Just to add that even in the case of Diverticulitis, the fecal matter caught in that little pocket isn’t really there that long. It becomes infected rather quickly after being trapped there. Probably like after 3 to 7 days would be my guess. Then you get severe abdominal pains sending you to the Doc and getting the liquid
diet and antibiotics treatment. The high fiber diet just helps prevent stuff from getting stuck in the pockets.
Nothing is ever going to get trapped in your colon for years!
Fecaliths are a fairly common cause of appendicitis, but the problem is the appendix is essentially a dead end hanging from the “main bowel loop”, like the tail on a Q.
I’m not sure bowel irrigation would help remove a fecalith, but laxatives have been shown to behelpful if given before infection or abcess sets in.
The Toxic Colon is back! Run for your lives, boys!!!
Seriously though, the false idea that bodily waste products are horrifyingly toxic has been around for centuries and much quackery has ensued - including countless unnecessary enemas and purges.
Fecal matter does not build up in the colon requiring special intervention. The minute amounts that may get trapped in the appendix or in diverticula are generally inconsequential (unless there’s a resulting infection), and no quack enemas or drugs are going to remove this stuff anyway. In the course of wonderfully entertaining years as a pathologist, I have dissected loads of appendices and diverticula-laden colons, and can lend assurance that the small amounts of poop they contain seem to recycle on a regular basis in most cases. Certainly one will not be “poisoned” by imaginary toxins emanating from these small poop pockets.
“Cleanse” fanatics often display photos of gunk they have allegedly purged from their gallbladders, livers, colons etc. This is probably harmless mucus admixed with a little cellular debris. To hear the cleansers tell it, they have eliminated gallstones, chemical buildups and Love Canal-like agglomerations of toxic sludge that have been accumulating in their systems since before they were weaned.
Death does not begin in the colon. Bullshit does begin in the mind, however.
In the original Jean Shepherd story that inspired the Xmas movie, the author-as-a-child is so overwrought by his experience beating up the bully that he has a severe GI upset and winds up having a major urpfest, vomiting up stuff that he ate years ago, including a pencil eraser he consumed in second grade.
This is about as believable as the “hidden poop” fantasy, but for some reason people don’t seem as willing to induce vomiting as they are to gulp down laxatives. Go figure.
If you don’t need one, I don’t think you’re supposed to take them just to make sure you’re flushing everything. It will probably give you the runs, and some of them work by giving you bowel cramps.
I have also seen photos of the kind of rubbery stuff that a colonic has flushed out (this was in a magazine article). So what gives? If there’s no “hidden poop” then where does it come from?
I was going to ask something similar about a herbal remedy that I saw a link to recently. Quite revolting (can’t find a cite thank goodness) 3-foot long wibbly stuff. My guess: it’s actually a direct result of taking the “remedy”, like Hopi ear candling.
You have to see an appendix to realize why this would happen. An appendix looks remarkably like a fishin’ worm. (Its medical name is “the vermiform appendix” which means “shaped like a worm” - apparently this resemblance has been remarked on for a good thousand years.)
It dangles off the end of the cecum with its tip often as much as three inches (seven cm or so) away from the colon. Every now and then when we are autopsying we come across a really long one, and we will sometimes holler at the other doctors to look at this one. You can definitely form a little dried ball of poo in the tip of something three inches away from the colon, separated from it by a muscular, squishy little tube with an opening half the diameter of your little finger.
However, the kicker? No enema’s gonna reach there. Enema waters will rush right by the appendix. No entry. No cleaning out.
The appendix is a lymphoid organ. It is lined by lymphoid follicles under a thin inner coating of mucosa. It is a part of the immune system. It is probably there to sample the fecal flow for pathogens to help you prepare yourself against dangerous diarrheas.
There is an extremely rare condition called “intestinal reduplication” in which a person can have a short segment of double-barreled intestine. I’m willing to bet you my year’s salary you and I don’t have this. Short of this, there are no pockets in the bowel.
Before they came up with gastroplasty, one of the major surgeries devised for treatment of morbid obesity was small intestinal diversion. Basically, the surgeon would take one end of your jejunum and tie it off, and route the duodenum into the teruminal ileum. The segment that wasn’t to be used any more was left living and flapping around in the belly. No shit ran through it, and nobody got toxic from it… except one fellow who developed bacteria in it that produced alcohol, who would land in hospital slurrin’ drunk, and sober up only after antibiotics.
The gunk pictured in those “death begins in the colon” sites has typically been attributed to bulk forming products taken beforehand to “facilitate” the process.
The only thing that did catch my eye about colon hydrotherapy was an article written by a skeptic who decided to try it and did end up “passing” a marble he had swallowed as a kid. Given that he was a critic of the process I can’t see any reason why he’d make it up.