In the natural health community, there are a number of regimens and protocols that are neither natural nor health-promoting and yet are aggressively endorsed by the community at the expense of our health. Many of these are around speeding up the elimination of waste such as laxative herbs, enemas, and colonics. Today I would like to talk a little about these tremendously harmful practices.
Elimination is a subject that can be taboo to talk about and as such, we end up with a lot of harmful ideas about what is needed to eliminate regularly and how often we need to be eliminating waste. Like most other things we want to run before we walk. If we have been dealing with constipation we want it fixed right now and that opens us up to harmful habits and remedies which keep us trapped in the cycle of never healing our digestive system.
“Enemas. juices, roughage, and other substances or practices do not result in a pure (unpolluted) healthy body. Health is the normal state unless toxicosis and disease are caused by anti-vital practices and foods.“ Marti Fry, “Why Herbs are Harmful”
Enemas & Colonics
The only place water is designed to enter the body is through the mouth. Putting water in parts of the body where it doesn’t belong is an interference with normal body processes. When we interfere with normal body processes we are immediately creating disease, because disease is the lack of the ability of any part of the body or any cells to process normally.
Health can only be achieved when the conditions of health are put into place. We cannot undertake a habit that would injure a healthy body and expect that habit to improve a weakened or sick body.
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The tissues of our colon are extremely delicate. They were only designed to handle the end-of-the-line waste. The stomach, as the first line of defense, will expel by vomiting anything that is too harsh to go through the system. Then the bacteria and stomach acid break down the toxins. By the time waste has entered the colon much work has been done to it.
When we flush water up an exit-only orifice we wash out the bacteria, we disturb the mucus put in place to protect the walls of the digestive tract, we bruise and injure the tissues and with all of this damage, the ability of the colon to perform its duties is further decreasing. Rather than the enema or colonic helping to clean it is adding far more waste to the system, it is damaging the tissues making them less able to work normally and perhaps most importantly it is slowing down healing and extending our suffering immeasurably.
Coffee or Herb Enemas
As if the standard water-only enema is not damaging enough, humans have now turned to forcing harsh poisons up their exit-only orifice for even greater stimulation. When a substance is toxic entering through the normal entrance the body at least has defensive mechanisms to protect itself from the enervating substance. When these same poisons are forced into an area that was never designed for a liquid to enter, the body has no inbuilt defensive mechanism to protect it. The damage done is magnified considerably.
A poison entering an exit-only hole is no less a poison, it is an even greater poison. The stimulating effect of the herbs and coffee to force elimination is not an effect of the coffee or the herb as we will discuss below, they are the response created by the body as a life-saving measure to rapidly remove poison in order to keep the organism alive.
Herbs and Laxatives
Herbs are inert. This means they are incapable of taking action. The body takes all action against substances. Therefore, when a reaction occurs after the ingestion of a substance to create a rapid elimination we know that the body is taking that action. When the body initiates a rapid elimination it is because the body has been poisoned. Therefore laxatives and herbs with laxative properties are poisons that injure the body and force the body to rapidly eliminate them in order to survive.
Diarrhea is a life-saving effort, as such, it is a tremendous drain on our nerve energy. If we are already constipated, which is an energy drain, and then we apply poison to the body to expel constipation by inducing diarrhea, then we thoroughly exhaust the body causing enervation.
Enervation
It is enervating to take enemas or colonics, and enervation leads to toxemia and disease. We often mistake the euphoria following enervation as a health benefit.
“The symptoms of enervation that people experience after an enema or colonic are usually mistaken for symptoms of well-being. This is a common error, but one that needs to be corrected if health is to be obtained. An analogy can be made between enemas and drugs. Amphetamines, also know as “uppers,” definitely give a feeling of well-being. Yet, they do not bring health and, in fact, are extremely detrimental to the health. Just because something makes you feel good (at first) does not mean it is good for you. It could be that it’s stimulating and enervating you and setting the stage for disease.”
Enervation is the first step in disease. Nerve energy is generated by our bodies to handle the normal processes of life. When our nerve energy is stimulated by encounters with poisons or health-draining habits our body is not able to eliminate at the rate required to keep toxins from overtaking the body. At this point, the toxins begin to accumulate leading to toxicosis. Enervation is the first stage of disease. Toxicosis is the second stage of disease.
When we employ enervating habits like ingesting toxic herbs to stimulate elimination or using enemas and colonics to clean out our bowels the body becomes impaired. Because of this impairment less nerve energy is generated, and all of the body’s functions become impaired, including the elimination of endogenous metabolic wastes and exogenous poisons, leading to the second stage of disease.
If we are employing habits that enervate the body we keep our body from ever reaching a state of health. We are precluding health from existing within our body through our interventions which we think are cleaning our body. We are immeasurably extending our own suffering.
“We do not advocate the use of enemas because they are enervating and usually result in weakening of the muscle wall of the colon due to stretched and detached musculature.” – TC Fry
As we continue to keep ourselves trapped in this cycle of draining the nerve energy so elimination is slowed, followed by enervation with laxatives, enemas, and colonics, we are draining all energy from our eliminative systems. This problem can only be corrected by stopping all enervating practices and allowing rest. Our digestive tract is muscle contracting. If you ran a marathon today you would need to rest tomorrow. If you are constantly whipping your digestive muscles into work, they will need full rest to heal. They will NEVER heal if you keep using enemas, laxatives, herbs, or colonics because you are never allowing the muscle to rest.
Stimulants are subtly undermining
“So insidious in their action are all stimulants that the unwary are surprised by finding themselves more or less slaves to them when they are not conscious of using them to excess.
“The coffee headache is an example. A time comes when it is not convenient to get the usual breakfast cup. A dullness or languid feeling appears three or four hours after breakfast, that cannot be accounted for until some friend suggests that perhaps it is due to missing the coffee; but the victim is not convinced until he proves it true by trying it out several times. Some develop a headache, and still others are troubled with gaping or yawning and a feeling of oppression, due to the heart innervation brought on from the use of coffee.
“At first stimulus gently remove awareness – remove tire and actaute the mind and body. It should be obvious to reasoning minds that borrowed activity must be paid for sooner or later.“
“Using nerve energy in excess of normal production brings on enervation. Few people waste nerve-energy in one way only. Food is a stimulant. Overeating is overstimulating. Add to this excess one or two other stimulants – coffee or tobacco – excessive venery, overwork and worry, and one subject to the amount of drain of nerve energy will become decidedly enervated. Elimination falls far short of requirements; consequently toxin accumulates in the blood. This adds a pronounced auto-toxin stimulation to that coming from overstimulating habits, and completes a vicious circle. This complex stands for a disease producing Toxemia, which will be permanent except as toxin crises – so-called acute diseases – lower the amount of toxin, again to accumulate and continue until the habits that keep the body enervated are controlled. Perfect health cannot be established until all enervating habits have been eliminated.” John Tilden, Toxemia Explained
The body does its own cleaning of its internal parts.
Human hubris tends to lead us into paths of destruction. We determine that the body requires our intervention and in following that logic we repeatedly injure the body with our attempts to “help” or to “clean” or “to speed up detox”.
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The body’s infinite intelligence knows when to eliminate. You cannot control elimination without creating disease in your body. If the body has slowed elimination it is because the body requires the elimination to be slow. It is not a mistake the body is making. If you have put the conditions of health into place, eliminating all enervating habits then you know the body will return to normal function when enough burden has been eliminated. If you have not eliminated all of the obstructions to health then you cannot expect health to be present. There are no shortcuts, no magic fixes, and no ways to undo the damage of health-deteriorating practices through more health-deteriorating practices.
“On its own, our inner wisdom will establish the necessary priorities, determine how these may best be addressed, lay out the plan, the ways and means, with exact directions and specifications; and then address each in its own manner and at the appropriate time. We are required only to provide the tools, then step aside and watch the magic within unfold.” – T.C Fry, Life Science Course Lesson 89
