Do you know the #1 obstacle you face in achieving your desired weight and health?
You might be tempted to say, “Lack of discipline to workout 5x a week,” or “Bad genes,” or “Long working hours.”
And all of those could be obstacles.
But there’s one obstacle that exacerbates everything above and makes it much tougher to fix:
A sluggish digestive system and toxic body, full of decade-old faeces.
I’ve seen this one firsthand because approximately 90% of the emails I receive contain some variation of: “I feel so heavy. I lack energy. What should I do?”
My response is always the same: “OK, are you eliminating once a day? How’s your dump?”
And then the person stops responding, sends back a vague response like “my digestive system is just fine,” or indicates that he/she has not really thought about how his/her digestive system is key to weight loss and health.
This is a big problem because you will not be able to achieve the ideal state of health, until you have a healthy digestive system and can eliminate toxins in your body that do not serve you.
Now many of you may have different opinions on how to detox, or even have opinions on whether you think detoxing is necessary or not.
While I do not want to get into a debate, I do want to present an alternative solution that may improve your digestive system and help you achieve a better state of health: Colon Hydrotherapy.
This time round, I’ve invited Sheila Shea, Founder of the Intestinal Health Institute and a certified Colon Hydrotherapist with 38-years of experience in this field, to join us today. In part 1 of this series, we will be talking about (Stay tuned for Part 2 HERE):
- 3 key reasons why you are constipated
- The number of times you should be eliminating a day (sorry, once a week doesn’t cut it)
- What constitutes a good dump (yes, the color, size, and texture of it)
- Why a congested colon can lead to bad skin, headaches, lethargy, bloating, and more
- Why some people get serious gas and inflamed bowels
- Why getting a colonic may help you regain your energy and health
Let’s start.
Q: How did you get started with colon hydrotherapy?
A: I was constipated since infancy. I had poor toilet training, never eliminated well and that’s what set it up. When I was 28-years old I was tired of getting the flu, tired of constipation and seriously eating disordered with bulimia. I decided I would get into ‘health’ whatever that meant. That started my personal journey of natural self-healing. I read all the great health books at the time: Walker, Bragg, Jensen and Ehret. I began regular fasting, juicing, enemas, colonics and dietary improvement. At one point I realized I would be good working with others to help them cleanse and heal their GI tract.
At that time in 1977, my brother Michael invited me to study massage and colon hydrotherapy in Miami FL. That launched my colon hydrotherapy career and the feeling I could make a difference!
I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of Arizona in 1994. This experience showed me that the abdomen served as the core of movement, and brought more confirmation of the central role of the intestines in all levels of health.
I’ve been practicing colon hydrotherapy for 38 years.
What is a colonic?
Q: How does a colonic work?
A: It’s basically water in waste out.
You have a water line that goes into the speculum, and a waste line, which is larger, that goes away from the back of the speculum. And there’s a viewing tube, in a separate line, so we can watch what comes out.
So you have inflow into the person, and waste out of the waste line through the viewing tube.
I massage the abdomen on the outflow and that’s a big part of my process.
3 Reasons Why You Maybe Constipated
Q: Why are people so constipated these days
A:
#1: Poor Diet
One’s digestive health is seriously compromised when people over-consume a diet of highly processed foods, added sugars, sugars made in the laboratory such as high fructose corn syrup, sugar alcohols and artificial sugars. The poor diet can damage and inflame your pancreas, intestines, liver and gall bladder. Your gut motility or ability to eliminate declines.
The whole idea is to have a diet that heals the gut wall and puts in the good bacteria.
Most people have damaged themselves from too much processed food. So they have very poor populations of bacteria. You want a diet that restores the good bacteria in the gut and heals the gut wall.
You want to incorporate foods that are natural, organic and non-GMO.
Include vegetables, fruit, raw juices, smoothies and fermented vegetables and dairy in your diet. Also, include bone broths, stocks, meats, eggs (Editor’s Note: We have a different view on animal products especially given environmental reasons), nuts and seeds too.
#2: Lack of Exercise
People are not moving enough and are sedentary.
Exercise provides circulation throughout the body and provides a good blood supply to intestines.
Exercise provides core training to build up the gut muscles.
Exercise metabolises foods like glucose and allows for more energy and efficient elimination.
#3: Stress
People are in a fight/flight mode when they constantly react to stress and do not relax.
The fight flight syndrome is an expression of the sympathetic nervous system. All our energy moves into circulation, muscles and bones and prepares us for action.
However, if we want good elimination, we have to learn how to move ourselves into our parasympathetic nervous system.
Stress affects your ability to eliminate.
PNS governs our regenerative organs: heart, kidneys, lungs, intestines and liver.
When I am stressed I need to practice techniques to switch myself back to my parasympathetic nervous system. PNS responds to rhythmic breath, love, laughter, meditation, relaxation and fun. You will eliminate better when you can calm yourself down, relax and breathe.
Healthy Bowel Movement?
Q: How many bowel movements should a person have a day?
A: Let’s just say minimum once a day. The more things build up in your system, the more stagnated your system is, and the more bacterial, viral, and fungal action there will be.
Some people in the health food industry recommend eliminating 3 times a day, or even after every meal. I mean if we can get everyone to eliminate once a day, that’s already progress.
Many are not eliminating once a day.
Got a Good Dump?
Q: What is a good dump?
A: A good dump should be:
- Fairly well formed
- Medium to light in color
- If the person has been eating lots of greens and chlorophyll, the dump can be much darker which is fine
A problem dump is too hard, too thick, or has too many food particles. You want a happy medium. You want a dump that would break up relatively easily in the water.
A good dump should feel good too. When you evacuate, you want to feel your BM is complete, your gut is lighter and you have good energy. The person feels a sense of well-being.
Symptoms of a Congested Colon (Got Gas?)
Q: When you have a congested colon, how do the symptoms manifest?
A: People with a congested colon usually feel perfectly miserable. Their quality of life (QOL) has taken a dive. The pain of gas has them begging for a means of relief.
The impacted person can be lethargic, not want to work out and be very distended. Bloat is a big buzz-killer. That’s a result of the gas, constipation and indigestion.
Why a congested colon can affect your skin negatively
Some people express a congested colon in other areas of the body. For instance, take the skin as an example. People eliminate toxins through their skin. The skin always reflects back to us the gut and the liver’s state of health.
The skin is a big expression of a toxic colon and liver. People report acne, dermatitis herpetiformis, hives, rashes, eczema and psoriasis.
Other people have the ‘fibromyalgia’ effect, sores muscles and joints, aches and pains in their body.
Many people no longer have headaches and migraines after a few colon hydrotherapy sessions.
When people have serious bowel problems, symptoms can manifest elsewhere in the body.
Leaky Gut?
Q: So why do people have serious gas and inflamed bowels? What about leaky gut?
A: Gas is formed when bacteria and other intestinal microbes feed on our food predominately processed foods, added sugars and complex sugars (grains, beans, starchy roots, lactose).
The microbes in their process of metabolism give off acids, gases and other metabolites. The gases distend the small and large intestines and weaken them in the process. They compress neighbouring organs. Acid is released at the same time.
The acids have the ability to dissolve the tight junction between the cells of the gut wall, the epithelium and cause inflammation. The acid inflammation causes the leaky or porous gut.
Small protein particles, indigested food, other toxins and microorganisms pass through porous areas of the gut walls directly into the blood stream. The immune system then reacts to all these ‘foreign’ particles.
That’s when a person begins to get “reactions” like hives, fatigue, migraine or aching muscles not to mention more serious auto-immune conditions.
The processed food diet has dissolved the cell that forms the border of the gut wall. And when these cells dissolve you have all these strange particles that are too big getting into the blood, and that’s where you get this autoimmunity.
Q: How much can a colonic help if someone has already developed serious diseases such as diabetes, etc?
A: I see many people with diabetes, one of the results of Metabolic Syndrome. They are among the most difficult cases due to poor elimination. Very often their abdomen is distended with the inflammatory abdominal visceral fat.
They have lived on a diet of processed foods, added sugar and complex sugars. Their intestinal muscles are weak and impacted with a lifetime of waste.
The colonic process is one tool the person has to help heal their diabetes or metabolic syndrome by cleansing and detoxing their whole GI tract.
The commitment is 1-2 years given the seriousness of diabetes. One has to adopt a new lifestyle that regenerates their pancreas, liver, gall bladder and intestines not to mention at a cellular level.
My mentor, Natasha Campbell-McBride MD, nutritionist and neurologist strongly emphasizes the need to take enemas and colonics to continue to clear waste from the body in chronic co-morbidity cases.
Pathogenic bacteria, virus, fungi, metabolites of the pathogens and residual waste need to be cleared from the system if you plan to heal the gut wall and reseed the good microbes and thereby heal the diabetes.
That’s it for Part 1 of this series. In Part 2, we’ll discuss:
- If some people are predisposed to have more digestive problems than others
- Do you need colonhydrotherapy if you already eliminate once a day?
- Laxatives vs. colonics
- If colonics will flush out our good bacteria, as many skeptics claim
Stay tuned HERE for Part 2 of the series.
About Sheila Shea: Sheila is the Founder of the Intestinal Health Institute and a certified Colon Hydrotherapist with 38-years of experience in colon hydrotherapy
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