Day 11     Call Roto-Rooter???

Since I do not know the condition of your colon, I will not even begin to tell you what to do. And I might add, that I wouldn't tell you what to do even if I knew your situation. I might suggest, or tell you what I have done, but all our bodies are unique and no one knows your body better than you. Hopefully, you are fine, your digestive system is fine, your red beet color came through in 24 hours, and you have no known diseases and you rarely, if ever, get sick. (By the way if you are not fond of beets, you can eat a can or ear of corn.  Our bodies do not digest corn, so you will eventually see it in your poop) .Good health is the goal. But I can promise you one thing, constipation will hit everyone sooner or later. Since you know that water, real fruits and vegetables naturally leads to good, regular bowel movements, and you are doing that, hopefully when you do get constipated you will ask yourself a few questions and correct it as soon as possible. Did I eat foods that are known to negatively impact the colon? Did I eat more than 3-4 oz of  meat (especially red meat)? Did I eat a lot of refined carbohydrates---mainly sweets, and breads? Did I eat refined foods in general---those is boxes or bags? Did I eat fast foods? Did I eat dairy products, especially cheese? Fried foods? There are even a few foods that are healthy but can cause constipation---bananas, (although most health advocates  do not recommend bananas because they are high glycemic and will raise your blood sugar), and nuts are also very good for you, but too many will stop you up.  A small handful a day is about all you need. At this point you may want to make a list of what you ate the last three days. Keep this list until the next time you are constipated and compare.






Now if you know you need some unstopping, you can Roto-Rooter yourself. I hope you know enough about me now to know that I would never go buy an over the counter laxative. It strips the colon of good and bad bacteria, and overuse of laxatives will cause your body to alter its natural ability to eliminate food as it was designed, because it keeps your body from "knowing" when it is time to have a bowel movement. You can actually get addicted to them or at least addicted to the good feeling of an empty stomach. How do I know this?  You guessed it. I use to take laxatives on a regular basis, every time I got constipated, and that was a lot, considering I was eating a SAD diet. Nobody likes that stuffed feeling, and I could temporarily feel good, but you know---it all came back!!!




Depending on your situation, it may be as simple as adding fiber to your diet to get it all moving. Before I started eating a good diet,  I started with just dry bran from the health food store. This worked pretty good, but I dreaded drinking it every day. I later found psyllium husks from the health food store. This was easier to swallow and they actually come in pills--much easier to swallow-- and I could also add this better to other foods--juice, smoothie's, regular foods that I cooked like oatmeal, beans---anything really, because it does not change the flavor of the food. So like with a lot of things, I went whole hog and bought 25 pounds of it because it was so much cheaper that way. After about the 3rd 25 pound bag, I learned a better way. I still have some of the last bag, and you may remember the recipe I gave you for the green drink I told you that I put a small amount of psyllium husks but would not be adding it when it was gone? Well waste not- want not. I don't waste food. But actually I have found something much better and a lot more nutritious---chia seeds and ground flax seeds. I put them in all of my vegetable smoothies. You can sprinkle these on salads or any food you fix. They have kind of a nutty flavor.





If this fixes you, be thankful. It started me on the road to having a bowel movement just about every day. I felt good about that because I have been known to have as few as 2 a week or about every three days. But I now know all about a bloated stuffed colon (evidenced by belly fat ) and I realized I needed to do more to get a healthy colon. If a colon is healthy, this is how it works. You eat food that goes into the stomach ( where the acid breaks down the food),then into the small intestine (where most nutrients are absorbed)  and then into the large intestine ( where the food that was undigested in the small intestine gets stored). Now the lining of the colon is home to more than 500 forms of healthy bacteria that can digest some forms of fiber in a way that your small intestine cannot. The fiber as it moves along absorbs water which moves the food along and then the colon is responsible for absorbing the water back into the body.  Voila---a healthy regular bowel movement after every meal. The colon is in four parts, and the sigmoid colon (right before the rectum) is where we begin to realize there could be a problem with the way we are eating. The fecal matter gets stuck ---constipation!!! And if it happens often enough it gets backed up into the descending colon located above the sigmoid colon, and begins to hide in the pockets of the colon where it can stay for years if not flushed out. This is where the big problem begins.






The size of the sigmoid colon is about 2.5 inches in diameter. I have read cases where this was stretched up to 12 inches.  This is extreme, but think about how this happens. We get constipated, but we don't stop eating, so what does the new food that comes in do? It starts stacking up, and stacking up, and starts to stretch the size of the colon like filling up a water balloon. Now sometimes our body will naturally take care of this by sending diarrhea. If this happens, thank God, and let it flow. This is his way of "fixing" it, and I would never run to the store to buy an over the counter pill to stop the diarrhea. Only chronic diarrhea is serious, and this is another way to telling our bodies that something is wrong. If diarrhea does not come, there may be another simple fix-- an enema---the way our parents and grandparents did it (if you are old enough to remember). The hot water bottle, as we called it ( because it served a duel purpose with an additional cap), actually hung in our bathroom on a nail. And the truth of the matter is, it was probably not used very much because that was the day of natural wholesome foods. The unprocessed, toxic, and  fast foods were not as available as they are today. I actually remember the first time my parents ever took me to a sit down restaurant. I was a teenager and it was at a Morrison's Cafeteria. I also remember my first fast food--a Krystal 10 cent burger. We ate home cooked meals generally fresh from the garden.




So what can you do if adding the fiber is not enough to help you have multiple bowel movements a day--basically every time you eat-- and you feel like you need a colon cleanse before you begin to eat healthy.  You can try to do a colon cleanse that can be purchased in nearly every store. I have tried them. They are expensive and are not very effective long range. Your story may be different. You would be a lot better off to do an enema.  It accomplishes about the same thing. It empties the sigmoid part of the colon and maybe a little further up the colon, but it is a temporary . My greatest success has come from fasting---a total water fast, or a detox food cleanse, both which requires commitment on your part. It just depends on how serious you are about your health. It lasts for two weeks and results are an increased energy, weight loss, belly fat shrinkage and you feel so good and it makes you want to start you on the road to healthy eating.


Here is one example that I know works and it can be tweaked to fit your taste. For this you will need a juicer. The juice recipe here is called Super 7!! So juice the following things.  The amount you juice of each fruit or vegetable, will be up to your taste and the amount of juice you want. This is all you will be eating each day for 14 days. If you find you can't possibly go without eating some solid food, don't beat yourself up, eat very small amounts of fruits and vegetables but NO bread, dairy, meats or sweets. This is where you could also add psyllium husks. If you stick it out, you will be surprised with the results. Health experts say you should do this every six months just to stay ahead of the disease game.


Juice: carrots, apples, beets, cucumbers, celery, lemons, ginger
 Now anyone of the first 5 can be juiced and you can have it alone, or you can combine two, three, four or five of them. The more you have, the more nutritious the drink. But you may want to vary the taste so you won't get tired of the same taste every day.  This is only a suggestion. There are literally hundreds of juice cleanses out there with varying numbers of ways and days to do the cleanse.

 I personally like adding berries to mine--blueberries, blackberries or raspberries. They do not add juice, but will add flavor.


Just keep in mind that a diseased colon leads to diseases of other organs. They all are in the same area and touch each other and they all need cleansing. We will cover these later, and also how the toxins and bad bacteria get to the other organs from the colon.