The Healthy Skeptic on Colon Cleansing Supplements

Posted By elissa on Jul 3, 2010 | 1 comment

Chris Woolston ‘s LA Times column on the claims made for two “colon cleansing” products is a pretty good read:

The often-repeated claim that most colons are clogged with 10, 20 or even 40 pounds of impacted material is ridiculous, Inadomi says. He notes that people preparing for a colonoscopy have to take a strong laxative that completely cleans out the colon. Even with this total scrubbing, “they only lose a couple of pounds, maybe 5 at the most,” he says. He’s never heard of anyone losing anything close to 40 pounds: “You’d have to check the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ for that one,” he says.

There’s also no reason to think that waste in the colon is full of disease-causing toxins, says Dr. David Kastenberg, an associate professor of medicine and co-director of nutrition and metabolic diseases at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He notes that people who suffer from constipation — who presumably would be in the biggest danger — don’t seem to be especially likely to come down with colon cancer or any other disease.

Kastenberg sees lots of red flags surrounding NuAge and Oxy-Powder. He’s never heard of “muciligenic fibers,” the one ingredient mentioned on the NuAge website. (The term also failed to show up in a search of a medical journal database.) As for Oxy-Powder, he seriously doubts that oxygen would have any power to clean the colon. “We give oxygen to people in hospitals all the time, and they don’t explode with bowel movements,” he says. He had a good laugh over the claim that oxygen is a powerful antioxidant. (As the name implies, antioxidants work by blocking oxidation. Calling oxygen an antioxidant is like saying that water is good for drying things out.).

There are any number of absolutely unsourced and completely unscientific claims made for supps all over the internet. “Detox,” and “cleansing” claims are among the most pervasive – and ridiculous – amongst them.  Even worse, the products are often hideously expensive – the makers of the supps profiled in Woolston’s column must be laughing all the way to the bank.