Why You Should Not Cleanse Your Colon

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Carole Engel, I'm the director of Outreach for Fruit-Eze Incorporated. We've been the leader in natural, healthy bowel regularity since 1990. The topic for this video is why you should not cleanse your colon. This video is not a substitute for professional medical advice and I'd ask you to seek the advice of a health care professional before changing a prescribed bowel regimen. The goal of colon cleansing naturally is to promote bowel health and regularity, however using products that contain harsh chemicals or herbs that over empty the bowel are not medically necessary and can cause harm. Instead of using these products, you can simply increase your dietary fiber intake to promote your body's own natural cleansing processes. In this video I'm going to talk with you about several reasons why you should not use these products to empty your colon. The first thing you need to know is that limited safety information is even available on many of these products. Many of them contain hidden stimulant laxatives. Read the labels carefully and look for ingredients such as senna, cascara, aloe and turkey rhubarb to name a few. These stimulant laxatives it work by irritating the colon wall. The colon undergoes intense muscle contractions as it tries to rid the body of these irritants. This promotes fluid loss and rapid bowel evacuation. Because these products can over empty the bowel, they can also promote dependency as it may take another 3 or 4 days for a bowel movement to occur when the colon becomes over emptied. This can lead to further use of other bowel interventions then another 3 or 4 days may have to pass and so forth. And this is how the, how habit of laxative dependency can develop. Many of these products also contain hidden diuretics. Read the labels and look for marshmallow root, dandelion root, or licorice root to name a few. You may know that diuretics promote fluid loss but what you may not know is that when they're combined with stimulant laxatives, they can place you at greater risk of dehydration. Many of these products also contain hidden dry fiber components. The problem with inclusion of these dry fibers is that when used with stimulant laxatives in diuretics, they may not become adequately hydrated in the colon. This means that they may swell up just enough to form a blockage. This is a blockage a pass which additional waste matter cannot pass through the colon. This kind of blockage is called an impaction. Impactions are life threatening and require immediate medical attention. I want you to know that just a single dose of these products can interrupt established bowel habits and interfere with normal colon function such as nutritional synthesis and nutritional uptake. With prolonged use, these products can quickly lead to dehydration. This can cause an electrolyte imbalance, this can lead to potassium loss and this is critical because potassium loss can cause rapid heartbeat and can paralyze intestinal muscles. You may also experience headaches, nausea, vomiting and muscle cramps in the colon and other parts of the body. You should also know that these products can flush out essential colon bacteria. This can cause an imbalance in their diversity and place you at risk of developing a colon infection. In addition to causing dehydration in the body, these products can actually dry out the colon lining and this is critical for you to understand. A moisturized healthy colon lining serves many bowel health and regularity functions and I'll explain. A moisturized healthy colon lining helps to permit efficient fluid exchanges into and out of the colon. As you know one of the most important jobs of the colon is to produce a stool and it does this by permitting just the right amount of fluids to be extracted from the liquid waste present in your colon while using fiber to trap and reserve just the right amount of moisture into the stool as it's being formed. This helps to give stools a good volume and weight, helps them to be flexible and soft in it's form and helps to make them easy to pass. This promotes regularity. However when the colon lining becomes dried out, these fluid exchanges are less efficient and stools are not well formed and constipation results. A moisturized healthy colon lining helps to ensure the that the cells that make up the colon structure itself are flexible. It also helps to protect the delicate nerve endings that extend down into the colon wall. And this is important because when the colon lining becomes dried it, this can expose these delicate nerve endings to fiber as it passes through the colon wall. This can interfere with signals between the colon and the brain and the brain and the colon as it directs activities in the colon such as muscular stimulation. In this example, when as you know when muscles don't get stimulated they can become weak. This can slow down stool transit and promote constipation. A moisturized healthy colon lining helps to enhance the habitat necessary for the essential bacteria to live and thrive and repopulate along the colon wall. These essential bacteria serve many bowel health and regularity functions. And the last point that I want to make is that a healthy moisturized colon lining helps to ease and lubricate the passes of stools through the curves and the right angles that make up the colon. This has several helpful outcomes such as speeding stool transit, helping to reduce the amount of time that waste is present in the colon, it also helps to preserve the moist quality of stools and helps to promote regularity. I hope that this video has been helpful to you and your understanding of why you should not cleanse your colon using these products."