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Radio Interview: Promoting Health through Colon Hydrotherapy

In this hour-long radio interview, Kristina Amelong addresses the following colon cleansing issues and more:

Does the body cleanse itself?
Is colon cleansing only about removing stool from the colon?
Why not just use psyllium?
How do I improve my immunity with colon cleansing?
Why don't medical doctors guide us with our detox programs?
What does the scientific literature report about using enemas?
Does colon cleansing perforate the colon? What does the scientific literature say about the cause of perforation?
Does regular colon cleansing cause a dependency?
How often is optimal to cleanse my colon?
How can I improve my prostate health using enemas?

LISTEN TO RADIO INTERVIEW [no longer available]

The Heart of Wellness airs each Tuesday at 1:00pm Central Time on WDRT Community Radio, 91.9 FM, in Viroqua, Wisconsin.

Radio Interview Transcript

Introducer: Good morning and welcome to the Heart of Wellness, a program about pathways to better health and wellbeing with chiropractor Dr. Paul Grenier and educator and researcher Prudence Tippins.

Today's guest on Heart of Wellness is certified colon hydrotherapist and certified herbalist Kristina Amelong. Today's topic is promoting health through colon hydrotherapy. Here to start the discussion are our co-hosts, Prudence and Paul.

Paul: Wow we didn't get any smart remark from our man. What's going on? We don't even know how to start a show without that.

Prudence: (laughing) This is a big topic, I think. Don't switch off your radios. This is an important topic and I think you're going to find some surprises in our discussion today.

Paul: Surprises, yes.

Prudence: Yes, and happy surprises actually. Paul, it's time for you and I both to come out… as… colon cleansers.

Paul: We are.

Prudence: We are both colon cleansers.

Paul: I mean, definitely, I've been doing it for almost 20 years. I think I have come out before, have you not?

Prudence: Well, not on this show (laughs).

Paul: OK, there you go. It is a down and dirty job, but it is amazing what it does for your life.

Prudence: Yeah.

Paul: I mean, there's just no doubt about it. It should be, ah, it's like an oil change. We should be doing this quite often. But we'll get into it, real deep. (laughs)

Prudence: (laughing) Yeah, we've been teasing each other with puns all morning, so we'll see how many of those come out. Come out? (both laugh) OK. So, Kristina, welcome to our show and thank you for being here.

KA: You're very welcome and thank you for having me.

Prudence: Of course. I'm going to start right off and ask you why we should be concerned with the health of our colon?

KA: I will answer that question by saying, why should we be concerned with the health of our bodies? There are over 80,000 toxic chemicals in our environment and a lot of these end up in the body as persistent organic pollutants and other toxins. The body just doesn't clean itself. If you look at why people are against colon hydrotherapy and colon cleansing, the literature from Dr. Oz and other doctors that are talking about the colon cleanse, especially now with The Strange Addiction TV show coming out, is that the body cleans itself, and it's just not true. If you do a comprehensive search on the Internet and in the scientific literature, you see that it's not true. And so, the question becomes, how do we cleanse the body from all that we are exposed to that's harmful to our tissues.

Paul: So, I need to start out right away here, cause I've always said that in all my sharing and educating, that we are a self-cleansing organism. I've always said that we've just been overloaded with such a massive amount of toxins like you're talking about, 80,000 toxins, and most of these have come up in the last 50-100 years, so my understanding is that we just need help with it, that we don't, that over time, just like an engine, you know, an engine has an oil filter and an air filter, but it needs to be changed, the oil needs to be changed. So is this new information that has come out that I don't know about, that our body doesn't clean itself? That would be hard for me to accept, and this is why: I believe there's a superior intelligence that developed us, and so, you know, this innate wisdom within us that at least knows what to do, we just need assistance. Can we get some clarification on that?

KA: Absolutely, I completely agree with what you've just said. The body cleans itself every moment of every day. The liver, through urine, through sweat, these sorts of methods, but it is about the amount of toxins that we are now exposed to.

Paul: OK. So it's just the total overload, so in our life we need some sort of outside assistance in order for us to stay clean and to stay healthy and to stay disease free.

KA: Absolutely.

Paul: So that's the basic premise we're starting on. OK. So from there, colon cleansing, again to answer that question, why is that so important to our health? Why colon cleansing? This is what I get when I talk about colon cleansing around here: they say, “well, I have three, four bowel movements a day, I'm doing fine.”

KA: It's not just about removing stool from the colon. For instance, let's look at the rates of cancer and what kind of cancers men have. The number one cancer is prostate cancer and then the number 3 cancer is colon cancer so right there those statistics are telling us that, and probably a lot of those people have regular bowel movements, so those statistics are telling us that something is going on that's not being addressed by just moving the bowels on a regular basis. So, the question becomes, how can we bring those rates of cancer down and improve people's quality of life? I find clinically - through the anecdotal evidence - and through the scientific research - that colon cleansing is an effective therapeutic choice, along with eating the right diet and doing saunas and drinking water. In a world with these rates of cancer, it is often best to use all the methods of assisting the body to cleanse.

Prudence: So, people are often shocked when they hear of such a thing, when they hear the idea of colon cleansing and what it entails, and, you know, normal reaction might be, I'll just take laxatives or I'll just take an herbal cleanser to clear out my colon. Does that kind of therapy have the same effect as colon hydrotherapy?

KA: Well, yes and no. It depends on the individual and it depends on what's being used. No in the sense that enemas, by far, are really the finest source of moving out stool and toxins from the body; enemas and colon hydrotherapy just do a fabulous job. There's lot's of problems that come along with laxative use, especially if you want to do it often enough to remove the kind of toxins that we're in contact with now. If you use something like psyllium which will improve, for most people, not everyone, the amount of stool that's moved out of the body, you can also run into psyllium sensitivity, you can run into irritating the gut, you can run into obstructions, and I've just found over the 16 years that I've been using this tool myself, as well as working with people internationally and locally, that this tool reliably helps people improve the quality of their lives and improve their health. And, there are other problems, for instance, with milk thistle, many people actually have sensitivity to it; senna, if you look on the internet there's a lot of research about how it's irritating to the liver.

Prudence: OK, so maybe then colon cleansing is safer.

KA: Colon cleansing is absolutely safer than any other method of regular cleansing.

Prudence: So, what are we talking about when we're talking about colon cleansing? You mentioned enemas?

KA: Enemas or colon hydrotherapy; they're great used in conjunction. We're talking about simply putting a therapeutic solution into the colon enough so that you can clear out the entire colon, improve the electrolyte balance of the colon, help that wonderful biomass of bacteria that live in the colon, improve immunity by using therapeutic substances in the colon.

Prudence: Like herbal combinations?

KA: Well, a good quality water to start with, and then there's lot's of choices. Sea salt, for instance, helps to improve the electrolyte balance of the colon, and essential oils help boost the immunity of the colon. For instance, Frankincense is going to help people with prostate issues to reduce prostate inflammation and therefore reduce the chances of prostate issues like BPH and prostatitis, prostate cancer. And then the coffee enema, which is probably the most famous, improves the functioning of the liver, helps the body produce Glutathione S-transferases (GST), which are a family of enzymes involved in detoxification. These powerful free-radical-quenching enzymes assist your liver to more effectively detoxify your entire body.

Prudence: Oh, OK, so there are all types of things that can happen with colon hydrotherapy. I didn't actually know about those options.

KA: My goal is to get these tools to people who need them and it's tremendous what can happen using enemas, colon hydrotherapy. I want to point out that the scientific literature is not massive in terms of using colon cleansing, it's actually sort of – there's like a smoke screen around this issue in the medical community, but if you really figure out how to frame your questions, you can find a lot of scientific literature that actually supports the use of enemas and colon cleansing as an important therapeutic tool. For example, I'm looking at the International Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology article right now and it's about an inflammatory bowel disease, and right here, 2005, “combined oral and enema treatment with Pentasa (which is a pharmaceutical) is superior to oral therapy alone in patients with ulcerative colitis.” (http://gut.bmj.com/content/54/7/960) It's a randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled study. So, my point is that, if your willing to sort of go at this at an indirect angle, because there isn't the scientific research to back up the colon therapy, it just isn't there. There aren't the randomized controlled studies. But again, if you go at it through different angles, you can see that the literature supports that using the colon as a delivery system works. And, this is crucial, you'd want to clean the colon before you do that because when you put things in the colon, the colon is going to absorb or be driven to absorb what's in the colon, so you want the colon cleared out before you put in therapeutic substances.

Paul: Yeah, well my cynical Grenier's coming out here, I mean, of course they're not going to be studying something that actually is very affordable –

KA: Exactly.

Paul: It's mostly home care, that you can do, AND, it actually works to stop a multitude of diseases when you become detoxified in your main toxic holding tank in your whole body, is that colon. It's just got to keep moving.

KA: Exactly, you'll see evidence of this even when you look at the history of hospitals. Just yesterday, I found a YouTube video from the US army where they were teaching people how to use enemas. Historically, enemas have been commonly used to help people control their bowel function in hospitals and to deliver therapeutic solution. But, yes, when the drug companies came along and developed laxatives and such, that tool - pills - of emptying out the bowel has taken over. But that tool is solely to empty the contents of the bowel, it's not to provide the therapy that is profoundly available by using enemas or colon hydrotherapy.

Prudence: What are some of the effects of colon cleansing?

KA: Well, you can improve the quality of your life, by feeling lighter, feeling more energy. I get calls every day that colon hydrotherapy has saved peoples' lives; every single day people call me up and say, “thank you for what you're doing, your resources have tremendously improved my life.” I've worked with people who have healed from cancer, who have improved their child's life, kids with autism, pain, diminishing pain, Lyme disease, inflammation, people sleep better, they feel more balanced energy, they improve their memory, and I know this sounds hard to believe, but it's actually 100% true.

Paul: Well, just from a standpoint of my own life, this is, I think, one of the single best things I ever did in my life. 20 years ago, I did my first colon cleanse: Arise and Shine Cleanse. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, it's a 28-day cleanse with a week fast at the end of it during the fourth week, and you're eating nothing but vegetables, of course, cutting out all the bad stuff, and then we did colon cleanses each week. We did one colon hydrotherapy and then we did our own enemas through that whole process too, and my life was changed forever. It was hard to go back, even though I've slipped, went down the wrong side of the slope multiple times since then, I've always come back with some sort of cleanse to get my mind clear, to get my energy back, to start sleeping better. There's not one system in my body that I myself do not notice the difference once I start cleansing. I mean it's just automatic. Now, why do we keep falling back? I mean, obviously most of these foods are not good for us, are addictive. I mean they're designed that way, the manufacturers have them that way, and they've got a ton of sugars in them, besides all the other toxins. So it's a must. I mean you can – and I've used this analogy many times, I've already mentioned it today – is our vehicles. We take better care of our vehicles than we do our own systems, internal systems, and we take much better care of our teeth than we actually do our bodies. Those two things we know we have to do regularly and we do not do that as a regular societal thing with our most important cleansing organ in the body.

KA: Absolutely. I agree. That's great to hear that you've had such wonderful benefits. I often ask my dreams to kind of guide me throughout my waking life and last night I set an intention to dream about what I might want to say on the radio and I actually had a dream about a house with many, many rooms and it was so very filthy, it was very funny and very literal.

Prudence: OK, we are talking today on WDRT's Heart of Wellness with Kristina Amelong, certified colon hydrotherapist and certified herbalist.

Paul: So you were talking about this dirty house, did I hear that correctly? Does that mean you're due for a big cleanse or what? (All laugh) or the people you're talking to?

KA: I think it just has to do with this analogy that's very apt that we take much better care of our cars, our house, our teeth, the outside of our bodies, than we do the inside of our bodies. And a lot of that does have to do with that the way we perceive health and how we think about health and how you're fine until you have to go to the doctor, right, and then you look towards the doctor to tell you what to do. The doctor”s only tools are drugs and surgery, it's largely not their job, really, to assist us with detoxification and what herbs we might take, or what enema or colon hydrotherapy protocol we are going to be on. We really do need to look to our own studies and professionals in the alternative health field to guide us with detoxification.

Prudence: Guide us right now, how might someone know if they need to do colon cleansing?

KA: Everybody does need to do this, OK? Because, again, if you just study on the internet about what kind of toxins are in our bodies now, and the rates of cancer, you know, especially breast cancer. Breast cancer is a great study to consider, deadly breast cancers are rising in young women, especially between ages 25 to 39 and this is just tragic. What do we know about the breasts? They store toxins. We know that because women have been insisting that breast milk is studied, and what do we find in breast milk? We find DDT, we find PCB's, we find dioxins, mercury, lead, arsenic, and so I can't ignore this data. How do we get this stuff out of our bodies? How do we do that throughout our lifetimes? I think that when we talk about the POP's, we know that this stuff bioaccumulates, we know that we get it from our mothers, and that we store it in our body our entire lives and then we pass it on to our children, if we have them. This says to me that everyone needs to be cleaning, cleansing their body, from a very young age and we need to take this really seriously as a society. It's really messing with us, in many profound ways.

Prudence: So how many bowel movements should one have a day if your colon is clean if your colon is clean? If you're functioning regularly, how many bowel movements should you expect to have in a day?

KA: Well, again, I wouldn't use the bowel movement as a sign that you need to clean or not clean, but there is this thing called a Bristol Stool Chart. I have it on my own website and you can just get it on the internet, and the idea is that you want to have one fully-formed, long bowel movement that's smooth so that you can see that you're not having too much water pulled out of your stool. It's going to depend on the size of the person; how much the person eats; how active the person is. You want to have at least about a foot of stool come out of your body, every day. But again, we associate the stool, because we're such visual creatures, with whether or not we should cleanse, and it is important, if you don't have that daily bowel movement, that's even more reason to do regular colon cleansing, but just because people have regular bowel movements doesn't mean they shouldn't be cleansing.

Paul: And again, that goes back to the analogy of a car. Regardless of what type of car it is, whether you drive your car short trips, long trips, you change your oil every 3000 miles. You know, it's the same process with your teeth, you go in and get them cleaned, at least once every 6 months.

Prudence: And you floss every day.

Paul: You floss every day and you brush every day - you're supposed to. And that's the crazy thing – most of us know. I mean you could take 90% of the population of America, they would know that all these things need to be done, but you had mentioned it earlier, that education is not there with our own vehicle. We wait, I mean, the whole allopathic model is set up to actually look for problems, so you got to wait until you actually have problems. And now this new movement is coming out where, oh, we want a wellness movement, but the idea of wellness is really maintenance cause they're checking for problems. You go in and get your prostate checked, you go in and get your breasts checked on a regular basis, you get your colon scoped, but that is just looking for problems, not actually adding wellness to this. This is where I see this process is - you're actually, on a regular basis, cleansing yourself. You're saying it doesn't matter, even if you're eating organic food, which, again, people say, “well, I eat organic food and I have three bowel movements a day.” Does this person still have to do a colon cleanse.

KA: Absolutely

Paul: Bingo. That's true wellness. That is taking an active step in your life to say, “I have these cleaning organs, this liver, these kidneys, the intestinal tract, the lungs, that spit out.” What do you have to do? You have to take care of them by cleansing them regularly.

Prudence:I don't think people realize that they need to have a foot of stool come out of their bodies every day. I don't think many people generally have that happen. I mean, you have that kind of metabolism and you eat a healthy diet, but those who are barely even having a bowel movement a day maybe ought to know that that could be a sign that they need to do colon cleansing. Of course, everybody needs to do it, but if you're having flatulence issues, if you're having small amount of stool, or some people don't even have a bowel movement a day. That's kind of like your car chug-chug-chugging down the road and then you realize, well I have to go in or the car's going to break down, you know, your stool can be an indication that you're about to break down, right?

KA: Yes. Two things I want to point to regarding the picture of all of this right now that's being put out by the TV and conventional medical doctors is that, first of all, they don't really know how to work with the bowel in a healthy way. I have, again a Pub. Med. article in front of me from 2008 and it says in the summary, “the treatment of constipation and palliative care is based on inadequate, experimental evidence.” That's profound, in a scientific study, that they're saying that. It's just not their area of expertise. You wouldn't look to a doctor to have the information about cleansing, about whether cleansing is good for you or bad for you or about how to optimize your bowel habits. It says it right here and you can find lots of articles like this. Additionally, the TV and the medical community like to throw out this idea that enemas or colon therapy can perforate the colon. But, if you look at the scientific literature, it's just doesn't back that up. Right here, I have an article by a doctor from Cook County Hospital, and they had all these patients coming through in the medical community and they did this 8-year study and they had 42,000 Barium enemas, 16,000 sigmoidoscopies, and 12,000 colonoscopies- the perforation rates were all related to the colonoscopies. It says that the incidents of perforation with the barium enema were .016 % and then it says, “this was not a healthy group of people.” [We could not find this link again. If you find it, please e-mail it to Optimal Health Network.] What doctors do now is they take this example, because there aren't a lot of them, there are a few, and they say, therefore these things are dangerous, they're going to perforate you, they're life-threatening. And when you're a very, very, very, sick person or you're elderly which all these people were, you have to be very careful about what kind of hard things you put in your colon. I don't mean water, or therapeutic solutions, I mean how you use the nozzle, and the length of the nozzle. I completely agree with that, but that shouldn't be used as a blanket statement to make people afraid of one of the most important healing methods that we have.

Prudence: Well, people are still doing colonoscopies.

KA: Exactly, nobody talks about colonoscopies that way. And the incidence of colonoscopy perforation was much higher.

Paul: I'll just lay this one out there: 78,300 people killed a year through the right diagnosis and the right treatment. I think having a small puncture in your intestinal tract isn't the worst thing in the world when you're sitting with a disease process. And, that doesn't go up that far anyway. I mean obviously you're not meaning to do it. But, the only side effect of an enema or a colonoscopy is a little cut, basically, cut or scratch in your colon. You know, obviously if you actually penetrate the whole thing there could be some dangerous processes, I'm not denying that, but, again, the benefits of actually getting healthy, living longer and maybe stopping cancer? That's pretty huge.

KA: Exactly. I want to reiterate supporting the prostate; it's tremendously helpful for men, especially. I do not want anyone to be perforating or scratching their colon. I've been doing this work for 16 years now and I have worked with only one gentleman who perforated his colon. He did that by using a very long colon tube that he was trying to thread up into his colon. There is the idea among some circles that you want to get the tube far into the colon so they can deliver this therapeutic solution deep into the colon. What I propose is that it's the solution, it's the water, you want to get deeply into the colon. You do that by taking an enema series or having colon hydrotherapy, by taking your time, by using 2-4 quarts of water for each fill. You don't rely on the tube or the nozzle itself. That's where the danger comes in.

Paul: Right, because the water's only going to go as far as the body allows it, so you use massage and other forms of movement and positioning, correct, to get the water up farther into the colon?

KA: Well, those methods do assist, but it's also just taking in the water very slowly and getting in the 2-4 quarts of therapeutic solution up into the colon. By using massage and position and the quantity of water, and patience, you will clear out the whole colon. Water will not perforate the colon. That's like saying water will perforate the mouth.

Prudence: We are talking today to Kristina Amelong on WDRT's Heart of Wellness, Kristina is a certified colon hydrotherapist and certified herbalist, and we're talking today about colon hydrotherapy. So, yeah, that's one of the fears, about the puncturing, so we should caution people, just use the enema nozzle, and Kristina, I know that you have offered people larger enema bags than are generally sold in the drug store, right?

KA: Correct.

Prudence: And, that's helpful because you can get more water in at a time, so it goes deeper into the colon, right?

KA: Almost everybody can take in at least 2 quarts, but most people can take more like 3, up to 4 quarts, of therapeutic solution into their colon. By taking those larger amounts of water up into the colon, you're going to clear out your entire colon and you're going to offer your body a greater benefit than just cleaning out the low colon.

Prudence: I wanted to direct people to your website, too, is it the optimalhealthnetwork.com? Is that where you'd recommend people go?

KA: Absolutely, correct.

Prudence: OK, optimalhealthnetwork.com to find out more information about all of this. It's one of the most comprehensive colon cleansing websites I've seen, so thank you for all the information you're providing people.

KA: You're welcome.

Prudence: Let's talk about mucous, and mucoid plaque, what is mucoid plaque?

KA: It's thought that mucoid plaque is created by the body to protect itself from acids and toxic compounds, and it's associated with cancer. We have this mucosa, all these microorganisms that inhabit our colon, and when those areas, those tissues are in contact with things that shouldn't be in the body or things that are in the body too long, the colon works to create a barrier to protect itself. That's what mucoid plaque is. We encourage people to continually take in therapeutic substances and to do regular colon cleansing to optimize the health of their mucosa.

Prudence: OK, and the mucoid plaque, it makes sense, right? We reabsorb things through the colon, we reabsorb toxins through the colon so the mucoid plaque prevents us from reabsorbing toxins that we're taking in?

KA: It's the colon's job to reabsorb. Not just reabsorb, but to absorb. 10% of the liquid that the body absorbs is all done in the colon. If the body is constantly in contact or dealing with toxins, discarded hormones, and other irritants, it's going to create a barrier.

Prudence: So colonics and enemas help us get rid of that mucoid plaque, but then its important, I suppose, that we try not to take in a lot of toxins afterward, right?

KA: Correct. The idea is to help the tissues regenerate and to restore the integrity of the mucosal barrier so that it's a healthy barrier and not a barrier that is simply in response to toxins and such. With the therapeutic additives, with particular products, you can do this. It is something that people need to do at least once a year, if not four times a year.

Paul: So, these products also include natural flora, correct? The natural bacteria?

KA: Well, bacteria is a biomass that should really be considered as a rapidly adapting renewable organ, and it has considerable metabolic activity and significant influence on human health. The bacterial cells actually outnumber host cells by at least a factor of 10. Each of us have at least a thousand different species of bacteria in the colon, in the gut. There's not just bacteria, there's also protozoa, there's fungi. And then we end up with, over our lifetimes, quite a variety of unhealthy organisms, all of us, like E. Coli and c. Difficile and blastocyst hominis and those all live in the mucosa, they come out in the stool. So, you absolutely effect that, and you don't threaten it when you do colon cleansing. So, as far as products, if you take probiotics that's a great start, but as I just said, we have over a thousand different species, and what they're thinking now is that each and every one of us has different species, so the question becomes, how do you support this rapidly adapting renewable organ on a day-to-day basis? I do think that by using the colon cleansing on a regular basis you can do that. This is a little bit of a different angle but, these microorganisms, one of their main jobs in the colon is to make butyric acid which is highly protective against colon cancers. You can feed them. We're not supporting our bodies well enough to make the butyric acid. And, for instance, if you implant geranium into the colon, that has butyric acid in it, and you're going to help your body be protected against cancer. The same is true with frankincense.

Paul: This is something new to me. I just learned something at this moment. So that was always, when I would be doing colon cleanses or doing colon hydrotherapy, healthy people would tell me, “well you're wiping out all your flora, so you have to replace it.” But, you know, I had a product that I would use called uh, can't even remember the name of it, but it would have like 6 or 7 main bacteria. And now you're saying, “wow, we could actually all have our own unique form.” So, would the replacement be best just to eat local food that maybe is a little dirty, instead of cleaning it so much? I mean, I'm joking a little bit on the dirtiness but maybe that's part of it.

KA: It absolutely is part of it. That's why you get sick when you go to another country or another place because you're in touch with their normal bacteria. So, yes, absolutely, you're totally on the right track. You can see with that myth - that you're going to wipe out all your bacteria - it's just simply not possible. That's like saying you're going to wipe out all your cells.

Paul: Wow. Well that's a thought I can throw out of my mind. Because I had that in there too and I would hold back on doing colon hydrotherapy and enemas because of that reason. And I can shift that and – wow. Thank you.

KA: You're welcome. And you're a case in point about how ubiquitous the fears are around these tools and how important it is that we do this work that we're doing right now, so thank you for giving me the opportunity to dispel these myths with you.

Prudence: Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about fears. There are other fears, like that colon hydrotherapy will create a dependency on that and people won't be able to use the bathroom regularly after doing these.

KA: It's absolutely not true. I have worked with thousands and thousands of people and I've never seen it happen. What's ironic about that is that people suffer greatly with all sorts of issues, constipation and bodily pain, for years, and they're all worried about this dependency happening and, first of all, just to reiterate - I've never seen it happen in all the years that I've been doing this! Any time that you stop doing it, even if you do regular colon cleansing, you don't take over the function of the bowel. It's almost like saying, if I carry something around, then my muscles are going to be dependent on carrying that thing around all the time. You actually support the muscles of the colon; you enhance the functioning of the liver. Here is an excellent example to dispel this myth: I met a man who had been hit by a car and when he came out of his coma his bowels didn't work and he was told by a couple doctors to take laxatives the rest of his life, and intuitively that didn't sit well with him so he kept searching for medical advice, and he went all the way to Colorado (he had the cash to go from doctor to doctor) and he found a doctor that said, if you take laxatives for, you know, however many years, you are going to lose your colon eventually. But, if you take enemas every day for the rest of your life, you'll keep your colon for your entire life and you will be much healthier. And I met him about 15 years after his accident, about 14 years ago, so it's been almost 30 years now and he's still taking a daily enema and, you know, he has to, but the point is that, probably in that amount of time if he would have taken laxatives all those years, he would now have lost his colon. But he's fine, he's healthy, he's active, and he still has his colon. He was the one that actually said, “you need to start up an enema website, you need to sell enema equipment on the internet.” And he was absolutely right.

Paul: I appreciate that example, but if somebody who didn't have that cut-off was to do an enema every day, how would they function in that process. You know, it's like, if you put a cast on, you don't use your muscle, that muscle atrophies. Would your ability to actually move your own bowels shift until you took that enema away?

KA: No. I have not seen that happen with a single client that I have worked with. And like I have said, I've worked with thousands of clients from all over the world. And, as soon as any of them - that I've been in touch with - have stopped using enemas, myself included, the bowels kick into full functioning, within a day. If someone was constipated before they started, sometimes, or if they have hormonal imbalances, like if they're low thyroid functioning, if these things aren't addressed, along with the colon cleansing, it's true that, over time, the colon can lose certain functions, but I've never seen it the cause of colon cleansing.

Paul: And what would you consider regular? Not regular bowel movements but regular colon therapy.

KA: Well, it really depends on the individual. I don't think daily is the best for everyone, but for some people daily is absolutely improving the quality of their lives. I would like to see people on at least a monthly colon cleanse program. For many, weekly is better. And again, it depends on what you have going on. Like if you have frequent urination and you're a man, waking up every night and not sleeping well, you want to do as many enemas as you need to in order to stop that and stop that cycle of inflammation of the prostate which can then lead to your death. That person would probably, at least for a time period, be doing some kind of therapy with their colon and thus their prostate on a daily basis. People with cancer, they'll often do enemas 2 or 3 times a day, coffee enemas, and see great benefit. But if you're a healthy person and you just want to support your body to keep moving through toxins, I think once a week is a fantastic schedule.

Paul: So it all, again, depends, I'm assuming if somebody is going to continue their diet that created this mess, if they're going to continue drinking their Mountain Dew, smoking their cigarettes, whatever it may be, eating junky food, then that person is going to require more if they want to stay healthy compared to somebody who is eating organic food and is off all the nasty stuff.

KA: Absolutely. That person's probably not going to want to, but yes, absolutely.

Prudence: So what kind of diet would you recommend for people once they've been through a colon cleansing series, what foods would keep the colon clean?

KA: I promote that everyone have a therapeutic diet every day of the week, 365 days of the year, and what that is depends on the individual and where they live. One of the most therapeutic foods for the colon is bone broth soup. Having fresh fruits and vegetables is really important, having high-quality proteins that are grass-fed and organic whenever possible, having fermented foods.

Prudence: We are talking today with Kristina Amelong, certified colon hydrotherapist and certified herbalist about colon hydrotherapy. We're coming out. So again, thank you for being with us, Kristina. I want to let our listeners know that we do actually have the opportunity for colonics in town. It's not always easy to find because it's kind of an underground alternative therapy but the holistic health center in town does have a machine, called the “Angel of Water” that will help you out.

Paul: Now, that is a self-help machine. Could you just share a little bit about that and go easy? (laughs) I mean, self-help machines compared to having somebody do it.

KA: Well, we're talking about the difference between an open system and a closed system and certainly the therapist would set the person up and then the therapist would leave once the client is comfortable with what they're doing. And the idea there is you have control over the knob, the faucet, and you open and close that and as you put the water into your colon, the pressure builds up and once you feel full enough, you empty into the table that you are lying on and so in that way you'll clear out your entire colon. That's a fantastic way to get started with regular colon cleansing. I would definitely recommend that people adjunct that with in-home cleansing so that they can do it frequently enough and be able to afford it.

Paul: When I was doing my first cleanse, my Arise and Shine Cleanse (we were talking about mucoid material earlier), the person that was helping me at the time said that she felt colon hydrotherapy was really awesome but it needed some sort of herbal release, you know in order to release these mucoid material from the actual colon walls. Do you agree to that, that something has to soften that up in order to help that release itself? Because some of that stuff has been there for 20-plus years in your body, being stored.

KA: Absolutely the body needs support to rid itself of that kind of situation. And people commonly use fasting as well as the colon cleansing and psyllium and bentonite. If you want to actually see the mucoid plaque come out, you're going to need to attach it to a carrier such as the psyllium and the bentonite, but we've developed a protocol where if you just use Young Living Essential Oils you can remove the mucoid plaque and it will just dissolve in the body. Also, the Young Living oils add more of a therapeutic kick; they'll regenerate the tissues, as well as remove it, which I think is really important to restore the integrity of the mucosal barrier after the toxic plaque has been removed. Every day in the world of alternative medicine, we are advancing this healing tool.

Prudence: So, Kristina, I want to know how you got into this, how did you become interested in colon hydrotherapy of all things?

KA: Well I was very, very sick about 17 years ago, and I went to the medical doctor multiple times and I wasn't getting any relief. I was told I wasn't eating according to the food pyramid and they wanted to do catheter ablation, because I was having lots of heart arrhythmia. I had multiple chemical sensitivities, I was in bed a lot, irritable, in a lot of pain, and I wanted to be well. So my motivation to be well and not finding solutions brought me to colon hydrotherapy which I have done many times, and now, today, I am very well; I'm completely well. I have no chemical sensitivities whatsoever, which I want to highlight that spot because lot's of people live with chemical sensitivities and they feel like it's something they have to live with the rest of their lives and it's absolutely not true. So that's how I came to colon hydrotherapy.

Paul: So when you weren't eating the pyramid, did they give you a box of snickers to give you a little bit more sugar, was that it, you weren't getting enough?

KA: One of my issues is I have Celiac disease, so I have a severe intolerance to gluten and, as you know, wheat products are an important part of the food pyramid in this part of the world, at least.

Paul: So with the gluten, we have somebody around here, Susan…local nutritionist, that we have that is really on this in our area. She does the elimination cleanse and helps people come back and on these individual foods to see which one affects them the most and gluten is a big one that shows up in a lot of people. A lot of them stop right there where they don't do gluten any more and that's fine for their health, but I believe and I hear you saying that there's another step that they can take, that, wow, maybe they could cleanse themselves completely. Can you eat gluten? This is a question, kind of two questions actually.

KA: Oh absolutely not and I'll never be able to eat gluten and I don't care.

Paul: Right. But, so if these people get off gluten, and they feel a lot better than they did before, getting the colon cleanse – or adding colon cleansing to their life, does that add to it? Besides just getting off the food that irritates them.

KA: You're going to improve your overall immunity, you're going to decrease your overall inflammation, you're going to reduce your chances of cancer, you're going to improve your lifestyle, you're going to be less irritable, you're going to sleep better, you're going to have an easier time of all the hormonal changes that happen to all of us, the list goes on and on and on, you're going to reduce your toxic load.

Paul: This needs to be back in the hospitals. In my understanding they were there at one point, colon hydrotherapy was a part of there a long time ago and I know I'm not a biblical expert but it was talked about multiple times in the bible in my understanding, of the cleansing of the colon and the necessity of getting the poisons or, “the evil spirits” out of your intestinal tract.

KA: Holistic cleansing of the body has never really been a part of the medical community, but certainly enemas have absolutely been a regular part of the medical community. And, yes, enemas are referred to in all sorts of places throughout history. Today is William Shakespeare's birthday, right? He wrote about enemas and it used to be popular in France at certain times to do a daily enema.

Paul: It has turned to drugs instead, it's easier, it's not as messy, am I correct there?

KA: That's what I want to distinguish here is that the difference between this whole idea of how much stool am I supposed to get out which, yes, that has been done in the hospitals since the beginning of hospitals doctors used that. Recently I went to an auction at a home where this elderly couple had both recently died and they had a ton of enema equipment there. And I talked to the auctioneer and he said that in homes of the elderly that is one of the most common features, is enema bags. And he told me that he was in the home of a doctor who had died, the doctor was 95 years old or something like that and he had the most interesting piece of enema equipment made out of goat bladder, I think it was, and so in the recent past, everyone had enemas, you could buy an enema bag at Sears and Roebuck. You could buy lot's of different enema equipment at your drug store. And, yes, since the rise of the pharmaceutical industry, that is really what's pushed the enema into the closet.

Paul: So it's still there in emergency situations. Like my mother had no bowel movements for four days at a time her whole life and I didn't even realize that and she died of colon cancer at 65. So I mean that fits. But what we're saying here is we need to put it into our wellness life, not just in emergencies when at the end of your life your bowels aren't moving anymore.

KA: Absolutely.

Prudence: Alright, so in what ways are you sharing your vast knowledge about this?

KA: I have a book, 10 Days to Optimal Health, which goes into the details around colon cleansing, that's available on my website, as well as on Amazon.com. I have a number of websites, the main one being optimalhealthnetwork.com, and every day I talk to people on the phone and consult them and advise them about how to set up the in-home enema programs. I'm working on writing another book, working with other health practitioners throughout the world to guide them to work with their patients, and doing things like being on this radio show.

Prudence: OK, great. Alright so optimalhealthnetwork.com is where people can find – they can find your phone number there as well as a great deal of information, your blog and there are even videos that you offer?

KA: Yes, we have over 50 educational videos and that number's growing all the time, and lots of written materials for free. This is a great tool and it's very inexpensive and it works.

Paul: It is a necessary tool and that's what I think we're getting here today. Change your oil in your own body at least once a month. But really, probably weekly or biweekly would be the ultimate opportunity if you want to stay healthy, regardless of how you eat. And, maybe more, if you eat what I know you eat but you're not telling me (laughs).

KA: Exactly, and let's talk about weight loss for a minute: research now indicates that because of persistent organic pollutants, before you lose weight you should now be evaluated because these things are stored in body fat and weight loss generates significant release of these toxicants into the body. How many people are on diets all the time? This is a situation right here where these people should be taught how to cleanse before, during, and after their weight loss program.

Prudence: Thank you so much, Kristina for joining us.

Paul: Yep, we appreciate it. It's been great.

KA: You're very welcome, thank you.

You have been listening to the Heart of Wellness with Paul Grenier and Prudence Tippins. Be sure to join us next week here on Heart of Wellness for yet another topic in the world of wellness. Thanks for listening!