Bowel Cleansing is a HUGE subject. How much you do and exactly what you do depends on whether your bowels are still shaped okay or not. This first part will assume your colon is basically shaped okay.
When we talk about the bowels, we mean both the small and large intestine. It also involves the stomach and liver, because if they don’t do their jobs, the bowel’s functions are compromised.
The names are misleading. The small intestine is approximately 22 feet long. It is a thinner tube so it is called smaller. Because of how it is wrinkled, if spread out it would cover about a third of a football field.
The colon is approximately 6 feet long, but it is a thicker tube so is called the large intestine.
The small intestine is where most of digestion takes place. The colon is where all kinds of wastes end up – not just food, but also waste from the lymphatic system. The liver dumps bile and toxins into the small intestine via the common bile duct.
When the colon’s shape is compromised or fecal matter gets stuck somewhere, because of how nerves are inter-connected, this will indirectly cause problems in other parts of the body. Here’s a great diagram that illustrates this:
colon reflex points
When the colon is healthy, we have:
1. A waistline that is equal to or thinner than our chest
2. good overall posture with shoulders back
3. at least 1 BM a day, that may change its shape and length due to diet but is easy to pass, with only very occasional constipation when we eat wrong or drink too few fluids.
If we’re hunky linebackers and eat 3 or more large, fiber-rich meals a day, we really should have more than one BM the following day – or one exceptionally long one. But for people who eat about 2,200 calories a day or less, it’s common to only have one BM because all the meals “catch up” to each other overnight when digestion slows down.
Foods have various transit times, but ideally, you should eliminate all meals by the next morning. To make sure you are doing this, fast for a couple days on only liquid foods and see if you’re still having BMs. Then when you eat again, see how long it takes before your next BM. If it’s more than 24 hours, you’re constipated and have a compromised colon.
A textbook-perfect stool for a larger adult is over 10 inches long, 2 inches thick, well-formed but not totally compacted, eliminates easily. It may or may not float depending on how much veggie fiber is in it. If it is slick looking and floats, you have undigested fats and that’s not good. Any kind of brown color is acceptable. Green is usually okay. Certain foods will turn it odd colors. Beets usually come out still red. Yellow feces means fast transit times, as bile is yellow but tends to turn color during digestion. Most toxins are yellow or orange.
A bit of gas expelled with the feces is fine. Lots of gas in between elimination is not.