Is it good to detoxify and cleanse the intestines?

There is really no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Using the right scenario and choosing the right method can help reduce the burden on the body. If you follow the trend blindly, it will destroy the intestines.

A while ago, Xiao Min, my colleague in the department, worked hard for ten days straight on a project. Every meal was filled with takeaways that were heavy in oil and salt, and he didn't bother to take a few sips of water. He suffered from constipation for six days, and his stomach was as bulging as a small rubber ball. He couldn't even bend his waist. He went to the community hospital to see a doctor, and he prescribed it. Two boxes of mild osmotic laxatives, combined with drinking 2 liters of water and half a pound of boiled spinach every day, she was fine in two days. She herself said that even her previously groggy brain was refreshed a lot. This kind of bowel cleansing with clear needs and under professional guidance is of course good.

But if you believe the nonsense on the Internet that "cleaning the intestines can eliminate 10 pounds of feces, whiten the skin, and slim down the belly," you are simply looking for trouble for yourself. Last year, my best friend Aya followed a health blogger to do the "7-day fruit and vegetable juice cleansing and detoxification". She ate nothing but cold-pressed fruit and vegetable juice every day. On the afternoon of the third day, she fainted at the subway station. She was sent to the emergency room and was diagnosed with hypokalemia. She stayed in the hospital for two days before she recovered. Later, her stomach and intestines were sensitive for more than half a year. She would suffer from diarrhea when blowing cold wind or eating something cold, which was not worth the gain.

To be honest, many people don’t know that “defecation” itself is a concept created by marketing, and there is no such term in formal medical textbooks. Our intestines are like a conveyor belt with its own calibration function. Under normal circumstances, the food eaten is digested and absorbed, and the residue will be excreted within 1-2 days. There is no "poison" accumulated for several years. If you have nothing to do, just drink those stimulating bowel cleansing teas containing senna leaves and rhubarb. It will feel good at first, but over time, the peristalsis function of the intestines will degrade, just like the motor of the conveyor belt has been loosened, and it will become more and more difficult to defecate on your own. In severe cases, you may develop melanosis of the colon, which is really harmful to the body.

Some people will definitely say, I usually have irregular bowel movements and always feel bloated. Is it wrong to want to clear my intestines? Of course there is no problem, but you really don’t need to do those fancy things. You can eat an apple with the skin on an empty stomach in the morning, or eat five or six room-temperature prunes, drink half a cup of warm honey water (don’t do it for diabetics), and stand up and walk two more steps during the day. It is much more effective than the colon cleansing products you spend hundreds of dollars to buy, and it is not harmful to the body.

After all, our intestines are not that dirty, and we don’t need to think about “detoxification” every day. If you really have defecation problems, just see a doctor first, and don’t blindly use yourself as a guinea pig.