The road to good health begins with cleansing the gut…….and then keeping it healthy.  There is an old saying that “death begins in the colon”!  A bit dramatic, but more accurate than most people realise. The general perception of a “colon cleanse” is either colonic irrigation, or some other method of removing faecal matter from the bowel, but it goes much further than that. The intestinal tract is essentially a continuous tube from the mouth to the anus, and each part of the tube has a specific function to perform. Among these are: Digestion -- transferring the nutritional value of that food into the body. Processing the waste from that food and eliminating it from the body. Serving as a drainpipe for waste produced Serving as a drain for toxic substances absorbed through our lungs and skin, etc. Functioning as a first line of defence in the body's immune system by serving as a home to beneficial bacteria that identify and eliminate viruses and unhealthy bacteria ingested with our food.   What can go wrong if the system is backed-up? Physically, the colon is simply not designed to store large amounts of old faecal matter. Stores of old faecal matter are not only breeding grounds for harmful bacteria and dangerous parasites, but the extra garbage causes the colon to distend and expand. This causes the walls of the colon to thin out (like blowing up a balloon more and more). As the walls extend out, they press on and compress other organs in the abdominal cavity. Consider that a sluggish bowel can retain kg's of old toxic and poisonous faecal matter (5-10kg is not unusual). It should be noted that doctors rarely see this accumulated matter during colonoscopies because patients are given purgatives to clean out their intestinal tracts before the colonoscopies, thus removing the