Revoltingly OT: Size of your colon

AgentZero · #1 November 2nd, 2005, 08:31 AM

OK, this is a wee bit gross, so if you're of a queasy disposition you might just want to skip over this and go read the latest installment of Hell is for Heroes, before I add the next bit.

Still with me? OK, so I'm up at 3:20am at the moment mostly on account of jetlag, and there's this infomercial on the telly about some natural health product or another, where the promoter is claiming that a lot of the minor ill health effects we feel nowadays (ie: chronic tiredness, etc) is due to the fact that we're carrying around a bunch of undigested fecal matter in our colons. Told you this was gross. Now while I normally wouldn't argue the point, aside from the fact that undigested fecal matter is an oxymoron, given that it's not fecal matter until it's at least partially digested, before that it's just undigested food.

The 'Health Expert' (that's what the show calls him. Not even a doctor?) claims that people have 15-40 POUNDS of this gunk stuck on their colon walls. Now what is want to know is, is the colon actually that big? I'm a fairly big guy and even I feel uncomfortably full if I eat more that about a pound or two, and I always thought the colon was smaller than the stomach. So how can one have even 15lbs just coating the walls, let alone filling the whole colon? It just don't make no dang sense to me.

Too tired to think of another shameless Hell is for Heroes plug, so just go read the damn thing.

Captain Kwok · #2 November 2nd, 2005, 10:43 AM

Perhaps this gunk is awfully dense, somewhere on the order of lead.

narf poit chez BOOM · #3 November 2nd, 2005, 01:30 PM

...Personally, I still say that extra 40 pounds is fat. It's the better explanation.

bearclaw · #4 November 2nd, 2005, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Captain Kwok said:
Perhaps this gunk is awfully dense, somewhere on the order of lead.

ROTFLMAO!!! (oops, there goes 40 lbs...)

Renegade 13 · #5 November 2nd, 2005, 01:59 PM

If there was that much weight just sitting there, I think I'd feel it clunking around in my guts after a while

Caduceus · #6 November 2nd, 2005, 03:34 PM

As a physician, I think this is incorrect. The fact is that if you go in for a colonoscopy (the large intestine), you take the preparation (horrible tasting liquid) that does make you use the bathroom quite a bit over about a 12 hour period, but folks don't lose 40 pounds. Their colons are cleared out to allow the scope to see the walls/polyps, etc.

Most of these informercials are not substantiated by scientific fact. Just buy the snake oil and be done with it

Renegade 13 · #7 November 14th, 2005, 04:49 PM

But if you can suspend your disbelief, it can be worth watching.

AgentZero · #8 November 14th, 2005, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Renegade 13 said:
But if you can suspend your disbelief, it can be worth watching.

Exactly. I mean, I've heard CSI isn't exact science and all that, but they at least make it fairly easy to suspend one's disbelief. But that Category 7 malarky, well, one would have to be a mentally deficient turkey with a lobotomy to have been able to suspend one's disbelief on that one.

narf poit chez BOOM · #9 November 14th, 2005, 06:17 PM

But technology is *EVIL!!

* Now lets see those people live out in the wilderness for say, ten years.

Alneyan · #10 November 14th, 2005, 06:24 PM

Quote:

narf poit chez BOOM said:
* Now lets see those people live out in the wilderness for say, ten years.

*Happily raise his hand*