THE HEALTH OF OUR COLON AFFECTS OUR TOTAL HEALTH

The colon is a tube approximately five feet long and 2 1/2 inches in diameter. A healthy colon has uniform size and tone. It extends from the cecum, where it joins the small intestine, up and across the abdominal cavity and down the left side of the body until it reaches the sigmoid and rectum. The three main functions of the colon are: the final digestion of our food, the elimination of digestive residue, and the discharge of toxins and wastes from our body. We experience better health and well-being when the colon is clean and functioning normally. When the colon is congested with stagnant wastes, then poisons back up into our system and pollutes the inner environment. This is called autointoxication, which literally means, “poisoning.” All of the body’s tissues are affected by autointoxication. 

The chart below shows the organs affected and the impact on our well-being:

 

Poisons backed up into the:	Affects to the Body
Nervous System	Irritable, depressed
Heart	Weak
Stomach	Bloated
Lungs	Breath foul
Skin (elimination organ)	Sallow, wrinkled Glands Tired, feeling old

Autointoxication can be a causative factor in numerous serious diseases and is considered by many to be the underlying reason for disease. The colon is the largest perpetrator of disease out of any organ in the body and is said to be the initiator of 80% of all critical illness.

There are many contributing factors to autointoxication from a toxic bowel. Improper diet, insufficient exercise, stress, overeating and ignoring the “call of nature” can all lead to bowel problems. Most of us have had years of poor to average nutrition. Much of our food is subjected to processing, which includes refining, frying, over-cooking and saturating the mineral elements of our food with oil or grease. As a result of this food altering, the digestive organs cannot process the minerals efficiently and they are passed out of the small intestine into the colon as wastes. The consumption of mucous-producing foods such as meats, dairy products, and flour, cause dense sticky bowel movements. Excess mucous in our system is a sign of trouble. Stools containing mucous are very difficult for the body to eliminate. When they are expelled, they leave behind a glue like coating on the wall of the colon, which accumulates, layer by layer into a hard rubbery crust. The body cannot eliminate these layers of harden mucous on its own. They are often carried for the duration of the person’s life as a toxic burden. Incompletely digested food ferments and putrefies when it remains in the colon longer than a day. When this fermented waste combines with the body’s own bile acids from the liver, carcinogens can form. We already know carcinogens can ultimately develop into colon or rectal cancers. Enhancing the colon’s ability to expedite the eliminations of waste reduces the risks of developing colon-rectal cancer.

Constipation is one of the first signs indicating that the bowel is not functioning properly. When a person is constipated, the walls of the colon are often encrusted with accumulated fecal matter. The inner diameter of the colon is reduced like a water pipe blocked by mineral deposits and eventually the opening becomes narrower and narrower making it more difficult to pass wastes through. Since the encrusted feces line the colon wall, the colon is unable to absorb nutrients from our food in the last stage of digestion. Wastes from the blood stream, which should normally be drawn into the colon through the colon wall, are re-absorbed by the body along with other toxins from the fermentation and putrefaction of incompletely digested food. Subsequently, intestinal stasis often follows which occurs when the muscular contractions known as peristalsis can no longer sweep the hardened feces along the digestive tract.

A person can have several bowel movements a day and still be constipated. They are just smaller and more often due to the smaller colon. The body reacts to this constricted bowel by stepping up the frequency of the peristalsis wave action to allow the waste to exit the body. Taken to its limit, the effect can be diarrhea, which is when the body moves out the waste so fast, the bowel doesn’t have time to remove the water and consolidate the waste into stool. These are the reasons that thousands of people choose colonic irrigation as a safe, inexpensive way to improve and maintain good health.