posted June 29, 2005 06:52 PM         

Mucoid plaque is a term used by many holistic doctors and researchers to describe the uniform rubbery layers of mucous and rotting food which compact themselves year after year along the entire length of the digestive tract. (Anderson)

Peristalsis is the normal rhythmic muscular action of the intestine to push food down and outward, out of the body.

Mucoid plaque is formed as the intestine keeps producing mucous as a normal response to an irritant: undigested food. Food is not supposed to just sit there and rot. We're only supposed to store three meals (Jensen.) But most Americans store nine, twelve, or even more meals before one comes out. This increased transit time is irritating to the intestinal lining. Mucous is not powerful enough to move the toxic, enzymeless sludge of Taco Supremes and Curlie Fried Onion Rings with ketchup. But the body keeps on valiantly trying, and more and more mucous is constantly being produced. Eventually the mucous becomes matrixed with the most indigestible elements, like trans fatty acids from the Barbecue and Sour Cream chips. And it goes on day after day, week after week, month after month, etc. And the layers get thicker and harder and the colon grows in diameter. And we absorb less and less nutrients and we lose more and more water and minerals.

Want to discover your own transit time? Try this simple test: eat something you usually don't eat that will be easily identifiable when it comes out. Frozen corn, peanuts, and pistachios are some good examples. Simply note the time from when you eat the markers to the time when you see them leaving. That's your transit time, at least of the matter that is not cemented to the colon walls.

The intestinal walls contain long muscles whose job it is to keep things moving along. These muscles gradually become overstretched and weakened by the pressure of too much waste pushing against them, expanding outward, like blowing up a long thin balloon. Thus peristalsis - the normal wavelike muscular motion of the colon - is further inhibited and blockage is again promoted.

Mucoid plaque blocks inflow and outflow, resulting in lack of nutrient, water, and electrolyte absorption, as well as retention of toxic putrefaction in balloon-like blocked outpocketings of the intestine. In addition, pathogenic bacteria, parasites, and Candida thrive in the mucoid plaque layer and are actually protected by it from prescription or natural herbal remedies and efforts to remove them. Researchers refer to the mucoid plaque as a "culture medium" for these organisms. (Forstner)

Mucoid plaque is described as a natural response to an unnatural stimulus. It is a necessary protection the body produces to try and shield itself from poisons. Mucoid plaque is a product of the constant production of mucous by the glycocalyx lining cells, brought on by the modern American diet of fake, empty, processed, chemical-laden, hormone-laced, antibiotic-soaked foods. Many doctors have noted that when the plaque can be removed by a cleanse, remission from virtually any disease may result. Simple cause and effect.

Mucoid plaque has been definitely linked to gastric cancer by the simple mutation of the lining cells - metaplasia. (Sipponen, Filipe) No big surprise here - cell damage is caused by inflow/outflow blockage, and after a certain time, mutation occurs. Another mechanism is that the constant secretion of mucous captures the toxins, but since normal transit is blocked, the toxins become locked in one location, often for years, resulting in irritation and eventual cell mutation. The cells steep in their own wastes, month after month.

In a lecture in San Jose California on 26 Sep 98, Dr. Richard Anderson told the story of one of his patients who underwent the cleanse in Hawaii a few years ago. The patient was passing long strands of the rubbery mucoid plaque, some over 20 feet in length! Fascinated, the patient hung the strands over his clothesline in the back yard. He then took a length of the plaque, and packaged it in a box to send to the mainland to prove what happened to him. He mailed the package at the local post office in Hawaii.

A few days later, two serious-looking officials in ATF windbreakers knocked on the patient's door and asked him if he had sent such and such a package to such and such an address. The patient said yes, and asked what was the problem. They answered that the post office has dogs that sniff out all packages mailed off the island, and that one of them had become very excited about this package. The patient asked what were the dogs trained to detect. Only two things, came the answer: drugs and explosives. Which dog was it? The one for explosives. The patient was incredulous, especially when he recalled that he had worked with munitions some 25 years ago, and his job was to handle explosives! He explained the detox cleanse to the two agents and they were satisfied. This story illustrates the power of a such an intestinal cleanse: the body had retained these strong toxins in the mucoid plaque lining of the colon, stored in a concentration powerful enough to be detected by dogs through the layers of wrapping of a sealed package some 25 years later!

Of course it's anecdotal, but Anderson has been doing this for 15 years and has cleansed several thousand patients. He has amassed a ton of clinical data, but not through double blind studies. (Only drugs require double blind studies.) The rubbery mucoid plaque layer seals in toxins and prevents absorption of water and nutrients. Toxic sludge promotes proliferation of pathological bacteria and yeasts, like Candida.

Now for the bad news.

There's another separate demon at work in the blocked colon. His name is

AUTOINTOXICATION

Here's how he works: The sludge that's stopping up the works is undigested food. Undigested means rotting: putrefying, fermenting, going rancid. Proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, respectively. Want to see what that looks like? Leave some meat, some french fries, and some bread out on the counter for a week. A blocked colon can be even worse, because of the time frame involved: in many people the sludge sits in the colon for weeks or even longer. The colon walls are normally very well sealed in order to protect the body against reabsorbing the waste that is about to be eliminated. It's a sophisticated design, set up to allow water and electrolytes back into the body, but no toxic poisons. Stay with me now. In long-term buildup of undigested food in the colon, eventually a situation emerges that doctors call Leaky Gut Syndrome.

Essentially what's happening is that the sludge has built up so much blockage that the inner membranes of the colon develop leaks. Some of the toxic debris is forced through the walls of the colon, along with the water and electrolytes, back into the bloodstream. Hence, the name autointoxication: you're poisoning yourself.

Once in the bloodstream, the undigested debris, now a foreign irritant, can take up residence in any organ or tissue it finds room. Chronic inflammation begins, and gradually, degeneration of that organ. Here are some of the diseases that such a sequence can cause:

Chronic Allergies
Jaundice
Kidney disease
Acne
Hepatitis
Psoriasis
Blinding headaches
AIDS
Arthritis
Pancreatitis
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Depression
Infections
Fibromyalgia
Septicemia
Multiple Joint Pain Syndrome
Dermatitis
Autoimmune Disorders
Candida albicans
Cancer

to name just a few. This list is taken from an article by Leo Galland, MD who has done extensive research in this area of hyperpermeability, as illustrated by the list of over 150 references at the end of the article.

It's funny, when people with average intelligence first hear about Leaky Gut Syndrome, they usually understand it right away because it seems logical. Very often, it is the nutritionists, dieticians, and doctors who seem more apt to question the existence of hyperpermeability, or Leaky Gut Syndrome. Even though there has been years of copious research in the best medical journals thoroughly documenting its characteristics and nature, Leaky Gut Syndrome is not commonly taught as part of the medical curriculum, or the abbreviated curriculum presented to nutritionists and dieticians. Many of these people therefore conclude that since they got their degrees without hearing about hyperpermeability or Leaky Gut Syndrome, it must not exist! Very curious.

Dr. Galland suffers from no such illusion. He traces the physiology of how large molecules of the "toxic/antigenic load" (undigested sludge) work their way through the intestinal walls and are first introduced into the liver before they are available to the bloodstream. Dr. Galland describes the "high cost" of the liver's detox work: creation of free radicals and other "reactive intermediaries" which themselves may be passed into the bloodstream if the toxic burden becomes too great for the liver's defenses. Here we see the particulars of autointoxication, not just some New Age literary musings. Dr. Galland points out the wide range of pathological conditions, listed above, which may come about exactly through this mechanism. Very sophisticated markers have been devised which can measure the toxins that "leak" into the body. (S. Martin)

Jensen has an axiom that the disease is named by where the toxins finally settle.

Candida albicans, the opportunistic yeast, can be both a cause and a result of Leaky Gut Syndrome. Once Candida gets a foothold in the gut, it puts down "roots" through the gut wall, causing openings through which large molecules and toxins can leak. Candida cells can themselves be introduced into the bloodstream in this same fashion. (Simon Martin)

Sherry Rogers MD, implicates Leaky Gut Syndrome as a primary cause for autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus. She says such conditions can be the result of the

"formation of auto-antibodies due to leaking of body tissue look-alike antigens..."

TRANSIT TIME

Let's talk propulsion for a minute. Normal elimination involves rhythmic contraction of the muscles in the colon wall, to push the waste outward. Again, this natural, wavelike motion is called peristalsis.

It is normal to eliminate two or more times per day. Transit time: how much time between food in and waste out. Normal transit time is less than 24 hours. This means that only two or three meals should be in transit throughout the digestive tract at a time. Today's breakfast IN pushes yesterday's breakfast or lunch OUT. Toxic fecal matter is supposed to totally leave the body in one day, not hang around to toxify. That's the design. Many people you know have been brought up to think that it is normal to eliminate only once every two or three days. Or even longer. That means they are storing NINE meals or more in the tract at all times. The waste from nine meals or more is always inside them.

Want to track your transit time? Use a marker; corn perhaps. Time it.

The problem is that the longer the food is in the colon, the more it begins to rot and toxify the body. Modern soft foods and empty junk foods have greatly increased transit time, for two reasons:

1. They are indigestible
2. They lack fiber

The colon thus becomes a breeding ground for pathological bacteria whose toxic byproducts further add to the totality of biochemical poisons. All this yuk is then available to be reabsorbed into the bloodstream, because of Leaky Gut Syndrome. From the chapter on Allergies (www.thedoctorwithin.com), you'll remember that means hyperpermeability of the gut wall: stuff gets through into the bloodstream which shouldn't get through, because of the destruction of the cells of the colon's lining. Large molecules of rotting fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, which also may drag along with them the toxic wastes of the pathological bacteria that have been breeding in the putrid sludge, all this can leak through into the bloodstream. From there the toxins have access to every cell in the body. Getting the image?

Let's make it worse. Let's hypothesize a lot of indigestible chips and margarine into the mix. No enzymes. Less than one glass of water per day. That's right - we're making cement here. Solid compacting of unmetabolizable sewage, daily pasted and encrusted in ever-thickening layers along the inside folds, the haustrae, of the colon. Mucoid plaque. Think the inside diameter of that shotgun barrel is getting bigger, or smaller year by year?

SIX FOOT BALLOON

The colon is fabulously extensible: it can expand up to five times its normal size when stuffed. Surgeons report expanded colons up to 12 inches in diameter, with a central opening the size of a pencil! (Tissue Cleansing p. 27) Technicians who measure percent body fat on patients day after day begin to notice an odd fact: many people with almost normal body fat readings have enormous abdomens. Pregnant trucker Santa Clauses with skinny legs. Reason: it's not fat. It's a monster colon, packed with sludge to five times of its normal size, expanding outward. (Rich. Anderson) Actually makes sense - if it were otherwise, many people would be dead in their 20s because the colon walls would become so layered with sludge that there would be no passageway left for elimination. The colon would simply close up.

Doing sit-ups? Trying to flatten that lower abdomen, and you aren't really overweight? But it won't get flat, right? It isn't fat. Most likely it's rotting food in the colon. How's the elimination? Transit time?

In his fascinating book, Cleanse and Purify, Dr. Richard Anderson cites his encounter with one medical doctor who did not want to be identified. This doctor, after hearing Anderson's lecture about mucoid plaque and expanded toxic colons, told the audience:

"I have spent twelve years working in the field of post-mortem diagnosis. I have seen many thousands of dissected cadavers. What Rich is telling you is the absolute truth. Everybody has it in there. We have a way of attaching a hose to the upper intestines and with the aid of powerful chemicals, we literally blow the stuff right out of the intestines. I have seen the heavy 'beer belly' and so called fat people lose all that bulk in five minutes. It wasn't fat. It was the mucoid layer that Rich was talking about. and in that filthy substance we see all sorts of worms, bacteria, fungi, and many unidentifiable things. It is almost unbelievable that people can live with that filth in them. All these people were dead of course, and it wasn't hard to see why "

(Anderson p2-46)

Probably won't read a story like that in any of the popular press.

The noted surgeon, Dr. Harvey Kellogg, of the Kellogg Sanitarium in Battle Creek Michigan, whose experience was with the colons of living subjects, agreed:

"Of the 22,000 operations that I have personally performed, I have never found a single normal colon. Of the 100,000 that were performed under my jurisdiction, not over 6% were normal."

Dr. Kellogg estimated that over 90% of the "diseases of civilization" were due to a blocked and non-functioning colon.

- cited in Iridology: the Science and Practice p 408

If "normal" people can have up to 22 lbs of undigested food in the colon, how much can the Beef Barbecue Buddhas be carrying? 50 lbs? 100? The imagination reels.

A little more plumbing, now. The colon begins in the lower right abdomen, goes up toward the head about 8 inches or so and then makes a right angle straight across the upper abdomen over to the left side. Then it angles downward again, and then out. Trace this path with your finger. OK. The section of the colon that traverses straight across from one side to the other is known as the Transverse Colon.

Gastroenterologist researchers now know that in the stuffed and expanded transverse colon, the horizontal section, the extra weight is enough to make it prolapse, or fall down, so that it is lying atop organs that it normally wouldn't be in contact with, like the bladder, the uterus, the prostate, or the ovaries. Dr. Stephen Chang at the University of California has now shown that combining the effects of Leaky Gut Syndrome with a collapsed colon can actually be the mechanism for toxification, infection, and disease of any organ that is now touching this leaking, sagging toxic tube. (Ross Anderson) Obviously it would be an ineffective waste of drugs to treat these new infections in isolation, as long as the process of autointoxication continues, wouldn't you say?