Better than Botox

I would like to share some beauty secrets I’ve discovered in my work, but first— we must talk about poop. I promise, this will make sense if you stick with me.

Parenthood has definitely lessened my squeamishness around all our bodies processes. Even though we are past the diaper years, lately the kids and I have been cracking up to songs about poop on Spotify. There is this one guy, “The Odd Man Who Sings”, who has poop song for almost every name in existence. Search for your name and poop together on Spotify and you will see.

While parenting broke me in, Functional Nutrition has me downright curious about the information we can gain by looking into our toilet bowl. We often overlook the most basic things- am I drinking enough water? Am I chewing slowly? What are the visual cues my poop is giving me?, in favor of fancier, more complex or more expensive interventions.

I try to test everything I can on myself before making recommendations. One treatment I have been wanting to try for many years is Hydrocolon therapy. Given our travels the past two years, I didn’t have access to some more specialized treatments, but now that we are home with access to EVERYTHING I seem to always be running some N of one experiment on myself.

I finally got the opportunity to experience hydrocolon therapy last week, and I was quite surprised with the results. I’d been having some winter allergies of late. By the next day my allergies were all but gone, my skin was looking considerably clearer, I’d lost several pounds, a slight discomfort in my digestive track I had been unaware of was gone and I was feeling lighter internally. The experience was another reminder of how gut health is the foundation of all health, and one of the true fountains of beauty.

The colon is five feet long, and over time it can accumulate uneliminated waste, especially if you struggle to hydrate property, don’t eat a ton of fiber, or tend towards constipation (meaning your stools have craggy lines or come out as smaller pellets, instead of something smooth and sausage like and doesn’t even require toilet paper to wipe it’s so clean). Much of nutrition is bridging the gap between our biology and the modern diet. We’re meant to be foraging for greens, eating seeds, and berries and twigs. Things that get the colon moving.

I am learning that our organs need love too.

As for my colon, I’d been doing things to support it on the outside- like eating lots of vegetables, taking digestive enzymes and apple cider vinegar to help my body break down food more effectively. But this is my first go at getting to know this organ better from the inside.

The whole procedure takes about an hour and a half, 50 minutes of which are spent actively irrigating. This is done by slowly filling the colon with warm water. Over time, the water helps to flush it out, starting with the descending colon, moving on to the transverse colon and eventually clearing out the ascending colon. Supposedly it takes several sessions (ideally in a short window of a week or two) to clean out the entire large intestine. But even after one session, the effects were significant. You can get a kit on Amazon for $20 and do this at home. I’d been hesitant— I’ve had an unopened kit at home for years, so I decided to go with a pro for my first time.

I’ve been studying embodiment the past seven years, learning how to access and release the information my body stores via feelings and sensations. Despite these explorations, I had yet to consider the sensations and emotions stored inside my organs. While the procedure was happening, I was transported back in time to a handful of memories related to my colon. The feeling of having terrible food poisoning in Mexico once while traveling alone. I had been laid out for three days in a hut by the ocean, only getting up to hydrate or go to the bathroom. Years of anxious living— feelings I hadn’t experienced in decades, passed by. A fearful moment of being chased out of a tent while camping alone with a girlfriend on a beach in southern Chile. As I allowed the sensations and memories to come and go, I marveled at how much my colon has stored and held and remembered.

While I found the procedure to be somewhat uncomfortable, though not painful, the after effects have me wanting to return and see what else can be released. I understand it gets easier after the first experience, as your body gets accustomed to the new sensation of water going upwards, against gravity and internal mechanisms.

The experience has me thinking— why would one go spend $100 or more on some beauty treatment when you could do a health treatment that would have much deeper and longer lasting benefits? I’m not knocking things like facials—but it does have me thinking about how much women in particular spend on superficial beauty remedies when they could instead invest in something that furthered wellbeing. Making small, regular improvements to your eating habits or routines, Going to hydrocolon therapy, working with some type of health coach you respect. If we could take all the billions spent on short lived treatments and apply them to actual health, not only would it make our eyes look brighter, our hair feel silkier, and our skin feel firmer, but we would gain more true vitality and wellbeing, from which our natural beauty emanates.

We’re often chasing results with products instead of looking to get to understand our bodies in a deeper way. They say beauty comes from the inside, which I take to also mean you have to do the work to take care of your health if you want it to be sustained throughout all of life.