So, we have this friend who is a massage therapist, and who is pretty woo-ish.
A few days ago we spent a couple days at her house and my partner asked her what was for the colander in her bathroom.
She said she likes to do liver cleansings, and that during that she emits those little thingies and she uses this colander to catch them.
She says she felt really great doing those cleansings. She then added she also loves doing colonic irrigation.
At this point I was feeling waaaaaaaay too far into TMI territory.
But I do have a few questions, that I really couldn’t imagine myself asking her:
What could be the things she is excreting?
And is it coming out from the urethra or the anus?
(And as a sidenote, colonic irrigation: fancy name for enema?)
The things are indigestible matter in what she’s eaten, they’re coming thru her colon and out her anus. Unless she’s passing huge kidney stones, which is less likely.
All that colon cleansing (a high colonic enema, yes) and liver detox is pure woo.
Liver or gallbladder “flushes” are quite popular amongst the woo crowd, as a purported means of expelling “toxins” or gallstones. It is, of course, total bunkum.
I admire the gentle way in which this surgeon describes the process:
“OF ALL THE BOGUS, DISHONEST, DISINGENUOUS AND STUPID BULLSHIT THAT MASQUERADES AS ALTERNATIVE MEDICAL METHODOLOGY, “GALLBLADDER FLUSH” IS AT THE TOP OF THE LIST. THE PURVEYORS OF IT ARE, AT BEST, CREDULOUS; AT WORST, THEY ARE CHARLATANS AND (LITERAL) SNAKE-OIL SALESMEN WHO WILLFULLY DECEIVE AND STEAL FROM THE SICK AND THE VULNERABLE, AND ARE TO BE COUNTED AMONG THE SCUM OF THE EARTH.”
The reason your friend thinks she is catching stones, toxin accretions (or whatever) from her stool into that colander*, is that one can harvest ball-like substances that to the medically illiterate look like stones, but they are not. As the previously quoted surgeon indicates (and this has been verified in an actual published study), what you get out of these “flushes” (which commonly include olive oil and some kind of acidic liquid like lemon juice) is “curds with your turds”.
Your friend will of course never accept this evidence; undoubtedly she “knows” that harmful substances are coming out and that she feels better after passing them.
*never, ever eat spaghetti prepared at her house. :eek:
Thank you both.
I usually know quite a bit about woo, but since so many of our friends are into “alternative” medicinal stuff, sometimes I begin to think maybe some stuff have some truth to them.
She made a point of telling us this particular colander never leave the bathroom.
There are “stones” produced by common “liver cleanses”.
By which I mean, the stones are produced by the things that liver cleanses have you consume: oil (usually olive oil) and lemon juice. They’re soap. They’re little balls of soap you make in your belly.
Nothing at all to do with “toxins” and they are most definitely not gallstones. Also…a very inefficient way to make soap.
Okay, when I saw the word “pass” in conjunction with the word “stones,” I assumed this woman was passing these things in her urine. You can find all manner of - well, I’d say “crap,” but that’s an accurate word for all of it - in your stool, so I’d never have imagined someone would be motivated to sift through her feces in order to separate out the various components. I only read the OP because I was curious about what kind of stones a woman could pass that could be caught with a colander rather than a sieve. :eek:
I’d still not want to eat anything at her house, and I’d certainly not want to use the hand towels in her bathroom. Ick.
There is a not insignificant subset of woo-prone humanoids who sift through their bodily wastes, exclaiming over the contents thereof and posting about it on various websites. Similar dreck (with photos) appears on the sites of those who sell “colon cleanse” products. Enema enthusiasm and poop preoccupation go way back beyond 19th century followers of John Harvey Kellogg and fans of irrigating ones’ nether regions.
She made a point of telling us this particular colander never leave the bathroom.