Today, I'm going to talk about when and how often to use enemas, so stay tuned.
Hey there, if you're new here, my name's Amanda Malachesky. I'm certified functional nutrition,
health coach, and a digestive and allergy detective. For tips and tricks on how to resolve
your digestive challenges from their roots, please consider subscribing. And be sure to hit the bell
to be notified when I post a new video every week. Enemas have been used for thousands of years all
over the world for their health benefits. But when, and how often, and for what should you
use them? In today's video, I'm going to talk about the contraindications for enemas, so when
you shouldn't use them. I'll talk about in what situations and circumstances you should use them.
And I will also talk about a general recommendation for how often it's
safe to use them. So, let's get started. Let's do with contraindications because
it's always a good idea to know when something isn't safe for you. So, a lot of these are kind
of obvious, but the first one would be if you've had recent bowel surgery, or any kind of bowel
obstruction. Obviously, these are situations where you don't want to be introducing the potential for
any kind of infection, or stretching into your large intestine. If you have active hemorrhoids,
you probably, also, shouldn't use enemas because this can just aggravate them. If you
have undiagnosed severe abdominal pain, you need to stop right now and go talk to your doctor and
try and find out what's causing the pain before using something like enemas to try and clear it.
If you have heart disease, or uncontrolled hypertension, so high blood pressure enemas,
also, aren't a good idea because the loss of fluid from the enema can alter your electrolyte
balance and this can have consequences for your heart rhythms and for your blood pressure.
And if you have either some kind of cancer, or tumors in your bowels,
or intestines this is also a pretty good reason to avoid inserting anything into your bowels.
And there's probably some other situations in which enemas might not be recommended. So,
if you have any concern or doubt about whether or not enemas are safe for you, I do encourage you
to please go speak with your doctor about it and get a clearance from them before using enemas.
Now, assuming that you don't have any of these contraindications, then when should you use an
enema? And the way I see it, there's kind of three main situations where enemas are really,
really useful. Obviously, the first one is constipation. So, constipation being,
when you have slow movement of your poop through your intestines, and you may not poop
regularly or on your own very often, enemas are a traditional remedy for just helping assist that
process and move things out of your intestine. It's crucially important that you poop every day
because this process helps eliminate toxins, and other things that your body is trying to
get rid of. And, obviously, it's no fun to have constipation. It hurts,
you get bloated, or have gas, maybe a little bit of mild abdominal pain or cramping, and
even things like headaches and sometimes joint pain. So, we want to be moving through your
intestine every single day. So, enemas are one option for how to help you move things through
your bowels and support this process of daily elimination for you, if you're having trouble.
The second situation where I might recommend enemas would be, if someone is doing any kind of
fasting. I don't recommend a lot of fasting for my clients because most of them tend not
to tolerate it very well for various reasons. But if you're someone who's doing a multiple day fast
of any kind, so a bone broth fast, or a water fast, or a elemental diet fast, or a juice fast,
again, it's really important that you are clearing the toxins that your body might be releasing. And
you might not need to poop as much because there might not be as much material in your intestines
to poop. So, during this short-term kind of three to four day fast window,
you might do one low volume enema per day. The third situation where enemas can be
helpful is during parasite treatment. And in this situation, you might be doing kind of a long-term
strategy of periodic enemas while you're doing other treatments, or you can be adding
additives into your enema to help kill parasites in your intestines. I did make another video where
I go into this topic a little more thoroughly and with specifics. So, if you'd like to see
that you can check out Parasite Home Remedies, I'll leave a link for that below this video.
Okay, now, one of the most common questions that I get about enemas is, how often should I do them?
Is it okay to do them daily? Is it okay to do them several times a week? People want to know
what they should do. And it's really hard to give a really blanket general recommendation
for this because each one of you is really different, your situations are different. And so,
it's hard to give a really clear answer to this. But the thing that I would really
recommend using as a guide for how often you should do enemas is to really think about
how is your body responding? So, as I mentioned, I have done some long-term enema protocols over many
months, and I was doing during this period two to three enemas a week. Sometimes I would notice
that I would start to feel really tired, or a lack of energy, and really hungry, or maybe headachy.
And that was a signal to me that I was doing too many enemas, and I needed to drop back.
So, if you are doing enemas frequently and you start having some of these symptoms that
would be a signal from your body to say, "Slow down, you're doing too much." Because, again,
enemas really alter your electrolyte balance. So, this can have something to do with headaches,
and blood pressure, and your energy. And, also, if food's moving through your gut too fast from doing
enemas too frequently, you may not have enough residence time in there for you to absorb your
nutrition from your food. So, again, do listen to what your body's telling you. But, in general,
I would say maybe twice a week would be fine. Less is fine too. And if you tolerate it well,
you could do even more than that. And, certainly, if an enema ever causes a pain sensation, you need
to stop doing enemas right away, and go see your doctor, and find out what is causing the problem.
One thing to know is that the day after your enema, you might not have a normal bowel movement.
You might not poop at all. And this is because it might take some time for your guts to fill up all
the way enough to have another bowel movement. But your bowel movements should return to normal
the day after that. But if you're continuously unable to poop normally on your own, this is a
pretty big sign that some things need to change, and you're going to need to do something bigger.
And this might look like, in the short-term, things like enemas, and supplements like
vitamin C, or medications like laxatives. But these are really bandaid solutions.
And so, if you're having regular consistent chronic constipation this is something that you
need to address. And some of the options available to look at that include changing your diet,
changing some of your stress management habits. And sometimes it has to do with needing to deal
with some sort of dysbiosis, or SIBO, or other kinds of bacterial infection in your gut. So,
if that's your situation, please do not delay with dealing with this. There are things that
can be done. And it's important that you get your motility back in your digestive system.
How frequently do you use enemas, and what do you use them for?
Tell us all about it in the comments. Okay so, enemas are helpful for constipation,
for fasting and for parasite treatment. And a general rule of thumb is that one to two times a
week should be safe. But do listen to your body to get feedback on how often is right for you.
If you're needing help with product constipation, there's two main ways I can help you.
The first is you can download a free copy of my mini ebook called The Roadmap to Gut Recovery.
It includes the step-by-step process that I walk my clients through to manage and
resolve things like chronic constipation, or chronic diarrhea, or other digestive symptoms.
So, you can grab your free copy of that by going to confluencenutrition.com/roadmap.
And I will leave a link for that below this video. Or if you've been trying a lot of these options
on your own, and you're still not sure where to go, or what to do next, you could schedule
yourself a free 30-minute assessment session with me. In this session, I will sort of take
stock of your case and try and understand what might be your next best steps. And then, we can
also talk about what it would be like to work with me one-on-one. You can schedule that by going to
confluencenutrition.com/contact. And I will look forward to seeing you on my schedule. And I will
also leave a link for that below this video. All right, I hope that this video helped you
understand how to properly use enemas, and how often might be safe for you. If you liked this
video, please consider liking, or subscribing to my channel, and consider sharing it with somebody
that might benefit from it. And I will look forward to seeing you next time. Take care.