Get a naturopath or herbalist onto the topic of the importance of a healthy bowel and you could quite easily be there all day…. Suffice to say, if your lower bowel (colon) is all clogged up, it isn’t good for your health. In the simplest terms, your digestive tract is one long tube. The top half (stomach and small intestine) allow you to absorb nutrients from your food. The lower part (the large intestine or colon) reabsorbs water from the undigested mass of food left, ahead of you eliminating the waste products. Food is supposed to pass through our body in eight hours, with a bowel movement after each meal being a sign of ideal bowel health. Even if you “go” every day, you might be excreting a meal from several days (or weeks) ago. A sign that this may be the case for you is if your tummy gets quite bloated after you eat.

A good way to find out your “transit time” – how long food takes to pass through your digestive tract – is to do this: Eat a meal containing corn. Note the time and date of this meal. Don’t eat any more corn until the corn you ate reappears at the other end. Count up how long since you ate it. This is your transit time. Eight hours is excellent. If your transit time is more than this your bowel could do with cleanse at least once a year. Anything over 24 hours is worriesome and you need to take action to get it back on track. A long transit time leaves waste products in your bowel too long, and can lead to toxins being reabsorbed into your bloodstream – with your liver, kidneys, lymphatic system and skin left with the job of getting rid of them.

If your colon is not emptying properly, eventually this will affect the small intestine too. Low grade nausea and indigestion can be a symptom of this. Imagine a long narrow pipe. What happens if the bottom end gets clogged up? Does the top end start backing up too? If your small intestine, where you absorb nutrients, begins to clog up, no matter how much organic food or how many supplements you take, very little of the goodness they contain can be taken up by your body. This can lead to tiredness and lethagy.

In days past we used to eat a lot more wholegrain foods, which moved through our bowel better. We also were in the habit of regular fasting, something quite out of fashion these days, which is a shame because fasting gives your bowel a rest from digesting food, and gives it an opportunity to clean itself out. Fasting also allows the rest of your body to cleanse itself. It takes a lot of energy to digest food, and while you are fasting this energy can be used for cleansing and healing. Simple practices like fasting and cleansing are extremely powerful and we all need to be doing them more often.

Autopsies have shown that the average adult in western society has 6kg of undigested meat in their colon. Meat that is not grown organically often contains quite a bit of synthetic oestrogen. It goes without saying that this has the potential to disrupt your hormones if it sits in your body for any length of time. I call oestrogen dominance “the root of all (hormonal) evil”. Irregular, painful, heavy and absent periods can often be traced back to this single cause. As can a lot of fibrocystic breast lumps, prementrual breast tenderness, PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, early puberty, bad menopause and infertility. Much of my clinical practice involves reversing oestrogen dominance. A good bowel cleanse is always part of the solution.

A top of the line cleanse involves some fasting. Believe me when I say, its not as hard as you think it will be (and well worth the effort). Most of my clients have reported  glowing skin, improved vitality, a tendency to eat less (and more nutritious) food, reduced cellulite, and ongoing weight loss after doing this program.

My favourite bowel cleanse is ‘The Colon Cleansing Kit’ which contains Digestive Stimulator herbal capsules (to get your bowel moving three times a day), Toxin Absorber (to remove mucoid plaque build-up and old hardened faeces from the bowel wall), detailed instructions, a FAQ booklet, and a calender telling you exactly what to do each day. This makes it really easy follow, even if you have never done anything like this before.

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Gall Bladder Cleanse

An inflamed gall bladder is one whole world of pain, commonly being regarded as being 10 out of 10 (maximum) on the pain scale.

If you are prone to be cranky or irritable, or have a short fuse, tend to hold grudges, or resentment, or don’t tolerate fatty meals very well, these are indications your gall bladder may not be functioning as well as it could.

An ultrasound will show up whether you have gallstones, how big they are and exactly whereabouts in your gall bladder they are located.

Gallstones are not to be taken lightly, especially big ones and those that look like they could move (a doctor will be able to advise you on this).

If you just have small stones, or “gravel” you may like to consider a gall bladder cleanse.

There are a couple of ways to go about this. One is to see a herbalist who can give you a specific herb to take every day for about a year to dissolve any stones in your gall bladder. This herb is not available over the counter, but any qualified herbalist will have it on their shelf, along with other herbs to soothe your gall bladder in the meantime and reduce the likelihood of an acute attack. This is the slow and steady approach and best used for big stones that look like they might block the bile duct. A blocked bile duct leads to aforementioned pain and possibly the removal of your gall bladder.

If it is just gravel and sludge, you might like to try this time honoured approach, which I first discovered in a Hanna Kroeger book. Hanna was a very well known and respected herbalist in the USA who passed away several years ago, but whose herbal school continues on in Colarado. Hanna found this cleanse in a 17th century herb book. It exists in many slightly different variations across the globe and generations. In fact the ‘hill dwellers’ near where I live have a similar cleanse, but I personally find this one a little easier to stomach:

Day 1

8am – Take 300ml (8oz) organic apple juice, (no additives)

Then, take 600ml (16oz)  organic apple juice (no additives) at these times through the day:

10am

12md

2pm

4pm and

6pm

Eat no food at all this day.

Day 2

Repeat Day 1.

Then, at bedtime, take 150ml (4oz) of olive oil combined with hot lemon juice or hot apple juice.

Go to bed immediately.

The action normally starts about 4am when you will find yourself off to the bathroom and will find little green pebbles in your poo – from the size of a pinhead up to as big as a bird egg, or it may just look like green mud.

The apple juice dissolves and liquifies the old stagnant bile and gravel, and the olive oil moves all of it out.

You can also do this cleanse on the final night of the Colon Cleanse, because by that stage you will have had nothing but apple juice for 5 days, so why not get in there and clean out your gall bladder while you are at it?

Get a herbalist onto the topic of the importance of a healthy bowel and colon cleansing and you could quite easily be there all day. Suffice to say, if your lower bowel (colon) is all clogged up, it isnt good for your health. In the simplest terms, your digestive tract is one long tube. The top half (stomach and small intestine) allow you to absorb nutrients from your food. The lower part (the large intestine or colon) reabsorbs water from the undigested mass of food left, ahead of you eliminating the waste products. Food is supposed to pass through our body in eight hours, with a bowel movement after each meal being a sign of ideal bowel health. Even if you go every day, you might be excreting a meal from several days (or weeks) ago. A sign that this may be thecase for you is if your tummy gets quite bloated after you eat.

A good way to find out your transit time – how long food takes to pass through your digestive tract – is to do this: Eat a meal containing corn. Note the time and date of this meal. Dont eat any more corn until the corn you ate reappears at the other end. Count up how long since you ate it. This is your transit time. Eight hours is excellent. If your transit time is more than this your bowel could do with cleanse at least once a year. Anything over 24 hours is worriesome and you need to take actionto get it back on track. A long transit time leaves waste products in your bowel too long, and can lead to toxins being reabsorbed into your bloodstream – with your liver, kidneys, lymphatic system and skin left with the job of getting rid of them.

If your colon is not emptying properly, eventually this will affect the small intestine too. Low grade nausea and indigestion can be a symptom of this. Imagine a long narrow pipe. What happens if the bottom end gets clogged up? Does the top end start backing up too? If your small intestine, where you absorb nutrients, begins to clog up, no matter how much organic food or how many supplements you take, very little of the goodness they contain can be taken up by your body. This can lead to tiredness and lethagy.

In days past we used to eat a lot more wholegrain foods, which moved through our bowel better. We also were in the habit of regular fasting, something quite out of fashion these days, which is a shame because fasting gives your
bowel a rest from digesting food, and gives it an opportunity to clean itself out. Fasting also allows the rest of your body to cleanse itself. It takes a lot of energy to digest food, and while you are fasting this energy can beused for cleansing and healing. Simple practiceslike fasting and cleansing are extremely powerful and we all need to be doing them more often.

Autopsies have shown that theaverage adult in western society has 6kg of undigested meat in their colon. Meat that is not grown organically often contains quite a bit ofsynthetic oestrogen. It goes without saying that this has the potential to disrupt your hormones if it sits in your body for any length of time. I call oestrogen dominance the root of all (hormonal) evil. Irregular, painful, heavy and absent periods can often be traced back to this single cause. As can
a lot of fibrocystic breast lumps, prementrual breast tenderness, PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, early puberty, bad menopause and infertility. Much of my clinical practice involves reversing oestrogen dominance. A good bowel
cleanse is always part of the solution.

A top of the line cleanse involves some fasting. Believe me when I say, its not as hard as you think it will be (andwell worth the effort). Most of my clients havereportedglowing skin, improved vitality, a tendency to eat less (and more nutritious) food, reduced cellulite, and ongoing weight loss after doing this program.

My favourite bowel cleanse is ‘The Colon Cleansing Kit’ whichcontains Digestive Stimulator herbal capsules (to get your bowelmoving three times a day), Toxin Absorber (to remove mucoid plaque build-up and old hardened faeces from the bowel wall), detailed instructions, a FAQ booklet,and a calender telling you exactly what to do each day. This makes it really easy follow, even if you have never done anything like this before.