Diverticulosis and The Bowel

If you are prone to lots of gas, your bowel is under pressure most of the time. If you are chronically constipated, this pressure is even more significant. This gas pressure exerted inside the bowel is capable of producing a blow-out or small rupture through the muscular lining of the bowel. Such a blow-out is shaped like a reverse polyp or mushroom pushing out through the wall of the bowel. Small out pocketings in the lining of the bowel are known as diverticula.

These little blow-outs or diverticula usually forming the weakest areas of the bowel. These are often in the spots where blood vessels penetrate the muscular layers. Regardless, when this develops, the condition is known as diverticulosis. It also means a susceptibility to infections in these pockets. When infection develops, the condition becomes known as diverticulitis. Diverticulitis can be dangerous, and it is usually treated with antibiotics. (When no alternative treatment has been used to halt the preceding conditions indeed antibiotics must be used at this time.)

In most cases, antibiotics clear the infection, the pus or infectious material is emptied into the bowel and rid through the stool. In some instances, if the diverticula are severe enough, and if the infection is noxious enough, the diverticula can rupture. At this point, bowel contents are spilled into the abdominal cavity, causing peritonitis.

Causes of Diverticulosis

A history of chronic constipation or colitis can predispose an individual to diverticulosis. When gas is routinely present in the bowel, it can exert sufficient pressure to produce blowouts. Similarly, if you have severely handicapped bowel habits (like a weakened or lazy colon), you too will be prone to this condition. Diverticula can also develop in your small bowel (small intestine). These are more serious, but also more rare.

It is not uncommon for surgery to be necessary to treat this small intestine condition. Fortunately for most people, natural treatments for both diverticulosis and diverticulitis are usually highly effective.

How to Treat Diverticulosis

If chronic gas is one of the main causes of the condition of your bowel, it is reasonable to assume that reducing this gas will help the condition. For all those people who suffer from diverticulosis and have gas, an exclusion diet is in order. This diet will eliminate the foods which cannot be digested properly. Such foods end up in the bowel undigested, ferment in the bowel, and produce huge quantities of gas, alcohol, and lactic acid.

For most people, the exclusion of all milk products: all high-sugar fruits; and all processed foods sweetened with lactose, fructose, corn sweetener, sorbitol, or mannitol will make a tremendous difference in eliminating the fermentation process in the gut. If this simple exclusion diet does not do the trick, visit a holistic doctor or other practitioner who can suggest specific digestive enzymes.

If your digestion is hampered anywhere (even in the stomach), you will pass undigested food into your bowel. There it will once again be fermented into irritating compounds that erode your wall. Gas will put constant pressure on the already irritated lining of your bowel.

Elimination Diet

If a simple exclusion diet and digestive enzymes do not halt the gas and bowel problems, use a more restrictive diet. Very few people are allergic to zucchini. Most people can tolerate a little celtic sea salt on their cooked zucchini. So, in stubborn cases, I put people on a zucchini diet until the gas and symptoms clear up. This will usually happen with 48 hours. At the end of the 48 hours, other foods must be individually introduced into the diet, one at a time in 24 hour periods.

Careful analysis must be kept regarding which foods cause the syndrome to reappear. These foods must be eliminated from the diet for at least six months. At that time, they can be retested to see if they are now tolerated. This approach also combined with digestive enzymes, will usually eliminate the cause of the problem of diverticulosis.

Unfortunately for most people they already have the little blowouts or out-pocketings. Luckily, when the diet is revamped these usually are no longer a problem. And with certain types of therapies, they can actually be removed and healed.

Removing and Healing Diverticulosis

To a general gastroenterologist or internist, removing and healing the condition seems ridiculous. After all, either you have the pockets or don’t. No vitamins or health food pills are going to make them go away. And this is partially true. But the right enzymes and supplements, combined with the necessary dietary changes and colonics, frequently wipe out diverticula and restore the bowel to health.

Scrub and Lavage Your Bowel Clean

For most individuals with diverticulosis, digestive enzymes are needed, unless there is a tendency toward ulcers. I routinely prescribe a strong digestive enzyme (one to three per meal). This allows for better digestion in the stomach. It will usually help relieve indigestion at this level. Most patients with diverticulosis also do well with an “intestinal scrub” therapy.

Using a colon cleanse product can remove undigested materials and enhance digestion. During and throughout any colon cleansing procedures, I recommend intestinal rebuilding products. Utilize formulas with healing properties during this time when you need it most.

Colon Therapy

For those who wish to eliminate diverticula (the pockets), colonics are necessary. We have performed this service on thousands of patients. The bowel contents were viewed as they were eliminated from the colon and passed through a lighted glass tube. After repeated very warm and ten cold colonics, the water opens up the plug that separates the diverticula from the inside of the colon.

Once this happens, the hardened, black fecal material that makes up the inside of the diverticula simply passes out into the colon and is washed away with the rest of the contents of the colon. The proof of effectiveness of this therapy is twofold. First, the material inside a little diverticular pocket is hard, round and black. When this washes out of the colon through the illuminated tube, there is no mistaking it. It rolls along like a black marble. And once it is washed away, the muscular walls of the colon seem to simply seal up the out-pocketing.

Barium x-rays of the colon before and after this treatment show all the diverticula early on the first film. They also show a smooth colon after diverticula have been eliminated.This is not an easy job and it requires from 10 to 30 treatments. It is possible, even after 30 treatments, that not all diverticula will be removed. But most will. And when the other treatments I’ve recommended are utilized at the same time, there will usually be no return of the condition.

As with all therapies of this type, work with your own doctor. With the threat of AIDS, it is critical that you go to a colon therapist who uses the best sterilization techniques for all equipment. Take your time with gut problems. Proceed slowly and deliberately, follow each step carefully, and allow plenty of time to heal. It took years for your bowel to deteriorate. Give it sufficient time to heal. You’ll be very happy that you did.

Dr Bruce West Health Alert Newsletter – www.healthalert.com