Science & Nature

Colonic cleansing: absolutely fabulous

By team ⋅ March 29, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

The Guardian, 4 March

When Edina from Absolutely Fabulous decides to lose weight, her daughter Saffy’s suggestion seems sensible: ‘Look, mum. All you’ve got to do is eat less and take a bit of excercise.’ Edina shoots back, ‘Sweetie, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.’ Somehow we all know what she means.

We are all suspicious of the different dieting methods out there, yet the diet industry is worth at least £1bn a year. One of the new fads on the block is colonic cleansing. Apparently, many people carry a huge amount of weight in their colon due to old impacted faeces [!!!], which the detox process aims to remove. Some clients lose as much as a stone in a week.
However, it’s the likelihood of gaining the weight back too easily which makes losing it so depressing. The recidivism rate for most diets is, unfortunately, horrendous: do you know anyone who lost stones from only eating grapefruit and actually managed to keep it off?

Losing weight from complicated and expensive diets finally fails to make the difference we really need. Maybe Saffy was right. Many people do shed weight and keep it off for decades. But these people’s stories don’t get heard very loudly, because in the end, there is no secret. It’s not what we get out of our bums; it’s what we get when we get off them!