A.M.
I finally got around to doing my research on colon cleansing after it seemed everyone was doing it.
There are TONS of websites saying that stuff is building up in your colon. The thing is, most of them are selling some expensive solution to this "problem."
Most medical sites and all major research hospital sites --Harvard, Tufts, the Mayo Clinic -- they, and most folks who went to medical school, agree with each other and disagree with the colon cleansing proponents.
"Things don't crust over" in your colon, says Robert Russell, MD, a gastroenterologist at the Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. "The business about putrefaction is all baloney. There are not pieces of food hanging around in there getting old."
In other words, you don't need a product. The body is capable of eliminating toxins in a timely, efficient manner. Consider that the cells of your gastrointestinal tract turn over every three days—fast enough so that there's no "crust," or "putrefying" food in your colon. Also, bacteria in the colon naturally metabolize and thereby detoxify food wastes. And mucous membranes lining the intestinal wall block unwanted substances from entering the body's other tissues.
One of the major reasons that colon cleansing seems to work is that usually the "treatment" is a strict diet that just happens to include an ingredient that makes your poop look even worse than usual. It is Marketing Genius, some would say... "I have this stuff that makes poop look really ugly." "Great! We'll make millions!"... The strict diet and placebo effect take it from there to produce more miracle cures than a traveling preacher.
But, from what I can tell, it probably won't hurt you that badly either. At least it didn't hurt my friends, and some got a lot of benefit from the placebo effect and the accompanying good feeling about being into the hippest health fad.