Tissue Cleansing

by Dr. Bernard Jensen

When the iris reveals bowel disturbances, and when there are other clear indications of bowel problems from other diagnostic methods, the health practitioner is faced with one of the most common, serious and difficult situations to correct.

In fifty years of sanitarium practice, I have had the opportunity to work with over 350,000 patients. Of all these people, not one of them was free from some form of bowel mismanagement.

All sick people have bowel trouble. All sick people are tired, worn out and toxin laden. I can’t think of any better, more effective way to stay healthy and avoid sickness and disease than to do what is necessary to take good care of the bowels.

In working with a patient, I spend the major part of the time in an effort to get the bowels back into proper functioning condition. Without this prerequisite, all other therapies, treatments, vitamins or other aids fall far short of their potential good. Proper bowel function is an essential precondition for staying healthy, and if ill, to overcome sickness and disease. The “sewer system” must work properly or the body remains soaking in its own putrid waste, encouraging disease processes and forever eluding health-building and vitality-producing forces.

Over the years, the idea has taken hold that we need not pay any attention to the bowel. “Leave it alone and it will I take care of itself. It is dirty and not nice to talk about.” Nothing could be further from the truth. This attitude has promoted a misconception about bowel function and hygiene that is now having serious consequences across our land. Many people are in bowel trouble. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have bowel disturbances and could not benefit from having better bowel function.

Degenerative conditions of the colon are rapidly gaining in frequency, intensity and severity. At the turn of the century, diverticulitis was unknown. It is the uncommon condition in natives of Africa, for instance. Today, it is increasingly common and deadly in our civilization. Cancer of the colon is now taking over I,000,000 lives a year. We have an army of colon specialists, colonic irrigators and surgeons. Laxative sales are booming as thousands of tons of colon stimulators are being consumed to force under active bowels to function. Constipation is so common that, for many people, it is a way of life.

At the source of all these troubles is a faulty and mismanaged dietary intake that is the direct consequence of the way we are now growing and marketing the food supply. Food quality has been sacrificed to quantity, ability to be harvested mechanically, long shelf life and, most of all, to selfish indulgence in profit taking following destructive and devitalizing chemical processing. The result is foodless food promoted and bought and sold at the expense of the health and vitality of the American public.

When the body’s sewer backs up, every cell feels the result in the form of an encumbering accumulation of toxic waste. The body begins to sink into a morass of failing health that is the immediate result of our greatest health enemy auto-intoxication.

It is becoming increasingly clear that bowel troubles have a reflex effect upon specific organs in the body.

For example, Sir Arbuthnot Lane, who was a surgeon for the King of England, spent many years specializing in bowel problems. He was an expert at removing sections of the bowel and stitching it back together. He taught this work to other doctors and gained an international reputation for his efficiency. During the years of this work, he began to notice a peculiar phenomenon. During the course of recovery from colonic surgery, some of his patients experienced remarkable cures of diseases that had no apparent connection with his surgery.

For instance, a young boy, who had arthritis for many years, was in a wheelchair at the time of surgery. Six months later, this boy had recovered entirely from the disease.

Another case involved a woman with a goiter. When a specific section of the bowel was removed in surgery, there ensued a definite remission of the goiter within six months.

These and similar experiences impressed him so much because he saw the relationship between the toxic bowel and the functioning of various organs in the body. After much thought about this relationship, he became very interested in changing the bowel through dietetic methods and spent the last 25 years of his life teaching people how to care for the bowel through nutrition and not surgery.

Sir Lane has said, “All maladies are due to the lack of certain food principles, such as mineral salts or vitamins, or to the absence of the nor al defenses of the body, such as the natural protective flora. When this occurs, toxic bacteria invade the lower alimentary canal, and the poisons thus generated pollute the bloodstream and gradually deteriorate and destroy every tissue, gland and organ of the body.”

I am absolutely sure that what Dr. Lane discovered through his surgical explorations is indeed an accurate description of how the bowel functions in relation to the other organs in the body. We know that every organ and tissue is dependent upon the healthy well-being of every other organ and tissue in order for there to be total well-being. When one tissue or organ fails, it affects the whole body. If there is faulty functioning in the bowel, this deficiency is passed along to the rest of the body. We could call this the intestinal domino effect. We literally poison ourselves into illness in this manner. Many years of productive life are stolen as the body slowly succumbs to a subtle, cumulative under activity.

At the Battle Creek Sanitarium, I heard Dr. John Harvey Kellogg say he knew of many cases in which operations were prevented by cleansing and revitalizing the bowel. He maintained that 90% of the diseases of civilization are due to improper functioning of the colon.

Sir Arbuthnot Lane (MD) of London has shown the relation between bowel stasis and disease. He left no doubt as to how seriously he regarded the effects of intestinal intoxication when he said, “The lower end of the intestine is of the size that requires emptying every six hours, but by habit, we retain its contents twenty four hours. The result is ulcers and cancer.

Besides these world-renowned exponents of intestinal sanitation, other authorities have given recognition to the belief that cleanliness of the colon is necessary to good health. It is believed that disorders such as appendicitis, infected tonsils, liver and gallbladder infections, dysfunction of the heart and blood vessels, sinusitis, arthritis and rheumatism, etc., no doubt have their origin in a sluggish colon.

There is also an increasing number of morbid conditions in the various parts of the colon, involving the flexures, the rectum and the anus. Consider the amount of surgery and various therapies for hemorrhoids, fistulas, prostate disturbances and malignancies.

Recently, Dr. Denis P. Burkitt has been lecturing to surgeons around the world about his 20 years of experience with East African natives. A surgeon himself, who has been honored with discovering Burkitt’s Lymphoma, Burkitt has been emphasizing the role of indigestible fiber, specifically bran, as a preventative of such major diseases as appendicitis, diabetes, hernias and colonic polyps. The surgeons he has been lecturing to have been, by and large, uninformed about the quality of food people consume. At first skeptical, his audiences have become impressed with his scientific findings. Burkitt shows that the contrast between diets including indigestible grain fiber, and those replacing it with a low residue diet high in refined flours and sugars, is dramatically illustrated by studying Africans and Westerners. Appendicitis and major colon diseases are almost totally absent in primitive African regions, but as these natives move to more developed countries, these diseases rapidly increase.

Burkitt has discovered that the intestinal transit time for evacuation of feces varies from 35 hours in the Bantu consuming coarse grain fiber to 77-100 hours in the Englishman who lacks it. Burkitt appears to be following Sir Arbuthnot Lane’s footsteps with these findings.

Long ago, Lane pointed out that the longer cells languish in waste evacuations and toxins, the more enfeebled and degenerative they become. Along with slowed transit due to absence of fiber, the increased use of white bread and white sugar have altered the bacterial nature of intestinal flora. In consequence, intestinal pressure increases along with colon diseases. Everyone should avoid white flour and sugar and include bran in the daily diet. Many of the major diseases troubling modern society could be prevented in this way.

In an effort to discover the most effective method of restoring proper bowel function, I have traveled all over the world, asking questions and tracking down any good ideas or methods. I have been working out many ways of coping with this problem. In the last few years, my colleagues and I have developed a system of bowel cleansing treatment that has given consistently good results. We have seen amazingly positive affirmations of what detoxification of the colon can do.

Dr. Alexis Carrell Experiments

In 1911, living tissue cells were successfully grown on microscope slides for the first time by Dr. Alexis Carrell of the Rockefeller Institute. Receiving the Nobel Prize for this and his other research work, Dr. Carrell was able to keep tissue cells alive through daily nutritious feedings.

By washing away the tissue evacuations, the cells grew and thrived; however, he found that if the evacuations were left for three days, the cells became languid and feeble. If left longer than three days, the tissue cells died. In spite of daily feedings, moderate saturation of the tissue cells by their digestive evacuations resulted in lowered vitality. Prolonged unsanitary conditions brought consequential death to the cells.

An infective process and constipation are associated with stagnation of the contents of the large bowel. As matter collects and stagnates, an excessive number of microorganisms, which normally tend to assume an unusually virulent type, begin to permeate and infect the wall of the bowel. These, and other more dangerous microorganisms that may develop in the decomposed material, cause irritation and inflammation of the mucus membranes, resulting in painful spasms of the muscle wall. This inflammatory process readily affects the appendix, which is part of the lymphatic system. Inflammation of the appendix is one of the first serious effects of constipation.

Escaping the large bowel, via the ileocecal valve, these microorganisms readily enter the small intestine, rapidly growing in this sterile environment. As the level of infectious material in the small intestines rise, the bloodstream and lymphatic system pick up a proportionately larger amount of microorganisms and noxious matter, more than the liver is able to control.

Consequently, the circulatory system delivers this contaminated blood to every cell in the body, irritating the tissue cells of the kidneys where the toxins and poisons are eliminated. The surface membrane lining of the bladder is also irritated by contact with the toxic material.

Chronic and degenerative conditions are the inevitable results.

In order to stimulate the tissues required to deal with these waste by-products, the thyroid and other ductless glands become overactive. The thyroid gland, which regulates the functions of the body, frequently becomes enlarged because of the unusual demands this low-grade infection produces, and the tissue cells of the thyroid undergo various stages of degeneration.

Just as in Dr. Carrell’s experiment with living tissue cells, the tissue cells of the human body, if supplied with impure blood, result in lowered vitality and resisting power. Disease and degeneration begin to flourish in tissue cells that are invaded and affected by the insidious behavior of microorganisms and their poisonous toxins.

Medical autopsies have occasionally revealed colons over 9 inches in diameter with no more than a pencil’s width opening for fecal elimination.

Old, decayed accumulations of years and years of putrid body waste materials had encrusted the colon wall. Could this backed-up sewer material be the primary cause of disease and illness in the body?

With the encrustation and old mucus lining removed, the cellular functions begin to return and the body is on its way to renewed health and vitality. This process is vividly seen in the following pictures as healing begins and chronic conditions are reversed as we proclaim in correcting practically all body ailments.

The following clipping is from the Daily News Service, 1981:

“A new study by University of San Francisco medical researchers has revived a turn-of-the-century idea that toxic substances produced in the bowel can have damaging health effects. The study’s findings also support recent suggestions of a link between a diet high in fat and low in fiber and an increased risk of developing breast cancer. The study of 1481 non-nursing women showed that those who are severely constipated tend to have abnormal cells in the fluid extracted from their breasts. Such cells have been found in women with breast cancer and, the researchers suggested, may indicate that the women face an increased risk of developing cancer. The cellular abnormalities occurred five times as often in women who moved their bowels fewer than three times a week than in women who did so more than once a day.”

Chronic constipation is often the result of a diet high in protein, fat and refined carbohydrates (sugars and refined flour) but low in such fibrous foods as whole grains, fruits and vegetables.


See Also: Intestinal Health