For my 35th birthday, I decided to give myself the gift of a colonoscopy.
It's definitely not the best gift I've ever been given but during the procedure,
the doctors discovered something that caused them to abort the colonoscopy. In today's video
with the help of the cadavers here in the lab, we're going to discuss the process of
receiving a colonoscopy and discover for ourselves exactly what's going on with my body and why the
doctors would decide to bail on the procedure. It's going to be a crappy one. Let's do this!
[Intro]
Colorectal cancer is the third most common type of cancer worldwide just behind breast
and lung cancer. Pre-cancerous growths called "Polyps" can grow on the intestinal
wall and if left unchecked can become cancerous and spread to your lungs,
liver and even your brain although not every polyp will become cancerous. This is an almost
completely preventable form of cancer. It's somewhere around 90% or so preventable.
If you're over the age of 45, getting regular screenings is one of the most important things
you can possibly do for yourself and your loved ones and if you're under the age of
45 just looking for some peace of mind, I totally get that. Please feel free to speak
with your primary care physician and get this process going that's what I did and
now I have a much better understanding of what's going on with me digesting.
All right, so let's go ahead and figure out what happened to me during my colonoscopy.
Primary instrumentation they used during a colonoscopy is called a Colonoscope. Now,
this is a very long, thin, flexible tube that can bend around the anatomy
of the large intestine so they can see everything they need to. Now, real quickly,
I want to note the difference between the large intestine and the colon. So,
right here, this is what's known as the rectum, then we have the sigmoid colon, descending colon,
transverse colon, ascending colon and then this right here is what's known as the cecum.
Now, the cecum and rectum don't have colon in their name and that's because
they don't belong to the colon. The colon is going to be the sigmoid, descending,
transverse and ascending but they are still able, through a colonoscopy, to investigate
the entirety of the large intestine and in fact, they can even go through here, which is known
as the Ileocecal valve and then investigate the distal end of the ilium or the small intestine.
So, when they insert this tube, you also have to-
or the colonoscopy I should say. Just understand there is a camera on it,
there is a light on it and there's also a port to eject water that they can kind
of flush things out and then they can remove that water if it has any particulates in there.
There's also going to be an instrumentation port
that they can insert say if they find a polyp and they want to remove it,
they can insert the instrumentation, go through the colonoscopy remove the polyp,
take the polyp and then take it out so then they can send that to pathology to be investigated.
So, what they do is they just come in here and what they're going to do is
they're going to bring the colonoscopy in and occasionally, they might actually have
what's called an Endocuff on it. Now, an endocuff is kind of like - kind of like,
I don't know, kind of reminds me of a starfish. It has all these little appendages that come
off and it allows to spread out the colon so they can investigate everything they need to
and they're going to go through looking at the colonic wall and just making sure they don't
see any ulcers or inflammatory bowel disease or diverticale. Like a diverticula is actually out
pouching to where the wall of the colon has ballooned out and it creates a little pocket.
They're not inherently dangerous but they can be. Again, this is all just investigative. And
then they will go through the transverse colon, descending and again like I said, they could even
go into the small intestine if they choose. But then what will happen is then they go backwards.
In this whole process of going backwards, it will take about six to eight minutes.
Let's say as they're going through here and the endocuff is spreading everything apart
and they find a polyp. That's when again they insert the instrumentation through that port,
come in there and they can actually like snare it. They can actually then like deprive it of
blood and then remove it and then they can take that out but obviously if you do that,
you're creating a wound and there is going to be bleeding but what's interesting is that upon the
removal of a polyp, that bleeding will only happen for a very short period of time before
it'll then just spontaneously stop bleeding. Colon just says "You're done with that".
So, they'll go through here and then when they're done, they just remove it and you're
essentially done which is pretty awesome. I mean, this is a very short procedure. The
whole thing really takes around 20 minutes or so from the time of insertion to exiting
and making sure that everything's done. But with me though, things didn't go quite as
planned. But real quick I want to thank the sponsor of today's video Athletic Greens.
Athletic Greens is a nutritional company that makes a nutritional drink, AG1,
which has become a morning staple for me. AG1 has 75 different ingredients including vitamins,
minerals, superfoods, probiotics and adaptogens. It's completely replaced
my daily multivitamin but the thing that gets me
most excited are the phytonutrients to help maintain a healthy gut microbiota.
You see, colonoscopies are extremely important, there's no doubt about it but let's be real here;
the colon prep alone essentially evicts all of the healthy microbes in your gut along with the poop.
So, as soon as I was done with my colonoscopy, one of the first things I did was mix up some
AG1 to help give those microbes everything they need to effectively repopulate my bowels.
All you do is take one scoop and add it to eight ounces of water and then
shake vigorously. Look, this is super important.
I mean, not really because it's not part of the instructions, it just makes me feel happy but
shake vigorously people and then after that you're just gonna drink it and carry on with your day.
Look, I am the type of guy that is all about effortless daily habits,
so knowing that a significant portion of my essential daily nutrition has been taken care
of first thing in the morning is a huge weight off my back. If you're interested,
visit athleticgreens.com/humananatomy or you just click the link in the description below and
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Now, I have a very poor recollection of this but there is something knocking around up there about
them asking if I wanted - if I wanted to continue and I ended up making the decision to abort the
procedure. The reason is, when they got all the way up to my Splenic Flexure and they were going
to go into the transverse colon, they discovered that I have what's known as a Tortuous Colon or
a Redundant Colon. Meaning my transverse colon is abnormally long. So, this is going to kind of go -
I'll be a little weird, I'm going to - obviously that's gonna distort this but if you have a
longer transverse colon, it can actually start making loops that are not supposed to be there.
So, if you - you can kind of picture, if you're trying to get - take that colonoscopy and make
it through all of these loops that can be very difficult if not outright impossible to do and
in fact, when they found this in me they then pulled the colonoscopy out and switched to a
pediatric colonoscopy, one that's meant for children and they then insert it again and
they still could not make their way through here and apparently, again I have no recollection
of this, I didn't feel all that good and I decided to abort the whole thing because it
was just causing me discomfort and you can even see this in my procedure report which
is super interesting for me to look back on. So then they just kind of went out.
So, what's interesting is I just have images - kind of trying to put this back - only up to
about this point. I can see that my colon looks great all the way up to here and then all of a
sudden nothing and so, there's this part of me that's like you know, even though my colonoscopy
ended up really good, the results of what I got are pretty good. It's awesome and you're like
[Inaudible]. "Well, what's going on over here? You know, what if there's something bad over there?"
It's kind of interesting that I went through all of this for only half of my colon to be
investigated because now I know that I just have a really looped and I mean,
I say this you know with love and respect, messed up colon. When it's all said and done,
they take you back to a room so you can get dressed, you can kind of recuperate a little bit.
They might even give you like some juice or maybe something very small to eat like some crackers
and that's when your gastroenterologist will go over the results and what they experienced and
what the whole procedure was like and for me this again this was super super fuzzy.
They um, they had to give me more medication when they realized I had a tortuous colon and I was
experiencing discomfort. So, for me, it's like I have kind of like an exaggerated recovery period
but I do remember them coming in and discussing the whole thing with
me and in fact they give you this. It's called a Procedure Report. Pretty cool.
It goes over just exactly what happened, your doctor's names, like there's a whole paragraph
that's saying "hey, this is exactly what we did and how it went here's the medications you got"
and they even give you pictures of your colon, which I'm sure everybody wants. Like who doesn't
want pictures of the inside of your colon? You can tell all your friends, right? Put it on your
wall but for me, you know, I only have pictures all the way up until my splenic flexure because
that's when they saw the tortuous colon but you know, I just want to say that this is to me is one
reason why I'm actually a believer in those under the age of 45 getting the colonoscopy because I
would never have known or at least not until I was 45 that I had this redundant colon and having a
redundant colon that can come with certain issues. Like I'm more prone to constipation for example.
So, if I was constipated then it would kind of be mysterious, like why am I experiencing
constipation? Now I know. So, there are definite advantages to getting a colonoscopy much earlier
on than say going to 45 but again this is something you want to speak with your primary care
physician about. Not just watch this video and say "All right, let's go schedule a colonoscopy".
Thanks for watching everybody. I hope you enjoyed today's video. Be sure to click the link in the
description below so you also can enjoy some AG1 which is far more than a greens drink. Also,
look at this awesome picture. This is from our sister company, Ava . We're now starting
to sell some really amazing anatomical art. This one just always catches my eye.
It's like I don't know, there's something about a black heart. I mean,
it sounds super depressing but I really enjoy it. So,
be sure to click the link in the description below and any of these purchases go to support
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be sure to Like, comment, subscribe if you feel so inclined and we'll see in the next video.