Bowel Management For Beginners

Note: This and other posts are being moved to the new Ask Shelley forum:

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The first part of any cleansing/healing regimen is cleansing the colon, as it is the main path of elimination. As you clean the other systems and organs such as lymphatic and liver,
you have to keep up the colon cleansing because that is where toxins get dumped.

Toxins must be taken all of the way out of the body. If they are left in the colon, they re-circulate and soon you are poisoning yourself all over again.

The easiest way to begin colon cleansing is via P&B shakes, which is psyllium seed fiber husks and Bentonite clay. Psyllium seed is often sold in bulk bins at health food stores. Bentonite
is sold as dry powder or as a liquid clay in bottles. Get the bottles, re-hydrating the powder is a pain. Sonne has one for cheap.

Fiber and clay not only pull toxins and impacted matter out of the colon, aided by the fact that psyllium is a water-soluble fiber so it can't get too hard and stuck itself, but they also exercise the colon. It can take about 3 months or more to restore normal bowel function to a weak and congested colon, longer if it has been weakened by laxative dependency.

The ultimate Colon Cleanse is a colonic, next, colema, next, deep enema with an enema bucket setup, lastly, enema from a bag, altho some bags are 2 quarts and so this is a great investment. The most cost effective are colemas and enema bucket setups. Cheapest good one I've found is from Health & Yoga in India for 30 bucks. www.healthandyoga.com

When you first add fiber, as in P&B shakes or a diet higher in fiber, your colon is a bit weak, probably has constricted areas (thin stools=constrictions and/or moving too fast) AND probably coated with too much unhealthy mucous. This mucous, altho bad, has a good side effect - it helps things pass quickly! The fiber starts taking off the mucus, so it slows down your BMs for awhile until your colon strengthens.

This is why when you first start bowel management, you want to do....

1. either do the fiber PLUS laxative for about 1-2 weeks, not more or you get dependent. There are fruit-based laxatives that are better if you can find them, such as Triphala or rhubarb. These *strengthen* the colon rather than create dependency so you can take them over a longer period of time. Start with only 1 P&B shake a day, gradually increase dosage until you're doing 3 a day. Follow each P&B shakes with a glass of plain water so that the psyllium is fully hydrated.

Fennel tea or cascarda sagrada or prune juice are very gentle yet effective laxatives and should not cause dependency. Senna, however, is quite strong and should only be used temporarily and in case of emergency. The Master Cleanse recommneds daily use of it, and if you fast for more than a week, you are actually doing damage to your health. Better to do enemas instead.

Take the P&B shake 30 minutes before meals if you're trying to lose weight. Or take them 1-2 hours after the meal. Do not take with supplements, take the supplements 30 min before fiber, or with meals, or 1 hour after fiber, or they will be pushed thru without dissolving.

You can take probiotics safely while you're drinking P&B shakes and doing enemas. Add live cultures to the enema solution for a direct implant.

If your new fiber stools are too compacted, you're not drinking enough water.

2. Start off with a series of colonics. colonics will reduce mucous AND exercise the colon too!

3. slant-board exercises (see Dr. Jensen's book. Basically, ab exercises while lying on a board with feet higher than head), walking, yoga, basically do AB exercises which in turn strengthen your colon and increase circulation.

4. Experiment with different fibers if you get too much diarrhea. Some people don't do well with psyllium. Most do, but some are better off with flax seeds powder, green apples, porridge, Kichadi, etc.

5. Start each morning with a large cup of very warm but swallowable water. This induces a bowel movement quite effectively. Walk, jump, climb stairs if it doesn't seem to be working.

6. End each night with this drink: a cup or so of milk simmered for ten minutes with 2 whole cardamom seeds, 1/2 inch fresh ginger root cut or grated, 1 stick cinamon, 3 cloves. This is basically Chai tea without the tea. Pour into a mug with a tsp or so of honey. This will hlep you sleep, increase your digestive powers, take out toxins from stomach and small intestine, is a natural laxative, and it tastes fantastic too! :) You can make tea like rhubarb, fennel, senna or dandelion and add the spices to that, simmer, then flavor with milk or not, always use honey tho as it acts to deliver the medicinal qualities, for more of a laxative/detox effect.

7. 1-3x a day take 1 tablespoon of olive oil or a really good EFA oil since everyone needs good EFA's in their diet. Flax seed, evening primrose, borage, Udo's Prime. This will force the liver to give up some bile, and bile stimulates peristalitic action! :) Most people only have to do this much in order to increase BM's.

8. Avoid all constipating and mucous forming foods such as deep fried, cheese, most dairy (milk okay if cooked, some people do well with yoghurt and cottage cheese.). Eat more nuts and fruits (preferably apples, pears, berries), but eat fruits alone as a fruit meal, never combined with anything else unless it's a dried fruit and nut meal. Avoid animal protein for a couple weeks. Eat more veggie stews with Quinoa, Basmati Rice, Lentils, Garbanzo Beans, instead.

9. Purchase and study Dr. Bernard Jensen 's "Tissue Cleansing Thru Bowel Management." A real life saver. It's available online for free.

10. Eat hot cereal for breakfast and for dinner occasionally. Very comforting. Get a mixture of grains, pref. no wheat, like Bob's Red Mills 5 Grain Cereal or Brown Rice Farina from the health food store. Flavor with flaxseed oil or butter, cinnamon, maple syrup. Or Lundburgh's brown rice cereal. Almond is especially good.

11. A good way to start cleansing, unless you suffer from bouts of diarrhea, is to start out with an oxygen-based cleanser. Oxypowder and Colosan are favorites. What they do is slowly introduce oxygen into the colon, so it can take hard fecal matter and liquify it. If it's working, you should get very loose, watery stools. Some people have reported no relief from constipation; possibly they weren't taking a large enough dosage with enough water.

As long as you have one BM a day, you shouldn't need to do much intervention with laxatives beyond avoiding constipating foods. Some literature designed to sell intestinal cleansers will say that if you don't go 2-4 times a day you're constipated, but that's pretty ridiculous unless you're a linebacker trying to gain weight. For most of us regular or tiny people, we only eat enough for one BM a day, and have two if we eat more oils and fiber-rich meals, as differnet meals have different transit times and can 'catch up' with each other in the colon as we sleep or are more active.

If you're not going at least once a day, you should do some kind of intervention, especially if you're trying to heal candida or detoxing the liver or experiencing skin eruptions.

Other ways to manage digestion, flatulence, constipation and bloating can be found in the "increasing digestive power" notes.

Also: You'll know your bowels are healthy and strong and clean when:

-You have as many BMs as you had fiber-rich meals the day before, and no fewer than 1 bm daily unless fasting.
-Stools are between 1-2 inches in diameter, are formed but not hard packed, uniform brown color. Should be at least 6" long, preferably >12", but of course it depends on how much fiber you eat. Eat more fiber rich meals if they are short.
-If the stools are very thin, then you either have constricted areas in your colon or they're moving very fast through your system because you ate foods with a shorter transit time such as fruit, or you're having a slight allergic reaction. Many people have noticed that as they get better and change their diets that their stools get thinner and at that point that's perfectly okay.

If stools totally float on the surface of the water that means they are full of undigested fats. So you either had a very high-fat meal or combined the fats with foods that don't combine well and impaired digestion. It could mean you have poor fat digestion either due to a lack of digestive enzymes or lack of bile production due to a clogged liver (which also causes constipation). Ideally, stools should sink slowly, and be light still, if you know what I mean. :)

When your bowels seem to be moving regularly, but perhaps you're still not completely up to par, look into liver management next. A strong liver produces more bile.

*** enema bags vs. buckets vs. colemas***
There are 2 liter enema bags available at Walgreens and Wal-Mart for only 7 dollars, a very cheap investment into your health!

An enema bucket is also 2 liters, and easier to clean and manage additions to the solution such as oils and salts. Plus the surgical tube is longer. 30 bucks is the cheapest I've found.

A colema setup is expensive, but allows you to lie on a board over the toilet bowl so you don't have to get up off the floor to evacuate/release. And storage is a problem.

There is no proof that enemas or colonics cause weakness or dependency. You can do enemas daily during intense cleansing times quite safely, but otherwise should only need to do them if you haven't gone for two days or need to make up for holiday meals clogging your system.

I use a bucket because it's easy to clean, store, and I like lying on the ground where I can change positions and use my foot roller. For more info on enemas, please refer to the enema notes. :)

Foods that treat constipation:

http://www.tarlovcyst.net/foods_that_treat_constipation.htm

More on Colon Health, Hemorrhoids:

//www.curezone.org/forums/m.asp?f=461&i=12358

Dr. Jensen's book online

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