Fig. 10. The “Colema Board”: The bowel’s best friend.
THE “FAST LANE”: FASTING AND COLONIC IRRIGATION
Fasting is a perfect example of the hidden powers of nature that awaken when the ancient Taoist principle of wu-wei, “not-doing” or “noninterference,” is put into practice. “By doing nothing,” notes the Tao Teh Ching, “the sage accomplishes everything.” In dietary terms, “doing nothing” means eating nothing and letting nature take its course, and this abstinence awakens the body’s most powerful cleansing and healing responses.
Fasting is nature’s way of curing disease, restoring health, and prolonging life. As all zookeepers and pet owners know, animals of every species instinctively refuse to eat when they are sick, and the same rule applies to animals in the wilderness. Long ago, humans also shared this natural, self-healing instinct, and even today, primitive tribes in remote regions of Africa, Asia, and the Amazon still have special “sick houses” located on the outskirts of their villages, where the sick rest quietly and comfortably, without eating any food, for as long as it takes to recover their health.
Today, however, therapeutic fasting is dismissed by mainstream modern medicine as “primitive.” As a prominent surgeon in New York once told this writer, “Fasting went out with the horse-and-buggy!” Nevertheless, owing to the pioneering work of a few courageous health professionals during the latter half of the twentieth century, the Western world has rediscovered the profound healing powers of fasting, and practitioners of alternative medicine are now applying it with success for conditions in which all other treatments fail. Moreover, recent scientific research, backed by extensive clinical studies, has established conclusive proof that periodic fasting and calorie restriction are the one and only proven way to significantly extend lifespan.
On May 28, 1986, the Associated Press reported the following U.S. scientific study on aging, in which laboratory rats were periodically put on forced fasts:
When the diets of laboratory rats are severely restricted, they live far longer than do otherwise identical animals that are allowed to eat as much as they want. In fact, researchers say such food limits are the only way they know of significantly extending these rodents’ normal lifespans.
More recently, Dr. Roy Walford, who was a member of the team that lived for two years in the experimental “Biosphere” project in the United States, conducted even more exhaustive research on the link between calorie restriction and lifespan, using a variety of different species for his studies, including rats and dogs. In his book Beyond the 120 Year Diet, he presents evidence that clearly demonstrates that calorie restriction prolongs the lifespan of all species tested by a factor of 50–80 percent. In human terms, that would mean a lifespan of 120–150 years.
While long-term human studies on the effects of fasting on longevity have not yet been concluded, individual examples of several contemporary practitioners of therapeutic fasting are highly inspiring and very encouraging. Dr. Norman Walker, for example, who advocated periodic fasting and daily consumption of raw juices and practiced what he preached, lived to the ripe age of 116, remaining active until the very end. Paul Bragg, who fasted for ten days fours times a year for most of his life, lived almost as long as Dr. Walker, and he too stayed healthy and productive until his final days. V. E. Irons, who cured himself of an “incurable” crippling disease by fasting, then went on to develop an extremely efficient do-it-yourself fasting and internal colonic cleansing system, would no doubt have lived a “normal” human lifespan of 120, if fate had not intervened with a car accident at the age of 98. Each of these individuals, and others like them, rediscovered through their own experience what all animals and primitive tribesmen still know: that fasting is nature’s way of cleansing and healing the body and regenerating the life force.
Abstaining from food permits the body’s innate detox mechanisms to function at full capacity and allows immune responses to operate in high gear. When fasting, all of the energy and enzyme power that the body must normally use to digest and process food is diverted instead to digesting toxic debris and acid wastes, while the digestive system itself remains dormant and produces no new wastes in the body. Fasting also triggers the production of human growth hormone in the pituitary gland and releases it into the bloodstream, where it circulates throughout the body to repair damaged tissues, regenerate vital functions, and rejuvenate the whole system. Normally, the production of growth hormone diminishes rapidly after humans reach adulthood, and the ever-dwindling supply of this powerful regenerative hormone is one of the primary causes of aging and the onset of chronic degenerative conditions. By stimulating secretion of human growth hormone, fasting not only helps cure disease and repair the body, it also slows down the aging process, restores flagging vitality, and prolongs life.
THE CURE OF THE SAGES
Fasting is not new. Hindu yogis, Buddhist monks, and Taoist hermits have been fasting for thousands of years to enhance their vitality and extend their lifespans. A few years ago in India, an elderly meditation master set a world record by fasting nonstop for two hundred days, during which time he took nothing whatsoever but plain water. Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers whose thought laid the foundations of Western civilization fasted regularly to improve their physical health and sharpen their mental powers, and Pythagoras required all of his senior students to fast for forty days as a means of purifying their bodies and minds prior to receiving his highest teachings. Practitioners of traditional medicine in ancient China also understood the direct link between human disease and the toxic filth that accumulates in the bowels as a result of unnatural eating habits. The Sung Dynasty physician Chang Tsung-cheng observed, “If the stomach and bowels are blocked, then blood and energy stagnate,” while the famous Chinese doctor, Chai Yu-hua, wrote, “Purging the bowels eliminates the source of poison, thereby permitting blood and energy to regenerate naturally. By cleaning the bowels we repair the body.”
The Bible mentions fasting seventy-four times, and Jesus himself fasted frequently, sometimes for as long as forty days. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed in Palestine in the early twentieth century, a most remarkable document written in Aramaic and dating from the third century ce came to light. Translated into English in 1937 by Edmond Szekely under the title The Essene Gospel of Peace, this ancient text recounts in detail some of the most important healing work performed by Jesus among the people of Palestine, and much of it sounds very similar to what Dr. Bernard Jensen writes about fasting and colonic irrigation in his book Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management. Unfortunately, none of this information ever found its way into the Bible, despite the fact that this gospel was recorded several hundred years earlier than other gospels that appear in the Bible. Perhaps the early editors of the Bible found the topic of colonic irrigation to be of too delicate a nature for inclusion in the Christian scriptures, but since this ancient historical document contains teachings of vital significance to the health of the Western world today, let’s take a quick look at some key passages and listen to what Jesus, in The Essene Gospel of Peace, said to his followers on the subject of detox and human health:
Renew yourselves and fast. . . . Seek the fresh air of the forest and of the fields, and there in the midst of them shall you find the angel of air. . . . Then breathe long and deeply, that the angel of air may be brought within you. I tell you truly, the angle of air shall cast out of your body all uncleannesses which defiled it without and within. . . . After the angel of air, seek the angel of water. . . . Think not that it is sufficient that the angel of water embrace you outwards only. I tell you truly, the uncleanness within is greater by much than the uncleanness without. . . . Seek, therefore, a large trailing gourd, having a stalk the length of a man; take out its inwards and fill it with water from the river which the sun has warmed. Hang it upon the branch of a tree, and kneel upon the ground . . . and suffer the end of the stalk of the trailing gourd to enter your hinder parts, that the water may flow through all your bowels. . . . Then let the water run out from your body, that it may carry away from within it all the unclean and evil-smelling things. . . . And you shall see with your eyes and smell with your nose all the abominations and uncleannesses which defiled the temple of your body. . . . Renew your baptizing with water every day of your fast, till the day when you see that the water which flows out of you is as pure as the river’s foam.
This method of cleansing and healing the body by means of colonic irrigation using a trailing gourd and warm river water was commonly practiced among the ancient Essenes, with whom Jesus lived and studied during his early, formative years, and it constitutes one of his most beneficial teachings for the welfare of humanity. Unfortunately, since all mention of this period in Jesus’s life was deliberately excluded from the Christian scriptures, this aspect of his work remains virtually unknown among Christians today, although it was common knowledge to Jesus’s own disciples. The sages of the ancient world were well aware of the inseparable link between the state of the body and the state of the mind, for they knew that toxic blood and tissues form a breeding ground not only for disease and degeneration of the human body but also for the darkening and degradation of the human spirit. They knew the law that modern physicians and philosophers alike have forgotten: that whatever pollutes the body also pollutes the mind. That’s why so many sacred scriptures of the ancient world prescribe fasting and detox as the first preliminary steps on the path of spiritual cultivation.
Today, the mutual dependence of physical and spiritual health has been largely forgotten, and few people see the causal connection between the massive pollution of the planet and degradation of the human body, and the rampant crime, chronic violence, and spiritual malaise that marks human life in contemporary times. According to the psychophysiological prescription of the ancient sages who gave birth to Western civilization, cleaning up the planet and detoxifying the human body are the best medicine of all for restoring peace on earth and reviving the health and spiritual integrity of humanity, and scientific evidence validating the truth of this ancient teaching is beginning to emerge. In 1972, for example, the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry reported results of a clinical study in which fasting and tissue detox were successfully used, without recourse to any drugs whatsoever, to cure over seven thousand patients suffering from a variety of serious mental disorders that neither psychiatry nor drug therapy had helped in any way. This methodology has since become known as the “Hunger Cure” and is still practiced in Russia.
Even a cursory glance at the current state of human affairs throughout the world today reveals two indisputable facts: one is that people everywhere and in all walks of life are getting sicker and more toxic than ever before in human history; and the other is that human behavior is growing more angry and violent, and world affairs are becoming more cruel and barbaric, day by day. Maybe it is already too late to take the slow lane of detox by gradual dietary reform. Perhaps our only remaining hope is to take the plunge and leap directly into the “fast lane” of detox by the “angels” of air and water alone.
THE “FAST LANE”
Tissue toxicity is a deadly serious condition, especially today, when so many carcinogens and other toxic chemicals contaminate our food and water and pollute the air we breathe. To give the reader an idea of just how serious the situation is, and what can be done about it, here’s a graphic excerpt from the book Detox Diet and Wellness Lifestyle, by Dr. Grady Deal, who operates a detox clinic in Hawaii:
You may be unaware that the colon remains chronically impacted with accumulated feces and mucus backed all the way up to the small intestine. . . . In effect, your intestinal plumbing. . . backs up like a full and overflowing septic tank. The blood vessels and lymph vessels in the colon pick up the toxins and carry them to all parts of the body. . . . The bloodstream becomes increasingly filled to overflowing with disease organisms . . . and toxins, where they circulate around the body, causing inflammation, water retention, weight gain, irritation, corrosion, damage, and disease. Feces and toxins abnormally recirculated in the bloodstream as a result of chronic constipation explains why the eliminative organs of the skin and lungs have a strangely familiar unpleasant odor . . . in the form of smelly sweat . . . and bad breath that smells like feces. . . . As a protective measure to get the disease-causing toxins out of circulation, the body removes these poisons from the bloodstream and stores them in cells and tissues, out of the way . . . causing what Dr. Norman Walker calls tissue constipation, meaning the tissues are burdened with excess toxins which then cause cellular and tissue inflammation, congestion, eruptions, and disease. In general, excess toxins are continually stored in the cells [and] tissues . . . as long as the person is taking in that particular offending unhealthy food, allergen, drug, etc. When that specific food or substance is completely eliminated from the diet, only then do the cells eliminate that particular toxin from the cells back into the bloodstream and lymph on its way to the eliminative organs and out of the body. Once back in the bloodstream and lymph, the toxin does its dirty work of inflaming and irritating the body until it is eliminated and out of the body. This aggravation or worsening of symptoms is called a healing crisis. People detoxifying from a toxin may get worse before they get better and they tend to crave the very food or habit which made them toxic initially.
Fasting is the fastest and most effective way to deal with this sort of blood and tissue toxicity, and to rid the body of the toxic residues and putrefactive wastes in the colon that continuously poison the bloodstream, clog the cells, and sap vitality. Until these toxins are eliminated, there’s simply no way that the body can repair and rebalance itself. Although there are milder methods of detox than fasting, they all take much longer and work less effectively, and none can match the deep healing power and life-prolonging benefits of fasting.
To gain those benefits, one must be willing to tolerate the unpleasant symptoms of the so-called “healing crisis” that fasting always triggers after the third day. The healing crisis opens the gate to the state of radiant health and longevity that only fasting can create, and the discomfort of detox is the price one pays to pass through that gateway. The choice is yours: either you flush those poisons out of your system, or else you live with the consequences of retaining them for the rest of your life. As this author notes in The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity:
Unless you live an ascetic life far from civilization and avoid all dietary folly, your blood and other tissues are bound to accumulate toxins and gradually lose their functional vitality. If you don’t purge yourself of these toxins on a regular basis, toxemia gets worse and worse, until the body cannot stand it any longer and either purges itself spontaneously in the form of diarrhea, acne, pimples, boils, “liver spots,” foul perspiration, body odor, bad breath, and so forth, or else it simply gives up the battle and succumbs to cancer, tuberculosis, and other fatal conditions.
MEGAFASTS, MINIFASTS, AND SEMIFASTS
Many different types of therapeutic fasting programs exist, with varying degrees of intensity and duration. The most intensive detox and swiftest healing results are produced by completely foodless fasts in which nothing but water and a few internal cleansing supplements such as psyllium and bentonite are used. Semi-fasts using water and supplements, plus one type of vegetable or fruit juice to provide energy and nutrition are easier to tolerate, and they, too, provide excellent cleansing and healing results. The so-called “Grape Cure,” in which nothing but black grapes are eaten for period of one week to a full month, also qualifies as a sort of “semifast,” one that is particularly effective for purifying the bloodstream, detoxifying the liver, and correcting serious gastrointestinal disorders.
To be effective for detoxifying the blood and tissues, a therapeutic fast must continue for a minimum of three full days, which is how long it takes for the body’s internal cleansing and healing mechanisms to shift into full gear. Three days is not long enough, however, to totally purify the bloodstream and detoxify the internal organs, nor is it long enough to experience the so-called “healing crisis” that normally occurs sometime between the third and fifth day of a fast. The healing crisis marks the point in a fast when tissue detox has reached its peak, and symptoms of the body’s most serious conditions come out of hiding and begin to manifest. For example, in someone with arthritis, the healing crisis occurs when the deepest deposits of toxic residues are dislodged and drawn out of the joints, causing pain in the joints and connective tissues. For someone suffering from heavy liver toxicity, the healing crisis comes as the most poisonous substances are dissolved and eliminated from the tissues of the liver, bringing out all the unpleasant symptoms of liver toxemia, such as overwhelming fatigue and listlessness, anger and irritability, yellow eyes and skin, foul breath and body odor, and throbbing pain in the liver. The good news is that this “crisis” marks the midpoint from which the rest of the fast is all “downhill.” It means that the worst part of the detox stage of the fast has passed, and that the healing stage is beginning. Hitting bottom at the midpoint is why that phase is called a “healing” crisis. Unless you continue a fast long enough to “hit the wall” and pass through the stormy gate of the healing crisis to reach the sunny side of radiant health, you will not succeed in fully correcting the root causes of your ills. Three days is certainly sufficient, however, to achieve a major cleansing of the bowels and bloodstream, and to rebalance the internal organs and partially detoxify the tissues.
The ideal duration for a therapeutic detox fast is seven to ten days, because it takes precisely seven days to completely purify the bloodstream and cleanse the lymphatic system of all residual wastes. When the blood and lymph have been totally purified, it means the whole body and all its parts are free of toxicity, because pure blood and clean lymph automatically cleanse the body and eliminate toxins from the tissues on a day-to-day basis. If you reform your eating habits and change your diet after a detox fast, your blood and lymph will be able to keep your tissues clean far longer and more efficiently than they would if you continued polluting yourself with wrong eating habits and wrong food choices. Eating properly also means you won’t need to fast as often to rid yourself of accumulated putrefactive wastes and metabolic toxins. Generally speaking, one seven-to-ten-day detox fast each year, while taking care to control your diet in between, is usually sufficient to protect you from serious diseases such as cancer and arteriosclerosis, prevent the onset of common degenerative conditions such as arthritis and senility, and pave the path to a long and healthy life. Almost anyone is capable of completing a seven-day fast, but for those who have never tried it and worry about going that long without food, a few three-day minifasts may be tried first, as a sort of “warm-up.” A minifast is a good way to gain confidence and gradually work up to a full, seven-day fast.
The remarkable Breuss Cancer Cure decribed earlier in this text is the longest therapeutic detox fast known to this writer. It involves a forty-two-day (six-week) fast during which only one cup of Breuss Vegetable Juice (fresh or bottled) is taken per day, sipped slowly by the teaspoonful, in addition to Sage Tea and one or two other herbal teas, depending upon the organs and tissues that need primary attention. While this fast may sound extreme, bear in mind that cancer is an extremely serious condition that can easily kill the patient, and that conventional therapies applied to cancer today, such as chemotherapy and radiation, are far more “extreme” in terms of the damage they do to the body than even the longest fast. In fact, mainstream cancer therapy often kills the patient faster than the cancer itself. On the other hand, no one has yet died as a result of trying the Breuss Cancer Cure, and to date there have been over forty thousand documented cases of successful cures from various forms of cancer, some of them already in advanced stages of development. Strangely, most people with cancer would rather submit to instant chemo or radiation therapy, despite the terrible side effects and dubious results, than endure a forty-two-day detox fast that has a proven track record as a real cure. It is hard to say whether patients’ reluctance to try the fasting cure is due to lack of confidence in the method, or to an actual fear of fasting.
The Breuss Cancer Cure is not only effective for treating cancer. As noted earlier, cancer is the final stage of tissue toxicity, and chronic tissue toxicity is the root cause of cancer. Therefore, shorter versions of the Breuss fasting program may be used as a means of periodic cleansing and general tissue detox, serving as a very effective preventive therapy against the development of cancer. Unless you already have cancer and wish to use this method as a cure, it is not necessary to follow the Breuss fasting program for the full forty-two days. One to three weeks suffices to effectively detoxify the whole body.
Minifasts are those of fewer than three days. While these brief fasts are not effective for serious detox purposes, they are an excellent form of maintenance between longer therapeutic fasts. For example, some people fast for one full day every week, taking nothing but pure water or one variety of alkalizing fruit or vegetable juice. This gives the digestive system a weekly rest and allows the body a brief break from “active duty” to readjust and rebalance itself. Another way is to fast for a period of two or three days each month, which has similar benefits to a weekly one-day fast. While minifasts do not provide the dramatic cleansing results of longer fasts, they are still quite effective as a form of regular preventive medicine against a wide range of diseases and degenerative conditions, especially if you do longer detox fasts from time to time. As the Greek writer Plutarch suggested, “Instead of medicine, fast for a day.”
FASTING SUPPLEMENTS
Water is the primary cleansing agent involved in therapeutic fasting; it is very important to drink at least 1¾ quarts a day of purified alkaline water throughout the duration of any fast, even if you’re using raw juices as well. In addition to water, a variety of very effective fasting supplements may also be utilized to amplify and accelerate blood purification and tissue detox, and to promote rapid healing during the course of a fast. Below is a review of previously described standard tools of the trade for therapeutic fasts:
Psyllium
Psyllium is the single most important supplement for cleaning and clearing the digestive tract, particularly the lower bowels. Psyllium’s mucilaginous bulking properties also help curb hunger by making the stomach and intestines feel “full.”
Bentonite
Colloidal bentonite acts like a “magnetic mop” to neutralize and carry away toxins loosened from the bowel walls by the psyllium fiber. Five hundred times smaller than water molecules, the negatively charged micromolecules of bentonite enter the bloodstream and cellular fluids. Once there, they latch onto positively charged toxins that are up to two hundred times heavier than they are and carry those toxins through the bloodstream to the kidneys for excretion.
Green Food
Green food is by far the best nutritional supplement to use during a therapeutic fast. One of the richest and purest sources of blood-cleansing chlorophyll and life-sustaining nutrients, green foods are easy to assimilate and do not require complex digestion. They also provide sufficient metabolic energy to help counteract the food cravings that often arise while fasting.
Lemon Juice
During a fast, fresh lemon juice may be used to assist the detox process with its swift alkalizing and cleansing properties. As the only anionic (negative-ion charged) food source, it provides potent antioxidant activity and energizes the detox process. Lemon juice has a natural affinity for the liver and stimulates bile production, thereby helping to detoxify and repair the liver. An ounce or two of fresh lemon juice may be added to the water when shaking up a dose of psyllium powder, to improve the taste of the psyllium and enhance its cleansing properties.
Lactobacteria
These are the so-called “friendly flora” of the bowels, and they constitute one of the most important elements required for proper digestion of food, assimilation of nutrients, and processing of digestive wastes. In healthy bowels, friendly bacteria should constitute about 80 percent of total bacteria population, with putrefactive bacteria accounting for the remaining 20 percent. In toxic bowels, such as those in over 95 percent of the people on the planet today, the ratio is reversed, with putrefactive bacteria occupying 80 percent or more of the bowel terrain, and the “good guys” hanging on for dear life in ever dwindling numbers. A primary goal of any therapeutic fast is to completely dredge the bowels of all bacterial colonies, and to eliminate the septic filth in which they breed. After that, the entire intestinal tract must be replenished with fresh colonies of friendly lactobacteria. Psyllium and bentonite do the job of dredging out the old stuff very well, but you definitely need to take dietary measures to introduce new colonies of beneficial lactobacteria into the bowels after each fast, before the “bad guys” sneak back in and take over again.
One way to replenish the bowels with friendly bacteria is to take a good lactobacteria supplement such as acidopholus, bifudus, and other similar cultures used to make yogurt. These come in powdered and capsule form, but you must be careful to purchase a reliable brand that retains its potency on the shelf. Most brands on the market today contain virtually no living cultures. Another option is to eat fresh goat milk yogurt for about a week immediately after a fast, but yogurt is not as effective as a high-potency, powdered supplement, because milk products produce mucus in the bowels, and it is best not to consume mucus-forming foods until after you’ve firmly established a new colony of friendly flora in your colon.
There’s also a third way, one that you can easily prepare at home in your own kitchen. Popularly known as Rejuvelac, fermented cabbage juice is one of the purest and most abundant sources of “rejuvenating lactobacteria” for the human digestive tract, and it does not require the use of any dairy products. After making the first batch, which takes about three days, each subsequent batch ferments quickly overnight by adding a few ounces of the previous batch as a starter to prepare the next one. You may therefore keep the culture going day by day for as long as you wish, simply by chopping some cabbage, adding water and some starter from the last batch, and setting it aside to ferment for a day. A recipe for making your own Rejuvelac at home is listed in appendix 1, page 312 “Recipes and Formulas.”
Regardless of whether you use dairy-based lactobacteria or cabbage Rejuvelac, you should start taking it shortly before eating your first food when breaking a fast, and continue using it twice a day for at least ten days to insure that a new colony of friendly bacteria establishes itself firmly in your bowels. Thereafter, repeat this replenishing regimen several times each year, even without a fast, to assist the friendly bacterial allies in your bowels to flourish and keep putrefactive bacteria under control.
TAKING THE PLUNGE
While fasting for seven days completely purifies the bloodstream, cleanses the lymphatic system, and detoxifies the tissues, fasting by itself will not remove the five-to-fifteen pounds of tough, toxic, mucoid matter that becomes deeply impacted in the bowels from years of wrong eating habits and wrong food choices that begin in childhood. The only way to rid your bowels of this rubbery toxic sludge is to dredge it out with a series of colonic irrigations done in conjunction with a therapeutic fast.
A hundred years ago, when pneumonia was still the leading cause of death in the United States, Dr. J. H. Tilden of Denver, Colorado, cured thousands of people of this deadly disease, without ever losing a single patient, simply by treating them with fasting and colonic irrigation and nothing else, then putting them on a strict diet of fresh raw foods consisting mostly of fruit and vegetables. After decades of dependence on antibiotics, pneumonia has grown resistant to drug therapy and has once again become a major killer throughout the world. As with most infectious diseases, the real cure for pneumonia is not a new drug; it is an ancient naturopathic method that long predates allopathic medicine but has lain buried and unnoticed for centuries in the archives of medical literature. That method is fasting and colonic cleansing.
One man who went to the library in search of a better cure back in 1935 and thereby rediscovered the curative powers of fasting and colonic irrigation, was V. E. Irons, an ordinary American businessman who, at the age of forty, had been diagnosed with a crippling arthritic spinal ailment called “ankylosing spondylosis.” His doctors told him that it was incurable and that he would soon be confined to a wheelchair. Refusing to accept their verdict, Irons began to study the medical literature recorded by such early luminaries of naturopathic medicine in the United States as Dr. Tilden, Dr. Kellogg, and others. Irons then decided to take matters into his own hands by treating his condition with a series of therapeutic fasts and self-administered colonics. Says he:
Within two months I had no more pain from displacement and within fourteen months practically no spurs. All done with cleansing, fasting, and natural foods—no drugs!
His experience, and the complete cure it effected, impressed him so deeply that he devoted the rest of his long life to research and development of this natural way to detoxify and heal the human body. In the process, he created a line of products that enables anyone to practice this powerful self-healing therapy safely and effectively at home. During the 1950s, V. E. Irons was briefly imprisoned in a federal penitentiary in the United States for publicly stating his revolutionary views on human health and healing and for refusing to recant them under legal pressure from the American medical establishment. Fifty years later, in an ironic turn of events that must have amused Irons, President Reagan heaped public praise on Irons for his excellent work in health and healing and presented him with a national award for his contributions to the science of longevity. Irons remained healthy and active throughout the ninety-eight years of his life, starting a second family at the age of seventy-two and fathering his last child at the age of eighty.
During the course of his life, Irons perfected a system of self-detoxification based on fasting and colonic cleansing that this writer regards as one of the most important contributions to modern medicine and world health in the twentieth century. In addition to his line of “Vit-ra-tox” internal cleansing supplements, Irons played a key role in the invention and development of the “Colema Board” (figure 10)—the bowel’s “best friend” and an indispensable tool for doing colonics yourself at home. Operated entirely by gravity, the Colema Board allows virtually anyone to safely administer their own colonic irrigations in the privacy of their own bathrooms. As Irons notes in an interview, it’s so easy that even a child can do it:
My seven-year-old son Robert frequently takes home colonics—all by himself. I’m 87 and I take them all the time. So, if you’re anywhere between the ages of 7 and 87, you should have no problems. . . . It is completely safe.
And yet, while people today don’t hesitate to discuss the most intimate details of their—and others’—personal sex lives, the moment the word “colon” or “bowel” crops up in a conversation, everyone winces uncomfortably and looks away, quickly changing the subject. Suggest that their bowels are bursting at the seams with mounds of foul, putrefactive filth and that it might be a good idea for them to flush it all out with a series of colonics, and most people leap to their feet and start looking for the nearest exit. Here’s what Irons has to say about such “colonic cry-babies” in an interview he gave in 1982:
If people can’t take a simple home colonic to clean out their clogged, constipated, putrid colons, then tell them to start looking for an old rocking chair and cane. . . . If these people are afraid of all the “horrors” that may happen to them when they stick a tiny plastic tube one “micro-inch” up their fanny, there is just not much hope for them. . . . Many people will easily talk about the most intimate sexual experiences—but by golly, they will revolt at the first thought of discussing the colon.
Some people claim that fasting and raw-juice therapy alone can remove the hardened mucoid plaque from the colon wall, but they are mistaken. Irons replies to this claim by saying, “Forget it! It won’t work. . . . You must use the Colema Board together with the intestinal cleansers, if you really want to cleanse your colon properly. If you don’t, the thick mucus coating on the intestinal wall will never come off. It will stay there till you die.”
It is important to remember that this tough, toxic layer of putrefied mucus and partially digested protein was put there by you, not by mother nature, as a result of your own unnatural eating habits and food choices. Your body’s natural cleansing mechanisms are not designed to deal with this unnatural mess; it requires special methods to eliminate it. Those methods are fasting and colonic cleansing, and anyone with the pluck to take the plunge always gets spectacular results and never regrets the decision to do it. Listen to Irons describe what happens when you do colonic irrigations in conjunction with a therapeutic fast, based on some of the cases he personally handled:
Fig. 10. The “Colema Board”: The bowel’s best friend.
You’ll get fabulous results. Some of the worst smelling material known to man comes out when people do the program right. . . . One woman passed more than a quart of black, vomitus, putrid material for three days in a row. One man passed a whole lot of material that looked like afterbirth. One man I know recently passed fourteen pounds of rotting material—all in one treatment. . . . Just about everyone should get a lot of black, hardened mucus on about the fourth or fifth day, if he takes two five-gallon colonics a day. . . . Most of this mucus is as black as charcoal and so tough you can’t even cut it with a knife. In many cases, the mucus is as tough as the rubber tubing of a bicycle tire. . . . The longest we have had is twenty-seven feet, in one piece. Sometimes it will come out as a pile weighing as much as eleven pounds and continuing to come out for several days to a week.
Despite the clear and present evidence, most people these days react with disbelief when told by a naturopath that their worst chronic ailments are caused by the seepage of poisons into the bloodstream from clogged, toxic bowels, and that they need a series of colonic irrigations to clear their bowels and cure themselves. These people often reply defensively, “Who, me?” The answer to that question is a resounding, “Yes, you!” Thirty years ago, in a rare moment of candor, public health authorities in the USA acknowledged that “over 90 percent” of all Americans are running around with seriously clogged colons, such as those depicted in figure 11. If, at the turn of the twentieth century, Dr. Harvey Kellogg said he had never found a single normal colon, it boggles the mind to imagine what a century of junk food, synthetic additives, chemically contaminated beef and dairy products, frozen pizzas, and now genetically modified foods have done to the contemporary Western colon. As Irons puts it, “Regardless of your financial standing, regardless of your past health history, regardless of your age or sex, you do have this hardened mucus in your colon, and you will be amazed by what comes out of you.”
The only way to find out what comes out of you and to get rid of it once and for all is to climb aboard the “Colema Express” for a sevenday adventure of fasting and colonic irrigation.
SEVEN DAYS ABOARD THE COLEMA EXPRESS
The seven-day fast and internal cleansing program using “Vit-ra-tox” supplements and the Colema Board is V. E. Irons’s great gift to the science of health and longevity. Today, Irons’s family in California continues to produce and distribute this fine line of products and to provide printed information regarding the program to anyone who requests it. Those interested in obtaining further information or ordering the products may do so by contacting the address given in the “Suppliers” section.
To give the reader an idea of what to expect on a seven-day cleansing fast using detox supplements and colonics, here’s a day-by-day description, based on personal experience, of a week on the “Colema Express”—the fast lane to health, longevity, and a squeaky clean colon:
Fig. 11. Clogged Plumbing: The colon is the most “out of shape” organ today. A) Healthy colon as depicted in anatomy books; B) X-Ray profiles of typical human colons today.
It is best to skip dinner the night before starting a therapeutic fast, or just eat fresh fruit, and to take two or three “Vit-ra-tox” herbal laxatives before bed, so that you begin the first day of the fast by completely evacuating the bowels of all residual feces. First thing in the morning, start taking the psyllium and bentonite cleansers, followed an hour or two later by the Greenlife and other nutritional supplements, according to the schedule outlined in the program brochure, and take one or two five-gallon colonics per day. The first day is very easy and causes no discomfort, because the body’s detox mechanisms have not yet reached high gear, and the tissues have not yet begun to discharge their most deeply impacted toxins into the bloodstream.
Day 2
Continue taking the supplements and colonics. By midafternoon, you will probably begin to feel a bit weak and wobbly, tired and listless. This is not due to starvation or lack of nutrition. How you feel is due entirely to the onset of the detox process, which switches on about thirty-six hours after you stop eating food. Digestive enzymes normally engaged in the endless task of digesting food in the stomach now enter the bloodstream instead and patrol the body on “search and destroy” missions, dismantling damaged and cancerous cells, killing bacteria and viruses, and dissolving toxic deposits in the joints, organs, and other tissues. All of these toxic wastes are then dumped into the bloodstream for excretion. For the first few days, the toxins come pouring out of the tissues much faster than the kidneys and skin can excrete them, leaving a backlog of toxic residues floating in the bloodstream. These toxins circulate around the body and through the brain while waiting to be eliminated, like aircraft circling an airfield while waiting their turn to land. They can cause headaches, body pain, fatigue, and irritability. You may, perhaps, derive a small measure of comfort from the knowledge that the worse you feel, the better the program is working for you to detoxify and heal your body. Also be assured that the discomfort will pass in a few more days. There is no shortcut to bypass the symptomatic discomforts of detox, although you may lessen them with herbal teas, hot mineral baths, massage, and other methods. There’s always a certain degree of “no pain, no gain” dynamics when it comes to detox. But with fasting, the gain is so much greater and lasts so much longer than the temporary discomfort it causes that it seems a negligible price to pay for the benefits.
Day 3
The detox process continues to accelerate and intensify today, making you feel even more tired and uncomfortable. If you feel particularly low, you may take a few extra doses of bentonite, which helps to neutralize the toxic overload in the bloodstream. You may also take some extra Greenlife to increase the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen and provide additional fuel for metabolic energy. This is the day that you start to approach the threshold of the healing crisis, which marks the peak intensity of the detox phase and the beginning of the healing process. It is no coincidence that this day is when first-time fasters start to waver and toy with the idea of terminating the fast. Do not surrender to that temptation! You’ve already come this far, and you’ll regret it if you deprive yourself of the final rewards of the fast by quitting now.
Day 4
For most people, this is the most difficult day, especially if they are highly toxic, because this is the day that the healing crisis usually occurs. The body excretes a foul odor and clammy sweat, the breath stinks of rotting sewage, and the tongue becomes coated with white and yellow slime. All of this reaction is the toxic waste from the deepest tissues of the body coming to the surface for elimination, and the body’s rancid reactions are always a sign of a successful detox. Don’t give up now! This is the halfway mark, and if you can make it through to the end of the day, the rest is all downhill, and you will easily finish the program.
Depending upon how toxic you were to begin with, the healing crisis will either pass today, or continue with ever diminishing intensity until the next morning. Either way, you will start feeling better today. Since the heaviest toxins are now out of your body, you will have a lot more energy to spare for ordinary functions. You’ll start to notice a lightness in your limbs, a supple flexibility in your joints, and a rapidly growing clarity and joy in your mind. You will realize from the way you feel on this day, without a shadow of doubt, that you are in the midst of the most profound cleansing and healing experience of your life, and that what you are doing is the best possible way to repair your body, preserve your health, and prolong your lifespan. That insight alone usually suffices to carry you through to the end of the program.
Day 6
Energy returns rapidly now, and the blood and tissues are almost completely purified. Your body has already begun to replace damaged cells, rebuild blood, and repair organs and tissues, and as a result you feel yourself growing stronger by the hour, even though you have not eaten any food for nearly a week. You should continue taking one or two colonics per day, because the biggest amounts of the most deeply impacted mucoid matter and putrefactive waste are flushed out of the colon on the last two or three days of the fast, after the superficial layers of sludge have been removed. As Irons says, and as anyone else who has ever done this program has observed, “You will be amazed by what comes out of you,” especially in the last few days, despite not having eaten anything for nearly a week.
Day 7
By now, you should feel healthier and more energized and well balanced than you can ever remember feeling, and you probably won’t have much hunger for food. You well might feel as though you could easily fast for a few more days, and indeed you could, if you wished. Recalling the heavy heaps of putrid waste matter that poured out of your bowels and realizing how much better you feel after ridding your body of this toxic load, you will probably resolve to change your diet and eating habits to avoid polluting your bowels, blood, and bodily tissues again with wrong food choices, indigestible food combinations, and foods loaded with chemical contaminants.
Don’t forget to take a good lactobacteria supplement for a week or two after any fast, and be sure to break your fast gradually and carefully by eating only fresh fruits and vegetables for a day or two. Then slowly returning to a normal daily diet of wholesome natural foods properly prepared and correctly combined.
Try taking the “Colema Express.” You may not like the ride very much, but you’ll love the results.