Inflammation and Colonics

Come learn about the basics of inflammation and how colonics (a.k.a. colon hydrotherapy) helps improve your health.

Why Have a Colonic?

I’m often asked this question, and the short answer is that it can help you feel better. I’ll be the first to admit this is a weird job to have! – but I do it because I receive constant feedback from our clients regarding how beneficial they find colonics to be. While the most obvious reason to have a colonic is to obtain relief from GI symptoms, such as bloating or upset stomach, the broader reality is that colonics can have a beneficial effect on virtually anything that ails you. Yes, I understand this is a rather grandiose statement to make, but please read on to understand why I feel comfortable making this claim.

One of my main take-aways when I studied medicine at Naturopathic University was that in our struggles to enjoy healthy lives it is inflammation that most often stands in the way of our progress. Most of us are familiar with the localized inflammatory response that occurs when we sprain an ankle or break a bone, and the resulting redness, swelling and pain this brings. What’s rarely discussed, yet is readily apparent given the huge sales of anti-inflammatory medications such as Aspirin, Ibuprofen and Aleve, is that inflammation can be a more generalized, even whole body, issue. Aches and pains are the most common manifestation of this generalized inflammation, but in the absence of acute trauma or an existing disease process virtually any health complaint, including headaches and skin conditions, can also be caused by low grade inflammation.

Reducing Inflammation

So where do colonics fit into this discussion? Colonics can reduce our suffering by removing the products of this inflammation from our systems. Evolution designed our gastrointestinal tract as a single long tube, whose role begins with the ingestion, digestion and absorption of nutrients but eventually morphs into the role of waste elimination. There is significant overlap between these processes as our liver also plays a dual role, producing bile to aid in the digestion of fat, but also dumping toxins and inflammatory molecules into our GI tract for eventual elimination. So unfortunately, while we are absorbing nutrients we are potentially subjected to reabsorbing some of these toxic/inflammatory molecules, catching us in an inefficient cycle. On average it takes 2-3 days for waste to pass through the large intestine – thus it can be logically concluded that irrigating this organ via colon hydrotherapy will remove 2-3 days’ worth of toxic/inflammatory load from the body, thereby preventing it from being reabsorbed. While there has been minimal scientific research in this area, certainly the positive results reported by our clients support this theory! (This is referred to as “empirical evidence” in science.)

Thanks for reading! In my next blog post I’ll discuss where this generalized inflammation comes from and what you can do to reduce your own inflammatory load.