Agreed. Very real. After 6 months of many products and almost daily enemas I have concluded that mucoid plaque is likely ropeworms. Ropeworms look like mucous so are often disregarded as unimportant when in the stool or colon, but indeed are quite posdibly a relatively newly-discovered dangerous parasite. When I would take Bentonite clay I would pass large amounts of mucoid plaque about 20 hours later, but only with either cascara sagrada to help push it out, or an enema (usually 2-3 quart salt enema) to wash it out. It would be black and have the same ridges in it as the ropeworms that I also found during enema flushes. I found the ropeworms intact and more white-yellow at times but this is when I had not taken any clay recently. So for me, they were not black and retained more of their mucous appearance. If anyone is interested in the topic of mucoid plaque, I recommend researching ropeworms. There are some great videos on youTube. Im interested in this topic very much because my grandmother was healed of esophageal cancer with herbal injections by a naturopath in Greece. She talked of passing large amounts of 'mucous' as she was healing from the cancer. My mother witnessed this mucous and confirmed that the pictures of ropeworms I showed her are indeed what grandmother passed. And here in the states, cancer patients pass huge amounts of 'mucous' with chemotherapy. In Greece the treating man said the 'mucous material WAS the cancer. In the USA the docs simply call it mucous.