“Why would people get colonics done?”
“Do you really need them?”
“What are the health benefits of colonics?”
Colonics – Why is it important?
To understand the benefits of colonics on our digestive system and bodies, we must first know a bit about how it all works.
In an ideal world we would all be moving our bowels efficiently & sufficiently.
You should be moving your bowels 2+ times every day. Yes, each day!
Yet many people are lucky if they move once a day. I’m talking about good bowel movements – well formed, no straining required, and the feeling afterwards that “everything is out”.
I’m not talking about the irritated, gassy, painful, mucousy, hard or loose excessive bowel movements we have all experienced.
There are a number of reasons why you may not be moving your bowels efficiently.
Commonly, its dehydration. As many of our clients can attest, we are a little water focused. “Drink more water” is a common farewell from us!
When you’re dehydrated, the faecal matter becomes more compacted and even more dehydrated as it travels through the bowel, because the body is desperately trying to extract the fluid to hydrate you. Its then harder to move the stool, and so it sits…and sits, sometimes for days.
Another reason is low fibre intake. We need fibre to create stool bulk, if your diet doesn’t provide enough fibre from various sources (veggies, fruit, grains , nuts, seeds etc) the actual roughage left in the bowel after you’ve absorbed all the nutrients is less, and therefore the stool bulk is less. Here again, the faecal matter becomes harder to move around the bowel.
The bowel is stimulated to move when more than one side of the bowel wall is being touched by the faecal matter – dehydration & low fibre intake = reduced stool bull, making it harder to shift the waste.
Another factor is being “poo shy” – suppressing the urge until you reach safe ground, and not wanting to go when you’re at work, at a friend’s house, or when faced with a public bathroom. Often this starts when you go to school (an issue that stems for more girls than boys) when the less pleasant smells and noises of the bathroom become taboo. It can set up bad bowel habits that follow you for years.
Ignoring or suppressing the urge to move your bowels regularly makes you less attuned to when you do receive these important “messages”. With less opportunity to clear out the toxins and build-up, the bowel becomes more congested, more sluggish and less able to move the waste through as efficiently. The bowel is a muscle, and as with other muscles, when it is not exercised, it becomes weaker, lax, and less toned.
What you may not know, is that people can carry 2 to 5kgs of faecal matter in their bowel at any one time.
Pretty gross huh?
Not only is that a lot of waste to be physically lugging around, it is also toxins that your body is trying to get rid of.
Here’s how it goes:
The liver works hard each day, processing and clearing out “junk” that your body doesn’t need, and dumping it into the bowel via the blood into the faecal matter…
Ideally, this then gets moved out of the body, and the toxins and waste are gone.
However if the stool isn’t moved along and out, but instead sits in the bowel, the body will reabsorb the toxins back into the blood stream, to be taken back to the liver. The liver then has to reprocesses them and send them back to the bowel for removal.
But since the bowel isn’t working efficiently, the waste just sits there, getting reabsorbed. You also reabsorb hormones that your body is trying to clear, causing all sorts of havoc on your whole system..…are you getting the picture??
Of course, there are other reasons for your bowel is not working efficiently, including parasites, overgrowth of bad bacteria in the bowel, medications, IBS, sedentary lifestyle, thyroid issues, depression, stress, or bowel obstructions.
Your colonic hydrotherapist may refer you to see your GP for further investigations if they are concerned it may be something more serious relating to the above.
Things that should be investigated further include
– Complete lack of bowel movements – this can indicate bowel obstruction, twisted bowel or atonic bowel
– Blood – dark blood suggests a bleed higher in the bowel, and bright blood a bleed lower in the bowel (often haemorrhoids)
This is not to alarm you unduly, but its always better to check & find there isn’t a larger problem or more serious pathology, than assume its ok and find out later that it wasn’t!
The Benefits of Colonics
Your colonic hydrotherapist will be able to help you identify what factors are contributing to your poor bowel habits and give you advice (dietary & lifestyle etc) and suggest the correct herbal and/or nutritional supplemental products that you need to treat or assist your particular health requirements.
Colonics will help you shift out accumulated waste, and in doing so this will reduce the toxin load on the body. You’ll be able to concentrate on clearing the “fresh waste” rather than building up a toxin load that your body isn’t able to cope with.
It will also help to create better bowel tone. We use warm & cool water fills during the treatment to assist with this. It is best to go to a clinic that offers a “Closed Colonic” rather than an “Open Colonic” system. With a Closed colonic, a colonic hydrotherapist is always with you, making appropriate changes depending on your needs – as opposed to “Open”, where the process is DIY, so you are left to fend for yourself.
Colonic Hydrotherapy is fantastic for long term (or short term) constipation issues – both by clearing the waste and increasing bowel tone, leaving you feeling brighter, lighter and more energised!
It is also a great complement whilst detoxing. Removing the obstructive waste in your bowel will allow you to cleanse more deeply, quickly and often more comfortably, so whether its your annual cleanse, a specialised parasite or candida cleanse, you can use colonics to enhance the results.
If you’re just generally feeling sluggish, fatigued, having problems concentrating, bloated, gassy, generally uncomfortable at the end of the day, colonics will help. Even if you move your bowels pretty well you can be surprised by how much you can clear out in a colonic session…its often quite an eye opener! We should also mention great to clear cytotoxic drugs after chemotherapy or before you see your gastroenterologist to present an empty clear bowel for further examination.
But what about the good bacteria? Don’t you lose them too during the treatment?
Yes, you will lose some.
But the benefit of clearing out the congested old faecal matter, bad bacteria, mucous & gas, would outweigh this by far.
To optimise your gut health, we recommend taking a probiotic everyday, and including fermented foods regularly in your diet. So the loss of good bacteria in this way is not an insurmountable problem, especially if you’re taking a suitable probiotic, and including a healthy dose of fermented foods in your diet, like yoghurt (plain, not fruit flavoured), kefir, kombucha, miso, kimchi, or sauerkraut.
Can Colonics be used for weight loss?
In short, yes – even just shifting the overload of waste that’s sitting in the bowel means ridding your body of excess waste. More importantly, once you’ve released this overload, your body is free to start clearing out any toxins and waste it has been storing in peripheral fat cells (kept here to avoid them impacting on the rest of the body).
That said it’s always important to look at why you might be carrying excess weight – for example, poor food choices, sedentary lifestyle, hormonal imbalances, underlying health concerns – and addressing these directly. Your colonic hydrotherapist can assist with implementing strategies or long term changes for overall better health.
Colonics – Yes, we think they’re awesome and Yes, we think you’ll benefit from them!
