Healthy Poop! Yes. Poop!

Did you know the average American may be carrying as much as 10-25 pounds of impacted fecal matter in their colon? And that is someone of normal weight with no known allergies! These toxins wedged in the digestive track are absorbed by the bloodstream, resulting in the body’s inability to metabolize food properly or to provide vital energy for living.

Think you’re in the clear? There is a surprisingly wide range of health problems that colon toxicity contributes to, many that a lot of us experience everyday. These include bloating, constipation, gas, fatigue, food cravings, hypoglycemia, allergies, arthritis, difficult weight loss, among many others. As you may have been trying to cure or treat these symptoms individually, it’s important to recognize and cure the root cause. Thus, the colon detox.

See for yourself. A healthy colon should provide you with two to three bowel movements per day, shortly after each meal. Elimination should be complete, fast and easy. The stool should be light brown in color, long and large in diameter, fluffy in texture, and floating on the top of the water. Yes I went there. You should be having glorious bowel movements I tell you!

Cleanse the natural way:

1. Up your fiber.

A diet high in fiber of up to 40 grams a day, both soluble and insoluble, to slow the emptying time of the stomach and move feces through the intestines quicker by bulking it up. You can add fibrous foods into each meal like having oatmeal for breakfast, lentils in your raw salad for lunch, berries for snacks, and a big stir fry vegetable bowl for dinner. You can also take a good fiber supplement.

2. Eliminate.

Eliminate all things contributing to the problem: all processed foods, sugar, white flour, alcohol and caffeine, food additives, colorings and preservatives, fruit and vegetables treated with pesticides, most dairy.

3. Hydrate.

It is essential to drink 8 – 10 glasses of pure, filtered water each day. Even more so, if you believe you are really backed up, drink 3 glasses of water before breakfast to really get things flushed out quickly.

4. Get moving.

Exercise speeds up bowel action and encourages healthy elimination.

5. Supplement.

Take digestive enzymes after each meal to normalize digestion and break down protein that can remain in the colon. Papaya and pineapple enzymes are a sure fire hit.

Any bowel detoxification program should last between 1 – 3 months depending on the severity of the symptoms, and should be as strict as possible. Generally speaking, most people can benefit from a colon cleanse twice yearly, but emphasis must be on prevention and dietary changes.

Make sure your immune system is in tip-top shape because those nasty toxins making their way out of your body can create some nasty side effects. You may experience a severity of your symptoms in the beginning, as well as foul smelling stool, headaches and light-headedness. They are no cause for alarm, usually the worse your reaction, the more crap you have in your body (pun intended).

While colon cleansing is not a weight-loss procedure, dropping weight is often a welcomed side effect! All the fiber is especially useful in providing a feeling of fullness and decreased appetite. Yay colon cleansing! See, it’s not so bad.

Visit Mind Body Green for the original article along with more tips!