Flushed with success
Lucy Vickery
‘During 30 years as a practising herbalist I’ve cured myself of three terminal illnesses and I’ve done more colon cleanses than I can count,’ writes Martha Volchok, Master Herbalist, on her website ‘Colon Cleanse for Radiant Health’. This seductive albeit ambiguously phrased claim, accompanied by details of her fiveday internal cleansing kit and some alarming photographic evidence of purged intestinal debris, may seem somewhat extravagant, but it is echoed by many of the naturopathic persuasion. They believe that death begins in the colon and that up to 90 per cent of all diseases are caused by poorly functioning bowels.
The theory is that wolfing down the lowfibre, high-fat, sugar-laden diet prevalent in the West leads to a build-up of hardened mucus on the intestinal walls. According to Dr Bernard Jensen, in his book Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management, the accumulation can have the consistency of tyre rubber: ‘it’s that hard and black’. This toxic muck creates an environment that severely compromises the body’s ability to absorb nutrients, and can eventually lead to a host of physical complaints that range from the merely tiresome to the terminal. The list includes headaches, back pain, allergies, varicose veins, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and infertility. Cleansing the colon on a regular basis by colonic irrigation, for example, a procedure whereby it is flushed out with warm filtered water which dislodges this impacted waste — purges poisons, regulates pH balance, improves intestinal muscle tone and restores normal bowel function.
There may be no hard scientific evidence to support this thesis but there is plenty of the anecdotal variety. Once she had overcome her initial bashfulness, there was no stopping Sarah Monaghan, a travel writer and a veteran of the practice. ‘My eyes are brighter,’ she raved. ‘I’ve been swimming a hundred lengths a day, I need far less sleep and I hardly get any colds these days. Try it.’ In the end, motivated by a combination of hypochondriacal terror and an unsavoury curiosity, I did. After several weeks of procrastination, I found myself rounding the elegant Georgian sweep of London’s Park Crescent for an appointment with colonic hydrotherapist Victoria Cooper.
Buoyed by the prospect of radiant skin and an invincible immune system, I had set out with a spring in my step, but by the time I reached the tar-black doors of the Hale Clinic my pace had dwindled to a reluctant shuffle. As I climbed the stairs, I reminded myself that this was not some newfangled quackery; enemas and laxatives were used liberally by the ancient Egyptians. In 440 BC Herodotus observed of his fellows that ‘for three consecutive days in every month they purge themselves, pursuing health by means of emetics and drenches; for they think that it is from the food they eat that all sicknesses come to men’. What is more, daily coffee enemas are an essential component of the nutrition-based Gerson therapy, an alternative treatment for cancer and other degenerative diseases.
But sitting in the waiting area, flicking nervously through alternative lifestyle magazines, the words of Dr Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist and investigative reporter who runs the not-for-profit watchdog agency Quackwatch, rang in my ears. ‘It’s insane,’ he says. ‘Several outbreaks of serious infection have been reported, including one in which contaminated equipment caused amoebiasis in 36 people, six of whom died following bowel perfora tion. There have been cases of heart failure (from excessive fluid absorption into the bloodstream) and electrolyte imbalance.’ These disconcerting ruminations were interrupted by the singsong tones of Victoria Cooper, who beckoned me into her office and invited me to take a seat. Soothed by her matter-of-fact manner and clear-eyed gaze, I was able to take in my surroundings: lemon-coloured walls, a bag of liquorice perched on a wooden desk, crystals on the windowsill and a dark-blue vase filled with flowers. Out of the corner of my eye I could just about make out a bed that looked like the sort of examination couch you get in a doctor’s surgery. It was covered in a paper sheet and topped with three crisp white pillows and some small instrument-type objects wrapped in plastic.
I’m not sure what I had expected, but Victoria’s delicate features and finishingschool deportment seemed somehow at odds with the procedure she was about to perform. She took my blood pressure (reassuring), followed by a detailed medical history. Then, backed by a calming soundtrack of popular classical music, she took me through the procedure step by step. Explanation over, I was left alone to undress and put on a blue paper robe which was open at the back. This gave me an opportunity to look more closely at the tools on the couch: a plastic nozzle (a ‘speculum’, I later learned), a thin plastic tube, thicker concertina’d plastic tubing, some sort of Vaseline-type substance and a pair of latex gloves. On the wall to the left of the couch was a white, medicine cupboard-sized cabinet, a plastic funnel protruding from a hole cut out of the bottom.
Victoria returned after a few minutes and instructed me to take up a position on the couch, lying on my side with my legs bent and my back to her. Next, she hooked me up to the cabinet by inserting the nozzle (no sniggering at the back, please) and then connecting one end of the plastic tubing to the nozzle and the other to the funnel. When she had finished, I was instructed to shift on to my back, knees still bent, whereupon a tap was turned, unleashing a carefully controlled torrent of filtered, blood-temperature water. A warm and not unpleasant bloating sensation spread over my lower abdomen as the water rushed in. Then the tap was turned off and the water released. Victoria gave my stomach a gentle massage to help stubborn bits on their way. Throughout the procedure, which took about 30 minutes, she listened patiently and gave me advice on how to be kind to my colon. Every so often she would congratulate me on my impressive ‘evacuations’, transporting me back to triumphant times on the potty.
Although the Hale Clinic’s website reassures potential clients that their ‘modesty will be preserved at all times’ (which it was), I had steeled myself for embarrassment, and it came at the end, when Victoria packed me off to the loo. It was only a few yards down the hallway but involved an undignified sprint, blue robe flapping, and I could have sworn that I caught sight of what might have been Victoria’s next client in the waiting area down the corridor. But the worst part of all was the interminable Tube journey home, during which I was plagued by sinister rumblings in the nether regions that might, I worried, have been the precursor of some hideously spectacular delayed reaction.
My stomach was flatter for a few days after the treatment, and I think that it may have helped to instil some discipline in that sometimes unruly area of my anatomy, but I can’t say that I’ll be following in the footsteps of Diana, Princess of Wales, who swore by regular colonic irrigation treatments. If you are considering it, though and perhaps you should, the United Kingdom apparently tops the league of the world’s most constipated nations — then make sure you steer well clear of Dr V.E. Irons, a pioneer in colon-cleansing techniques who believes that his clients should be given an unforgettable lesson in the error of their clogged-up ways: ‘We will let them see, feel and even hold in their hands exactly what has been thickening, hardening and decaying in their colon for years.’
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