Re: Why colon walls look clean in colonoscopy?

One of the instructors who trained me in colon hydrotherapy, Catherine Cavanaugh, was a registered nurse with long experience working in a variety of nursing fields and she addressed this question on several occasions.

Over the years Catherine had helped prep many patients for barium enema X-rays and colonoscopies, and was convinced that the old fashioned "enemas until clear" routine was effective in cleansing the large intestine adequately to permit a successful examination.

A long sufferer from chronic constipation, during the 1960's Catherine had been introduced to colonics for the first time from a registered nurse in Philadelphia, and as she described it, found wonderful relief. As a result of her own experiences, she recommended to one of the gastroenterologists she worked with to consider referring patients scheduled for lower GI series for prepping with colonic irrigation if they thought they might have difficulty in carrying out the enemas until clear procedure on their own at home.

This was at a time before Mirlax and other more recent chemical concoctions became popular for pre-GI prepping, and she told us that both colonics as well as enemas until clear had a successful prep rate of over 90%, meaning that less than 1 out of every 10 patients arriving for diagnostic procedures required additional cleansing enemas by the nursing staff prior to their exam.

However, during my training and since in my own practice, I have had many clients arrive whose colon was so impacted with waste matter that it is impossible to clean them out in a single session. Some have so much old hardened stool and waste up there that even a series of 6 colonics supplemented with enemas at home over a 2-3 month period are insufficient, and they required a longer series of treatments.

"It's like peeling the layers of an onion" Catherine would say, "each colonic peels off another one or two layers".

But for the large majority of people, I believe a clean colon can be maintained by a healthy lifestyle with a balanced diet that includes a large complement of fruits and vegetables, adequate physical exercise, sufficient sleep, and regular periodic cleansing with the enema bag at home and professionally administered colon hydrotherapy sessions as required or desired.

Just my professional opinion, Valerie