Did you ever stop to think that the crazy looking gunk you describe could be intestinal mucosa which is designed to protect your organs?

Hi Michael,
You seem to have come under a bit of an attack on this board. Which is a shame.

I'm pretty new to the whole notion of intestinal cleanses. My interest was triggered by some posts on a totally different board. It sounded potentially health-improving. The stuff about mucoid plaque seemed particularly interesting - if that were a real phenomenon, then presumably removing it would do something useful. My health is pretty good, but I was feeling a bit low in energy - after a days work I was finding it hard to do all the projects I wanted to do at home, and I hoped that an internal cleanse might be useful.

I looked around and decided to opt for a cleanse 'kit' made by a company called 'blessed herbs'. It's a 5 day 'fast' involving no food but frequent juice with psyllium husks and Bentonite clay, preceded by a 3-day pre-fast involving diminishing amounts of food, which itself should be mainly raw. On the second day of the fast phase, I started to pass stuff described in the literature as 'mucoid plaque.' Now, I have no way of proving, to myself or to others, that this was ancient stuff. But it certainly seemed to be - it had a strange rubbery texture, and consisted of blobs strung on kind of rubbery ropes. Also, it just 'looked' very old, with a kind of mucus-covered, 'weathered' look about it. As I say, I can't prove it was old, but it certainly seemed possibly, or, I rather think, probable. What would pretty much clinch it for me would be if I could go onto a some kind of diet in which more of this stuff emerged, and then it tailed off. If that happened, it would be an argument against it just being kind of reformed mucus, which I believe is the orthodox view of it. I think one of the posters in this thread said something of this kind happened to her. (ie the 'regular' mucoid plaque tailed off and finally frond-like stuff came out).

I suppose that this board is a kind of mutual support group, and information exchange, and very nice too; it's not designed to be a scientific investigation. If you ask specific questions, preferably in a friendly fashion, you may well get useful answers. Whether you choose to regard them as 'mere anecdote' or assemle them into a 'clinching argument' is rather up to you.

You said that you are open-minded. I must say that the tenor of your opening post struck me as being a bit, well, confrontational. Perhaps that accounts for the attacks you've run into. As I say, I think that's a shame.

Did you read about the penny that was dislodged after 20 odd years inside someone? How do you react to that story? Dismissive? Interested? Inclined to regard it as an exaggeration built around a trivial event? A nugget of useful data for you to build your scientific case on?

I read your quote about nice pink colons. But I've also read about many kilos of mucoid plaque being found inside people at autopsy. I think if you look around you'll find xrays of alarmingly distended colons suggesting that it's very far from an efficient self-cleaning system. So the jury's out there, for me. Perhaps stuff adhere to the small intestine and not the large intestine?

regards,

Marc


by the way, my energy levels do seem to have gone up.