Subject: The Most Important Spring Cleaning You’ll Do This Spring

By:  Dr. Karen Yale, BA, DC

Imagine if when you took your garbage and recycling out, you left most of it on the front porch.  Only a couple crumpled napkins and an old spaghetti sauce bottle made it all the way to the curbside.  What would your front porch look like after several months?

Pretty ugly image – right?

Even worse, think about how many tasks – sorting the mail and cooking, for example - would become unthinkable because you couldn’t stand to take the old envelopes and onion skins out to the porch – there isn’t any room. 

Well, think of your colon as your front porch:  The exit way for your body’s unwanted waste.  Everything you put into your body goes through a careful sorting and processing system as it passes through your digestive tract.  And by the time you’ve gotten to your colon, it’s pretty much just the recycling and trash left over along with some water.  Your colon moves this out of you while absorbing precious water from the waste.

If your colon isn’t working right, it’s like your garbage-filled front porch: 

A few bits of waste get out, but the rest accumulates, which in turn gets in the way and makes more stuff accumulate.  Before long, your colon is no longer a smooth exit and the rest of your digestive system starts slowing down as well.

To keep your waste-removal system running smoothly, the prescription is simple:  Fiber, exercise and hydration.  Fiber adds necessary bulk to your digestive waste and keeps it soft.  It makes it easier for the muscles around your colon to squeeze and push your waste down and out.  When we eat too much processed food, we miss out on this digestive scrub brush. 

Another bonus:  fiber makes us feel full, which keeps our stomach from putting out the hormone ghrelin which signals the brain to look for our next meal. Water keeps things flowing and exercise keeps our body moving – every part of it.

In winter especially, our bodies naturally slow down in response to less daylight.  We exercise less, we eat more, snuggle on the couch with a good book or a favorite movie – we hibernate.  Well, just like the bear after its long hibernation, as we up our activity in the spring, the first thing we need to do is eliminate all that buildup from winter.  It’s time for one of the most important spring cleaning chores – cleaning up our colon.

A good fiber-rich diet, with a minimum of processed foods, is the best thing for keeping your colon feeling good.  But if you feel like you need a little extra help, psyllium husk fiber in a supplement form can do the job.

I like Botanic Choice’s #739 Colon Cleanse formula, which keeps it simple and effective.  It includes 1500 mg of psyllium husk, and they’ve added just a bit of the traditional digestive aid, gentian root 60 mg, which stimulates the secretion of gastric juices and helps with digestion.  Plus, the Slippery Elm (42 mg) helps soothe any inflammation of your digestive tract.

And when your digestive system gets back in gear, you can get back in gear – to do the rest of your spring cleaning.

Sources:

Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D., You:  The Owner’s Manual (New York: Harper Collins, 2005)