forty minutes, so nothing about the appointment is rushed. It starts with a consultation — your health history, anything you take, and whether a colonic is the right step for you today — and then you are shown to a private room with its own ensuite.

Warm filtered water flows gradually in and out through a small single-use tube while your therapist adjusts temperature and pressure and massages your abdomen. This is a closed system, which means someone qualified stays with you the whole time rather than leaving you to administer it yourself, and waste passes through sealed tubing directly into the sewer — so there is no odour and nothing to clean up. Your own bathroom is through the door of your own room afterwards, in your own time.

Once your booking is confirmed we email you How to Best Prepare for a Colonic — when to stop eating, how much water to drink beforehand, and what to wear. There is a fuller account of the room and the equipment, with photographs and three short clips filmed during a session, on the colonic irrigation page.

What it costs

A session is $150, whether it is your first or your tenth. Infusions are not offered on a first visit, and where your therapist judges one appropriate later it adds $30. There are no health fund item codes for colonic irrigation, so that figure is what you pay rather than a gap. No referral is needed, and the satisfaction guarantee covers the service on your first visit.

Before you book

Most healthy adults, and there is a short list worth raising with the front desk first. We screen for all of it at the consultation, and will refer you rather than book you in where a colonic is not the right step:

• •Pregnancy
• •Recent bowel, abdominal or rectal surgery
• •Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis during a flare
• •An active episode of diverticulitis
• •Severe haemorrhoids, fissures or rectal bleeding
• •Bowel cancer or any undiagnosed change in bowel habit
• •Severe uncontrolled blood pressure, heart or kidney disease
• •Recent heart attack or stroke

If you are not sure, call (03) 9380 8099 and ask — it is a short conversation, and the front desk answers it every day.