Colon Health By Ruth Sackman
This is a transcript of a taped lecture given at the Vegetarian Hotel in Woodridge, New York by Ruth Sackman.
Let us start this lecture with an introduction to some work done many years ago by a noted British doctor by the name of Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, a pioneer designer and leader in making surgery safe, decent and of perfect design. I think I mentioned him at yesterday’s lecture. He was a surgeon. He came from a family of surgeons. He was well-known, not only in England, but in Germany and the United States. When he was invited to present his innovative techniques, the gallery of the OR (operating room) was filled with people anxious to acquire the new skills he presented.
Dr. Lane developed new surgical instruments and was recognized by the medical community as an outstanding physician. He was eventually knighted by the royal family.
I purposely give you all of these credentials so that there is no question about his link with the medical community. He was quite conventional, not off-beat.
At one point in his career, he had a most unusual experience, an experience that led him to the conclusion that nearly all chronic, degenerative diseases (arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis, etc.) stemmed from “poor drainage.” What he meant by poor drainage was that the body was not eliminating its waste competently and nearly all of it stemmed from poor elimination from the colon. It is as though a sewer is blocked up which then backs up into the blood stream and the glandular system.
Dr. Lane came to that conclusion when he was about 60 years of age because he had a patient who was confined to a wheel chair with rheumatoid arthritis. The man was found to have an inflammation in the colon which needed surgical excision. It was removed and subsequently the man came into his office without the wheel chair. Lane could not understand this phenomenon but being a maverick, an innovator, an investigator, he had to know why it had happened.
In his early years in medical school, he used to do frequent autopsies to find many answers to health problems. He learned that the body adapted to its environment so concluded there was a connection with the removal of the inflamed area of the colon and the relief of the rheumatoid arthritis. He began to use surgery of the colon successfully with other rheumatoid arthritis patients and ultimately taught the technique to his students. He concentrated on the rheumatoid arthritis for a long time. Eventually, he began to relate other health conditions to the colon.
Although Lane as a surgeon might ha-ve been biased toward using systems other than surgery to cure a health problern, he concluded there was a possibility that cleansing the colon might accomplish the same results. If you are my age you might remember there was a time when people talked bout using mineral oil to improve their health. That came from Dr. Lane. I do not think that mineral oil was the right tool to use but we are dealing with a concept this man had to clean the waste products out of the body, to see that the sewage system was clear.
What happens if it is not? When the fecal matter sits in the colon for too long a period of time, it putrefies. It has a tendency to get dry and hard. If you have ever seen the stuff left by dogs, it gets as hard as a marble. If the waste sits in the colon too long, the same kind of thing can happen in people. It gets as hard as cement and adheres to the colon wall or forms pockets which is loaded with the material. The colon stretches to accommodate the day’s waste and sometimes creates heavy bulges which cause the colon to stretch and narrow in some areas. This condition causes the bowel to lose much of its muscle tone. We have pictures of X-rays of the colon in the office showing the bulging and narrowing. Unfortunately, this happens because of the diet we Americans have used for a long time, and I’m not talking about those people who have been eating here at the hotel, but many people have been eating food that does not contain enough roughage. It was not until Dr. Dennis Burkitt went to Africa to study the native diet there and told the world that there wasn’t enough fiber in the British and American diet that people began to pay attention. There were health professionals who said this long before Dr. Burkitt but the information wasn’t given any consideration.
We need to pay more attention to the condition of the colon. For one thing, there is a portal vein in the colon. A vein, you must understand, is part of the blood-carrying system. The portal vein will absorb fluid that remains in the colon. That is its role. When waste material enters the large intestine at the point of the appendix, it is in a very fluid state but by the time it is evacuated it is usually a solid stool. This is because the portal vein has absorbed the liquid from the bolus. If the colon is full of putrefied waste, food that doesn’t move through adequately because the muscle tone has broken down, the fluid will be loaded with toxins and they will be absorbed by the portal vein. If the muscle tone is good, the stool will be carried to the point of elimination in a matter of hours.
If the muscle tone is poor, it will not move through muscular action, but the waste of each meal will wait until a subsequent meal pushes it along to the point of elimination. The process might take anywhere from 2 to 4 days or longer. This is the transit time. Even though the elimination may take place daily the individual with long transit time should be considered constipated.
When Dr. Dennis Burkitt and Dr. Gordon Latto, a man I had the privilege of meeting, went to India to investigate the vegetarian diet, they found that the people eliminated their waste three times a day. The medical community, the hospitals and the government all cooperated with them by providing records and patients for the investigation. What they found were healthy colons, with healthy color and no colon cancer. Piles were more common which is nothing compared to cancer.
Most people eat bad food. One doctor who spoke from our platform referred to the food as pastes pasta, pastries, etc. These paste foods clog the colon and may cause it to prolapse (i.e., the muscle tone gets flabby just like a double chin and stretches down into a U toward the pelvis).
I had a young woman come into my office who was suffering from many ailments. She was under 30 years of age. Someone was concerned about her health so he wanted her to learn more about colon health, and knew we had some books that could help. She moved her bowels once every two weeks. Her doctor told her not to worry as that was probably her schedule. The medical community has never felt that it was urgent to eliminate one’s waste at least daily, yet here she was in poor health and she could not accept the fact that it might be caused by poor waste elimination. It is hard to relate poor health to poor bowel function because the body does not react immediately but accumulates the toxins. They load the blood stream, the lymphatics, form mucous pockets of toxic substances, until the body attempts to eliminate through other channels. The body tolerates a lot of abuse until it is so overloaded it notifies you that it is in trouble by getting sick. Unfortunately, one rarely connects the present illness with the years of abuse.
It is my opinion and the opinion of practitioners who were and are involved with restoring host resistance through biological means, a polluted colon is the seat of many health problems and the problem can be remedied through careful diet, colon cleansing, exercise and stress reduction. These are simple, safe ways to preserve health and prevent disease. It is easier to prevent cancer than to treat it.
