Colonic Irrigation must sound like the most weird, outrageous and taboo notion that anyone could ever consider. Just why on earth would anyone chose to have a pipe inserted into their rectum. I am the founder of Dublin Vitality Centre clinics and that was certainly my own thought, when I first heard of the treatment many years ago. For me the treatment is as fascinating at the peoples stories whom I have come upon over the years. Here is my own story and some other notable people who have crossed my path over the years and who have benefitted from this wonderful treatment.
I was twenty five before I ever even thought about my bowel. I had no idea how often you were supposed to go for a number two. I had no idea what was considered normal. And more to the point, I could not care less. I remember my mother, a psychotherapist, mentioning that a certain therapy involved talking to your body so that it could heal. She mentioned that some people even talked to their bowel and told it that they loved it. That was the most way out, wacky thing I had ever heard of. "Who wants to love their bowel?" I thought. "Best not think, never mind talk about such things." That was my approach to gut health. And so such notions and ideas, were quickly pushed to the back of my mind and my focus shifted back to the things that did concern me, namely clothes, partying, design, finding a husband (still looking) socialising and all things aesthetic, pleasing to the eye and beautiful. Back then I was a designer working in one of the most glamorous head offices in Dublin. My busy role as In-House Graphic Designer for Irelands leading luxury retailer, Brown Thomas, left little time to consider anything less. That's when I began to experiment with diets and become very interested in food.
It was also around the same time that a colleague shared with me her embarrassment about using the bathrooms located just downstairs but within our glamorous marketing suite located on Grafton Street, Dublin swankiest shopping area, in case she may be overheard making a splash, that I confided my own toilet habits. "What's the problem?" I announced with characteristic Virgo practicality. "Why not just wait until you get home. I mean, who goes to the bathroom more than once a week or something. Just hold onto it." That was my advice. It was then that I noticed the expression of horror spread over my friends face. "There's something wrong with you." She said, the look of utter disbelief still etched into her pretty features, now crumpled in furrows of despair. "That's not right." She said shaking her head into her soup. I often remember the look on her face. I think that my entire life was leading up to that awkward silence that made me consider the strange workings of my inner body. And very soon after it, as if the master hands of time, had struck a monumental cord, coincidentally, my bowel began to act up. Like so many people, I was to meet later in my career as a functional gut health nutritional therapist, I had managed to "switch off" the urge to go by ignoring my bowel for so long and putting off the call of nature. Then one day, around the same time as that blessed moment of enlightenment, my bowel started to make itself known again.
The symptoms that I experienced were bloating, constipation and general fatigue. But that was nothing new to me. I could recall dozens of childhood and adult holidays feeling heavy and bloating. The moment I got on a flight, my bowel stopped working. Things became more pronounced as I moved into my menstrual cycle years. So I was pretty used to feeling heavy and bloated. But this time, it was the bladder that was screaming for attention. Ongoing urinary tract infections turned into kidney infections turned into insomnia turned into anxiety. After an almost lethal anaphylactic shock reaction to a common UTI anti-biotic, I was warned by the night visiting GP that I must never that that drug again. If I did, it could be the last thing I would ever do. I paid attention. I wanted to stay clear of pharmaceuticals. But still had no idea the cause of these ongoing issues. I went to various doctors, physio therapists, massage therapists, acupuncturists, reiki healers, hypnotherapists and nutritionists. I tried yoga. Exercise seemed to help a little but I never got to the bottom of things. And of all the doctors, healers and alternative practitioners I visited, not one of them ever asked me one very simple question. "How often do you go to the bathroom?". "How often does your bowel move?". Such a fundamental basic thing. But nobody seemed one bit interested in the humble bowel. Even today , the medical profession seems to look down on the bowel to such an extent that in my tens years as a functional gut health therapist, I have been told many times by people with symptoms similar to mine that they feel very much like they are being dismissed when they speak of such things. It is as if the gut does not matter. You are not sick enough. I always add to that one word. You are not sick enough, yet. In 2009, I discovered colonic hydrotherapy. Combined with a strategy of plant based living and gut flora rehabilitation probiotics, I changed my own health. I pioneered Irelands first Functional Gut Health Clinic. I trained in nutrition, colonic hydrotherapy and exercise therapy. I studied the bodies energy systems and qualified as an Aura Soma practitioner because I believe that we are three dimensional beings and that blocks in our energy paths have a more profound impact upon us than we can truly understand. I then trained to become a trainer of colonic hydrotherapy and began providing the gut health packages that worked for me to many others in my Dublin based clinic. All of the anecdotal stories in this book come from real people that I have met over the years. I have seen incredible changes in attitudes of people relating to their gut health. When I first began to work in this field, there was no such thing as IBS. Nowadays, it is treated pharmaceutically with anti-depressants. That's because approximately 95% of our serotonin, the bodies main feel good hormone is produced by the bowel. In my clinic, I have seen rock hard matter leaving the body. I have seen industrial plumbing blocked by the "normal" contents of ordinary persons bowel. I have seen peoples mood alternate from insane anger to calm happiness and relief in the course of an hour. I believe that the future of medicine and our happiness is very much linked to a better understanding of gut health. I doubt that even few have seen what I have seen coming out of the bowel. During the course of colonic hydrotherapy, the entire five foot colon is hydrated and cleared. What I have seen has kept me fascinated for over 10 years. The changes in people who undergo functional gut health programmes, is astonishing. That is why I decided to write this book. I want you to connect with your gut. We are one third gut. Why on earth do we think its OK to ignore this massive part of ourselves. Its not. Its time to cultivate gut health and raise the profile of the humble bowel so that we put it on equally if not more important footing than diet and exercise. In my clinics I have met thousands and thousands of people who suffer with gut health issues. These range from common IBS symptoms like constipation, loose stools, cramping, gas, bloating to skin conditions like psoriasis, eczema, acne. There are those wise enough to seek solutions to yeast issues like Candida in the gut. There are even those who take diagnoses into their own hands and choose to follow alternative home treatments instead of drugs. Invariably these include colonics and enemas and so I have had the very privileged positions of meeting and observing some pretty incredible things. One such case was a young man whom I will call Paul.
Paul was a young man who attended my clinic for colonic hydrotherapy a number of years back. He said that he had lead a very indulgent life and had partied hard for many years but had since put all that behind him and was convinced that colonics and a plant based diet were the way forward. He for years he had dipped in and out of living a relatively healthy lifestyle and then binging heavily. He explained that his drinking and substance abuse benders could go on for the entire weekend at times and were often accompanied by the taking of recreational drugs and smoking cannabis. He went to music festivals where for days and sometime weeks, he would hardly eat, would stay up all night with his friends on stimulants. After these excursions, he would come often came back feeling so low and depressed that he feared his bad habits had triggered some psychosis or latent mental illness. He could not face going outside, even to the local shop. Instead he stayed indoors in a darkened room and watched Netflix on his laptop. The only way to calm himself down was to smoke more cannabis and the only people he would see were his smoking buddies. This pattern continued for many years and eventually Paul attempted suicide just two days after a major weekend of revelling. By now he had a son. When he found himself admitted to a psychiatric ward and being prescribed pharmaceutical drugs that he described as having a "zombie" affect on his brain, he decided that he would get himself out of hospital, away from drugs and turn a corner. He didn't want his son seeing him in such a state. But this time, he swore he would be making his changes permanently. It was at the start of this health venture that I met Paul. A few years passed and one day I received a booking from Paul. He wanted to have more colonics. When he arrived he was so thin and gaunt. He told me that he has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis but being the strong willed character that I had come to know, he was not taking that diagnosis on. In the time, since we had last met, Paul had educated himself in various aspects of natural health and he believed that the MS symptoms were related to toxicity. He had been on a water fast for the past 30 days in an attempt to reboot his immune system and was a following a programme of his own. That explained his grey hound like appearance, I thought. He said that in the past few days he had sensed a heaviness in his lower abdominal and felt that, even though no food had passed his lips for 30 days now, there was some fecal matter in his bowel. He had the sense of something "breaking away". I was not so convinced but what I witnessed changed my mind. Within 20 minutes, the 1 meter tube that allows you to view the contents of the bowel as it passed away into the sewage, became full and clogged with pure black matter. The colour was like nothing I had seen before. It was a black as coal. The matter continued to come away for a further 20 minutes. Time after time , Paul released more and more. I could not believe it. It seemed to defy the laws of the body. As Paul filmed the event on his mobile, ready to post online or share with his friends, I could only stand there, aware that as much as I knew about the bowel and gut, there really was more to know. I believe that the dry impacted hard matter inside Pauls colon was adhered to the walls like lime scale on the pipes of an old plumbing system. In my opinion, it had taken 30 days of hydration with water for that matter to become soaked. But during the colonic, it also took a further 20 minutes to soak that dried out clay so that it eventually could break off and flow away. A number of weeks later, Paul returned for his next colonic. This time, his face looked bright and he seemed to have gained weight. He said that he had been cleared of MS by his doctors. He believed that the deep impacted lining that had been on the walls of his bowel was residual toxicity from his days of partying. It was his opinion that the removal of this matter had saved his life.
If you are wondering why nobody told you this before, you are not alone. Unfortunately, gut health practices and colonics are the highest level of wellness and preventative health and only those who make it their business to stay informed, are aware of. Its no coincidence that royals like Lady Diane and too many celebrities to mention have spoken about colonics and gut health. Even, in Egyptian times, it was the royals and elite who underwent colonic hydrotherapy. In ayurvedic practices, it was the enlightened ones who sought such practices. Jesus himself recommends it. (Check out The Book Of The Essenes, to hear what he says on the subject). So it's not surprising that a man who allegedly lived on a diet of fried Mars bars and doughnuts was in the dark about such matters. According to his own personal doctor, Elvis died of constipation. He had become so dependent on laxatives that his bowel could not move by itself. (remember the peristalsis that we mentioned earlier on). When the bowel is completely impacted, it is dilated to its full capacity. It held out by solid fecal matter and the walls cannot contract or relax to move the matter along. Laxatives no longer work at that point. Word to the wise. Don't think that laxatives offer a long term solution to keep your sluggish bowel moving. They don't. They eventually cause the muscle to become weak and slack. Colonic hydrotherapy uses water in much the same was as aqua aerobics does to gently create resistance in your gut, which can retrain the muscle to work by itself.
Colonics Could Have Saved Elvis " According to Dr Nichopoulos, the autopsy found Elvis’s colon to be five to six inches in diameter, compared to an average of two to three inches. And rather than the standard four to five feet long, Elvis's colon was eight to nine feet." Daily Mail Online. Just how was it that nobody thought to ask Elvis when was the last time he went to the toilet. Was it that he died of embarrassment? I believe so. With all those friends and adoring fans around him, I guess toilet talk just wasn't on the table. And look where that got him. Fat and dead at 42. So what is worse? If I could speak to Elvis, I this would be my advice to him. "Give a thought to your gut and undergo some cleansing colonic hydrotherapy treatment. It will make you feel absolutely fantastic. Keeping gut health problems to yourself and not talking about the bowel, only makes it worse. It will not get better by itself." It is no coincidence that people who clean their teeth have less dental health issues. Most of you would not go one day without dental hygiene. You would not travel without a toothbrush. If you did you would feel plaque on your teeth and you would be aware of a bad taste in your mouth. Imagine what is happening on the other side of the tube. Because your bowel is part of the same tube as your mouth. That is why halitosis (bad breath) often comes from constipation. You should give the same attention and thought to your bowel as you do to your teeth. Get it into your head. Colonic hydrotherapy is probably the best thing you will ever do for your gut health. If you are well, you will benefit greatly from this incredible life changing treatment at Vitality Centre clinics.
If you are interested in reading more about Gut Health, we offer a FREE book by author and founder of Vitality Centre clinics, Frances Flannery. Lets Talk About Happiness - The Ultimate Guide To Gut Health - is for anyone who wishes to learn how this humble organ has a profound and major influence on overall health and is intrinsically linked to mood.
