The German Theory of Intestinal Autointoxication and Its Application in the 21st Century

“I call upon our aches and pains for assistance; for they are our friends, and give good counsel.” – Goethe (1749-1842)

In November of 2003 I attended an OIRF tour that included a two-day seminar with Dr. Heinrich Kremer, MD. One of the many statements of Dr. Kremer’s that impacted me during his presentations was his realization that, after eight and a half years of doing research for pharmaceutical interests, “all autoimmune illnesses and cancers were caused by toxins.” Dr. Kremer further stated that the body’s number one priority is to detoxify, and that pharmaceutical drugs would not assist the body in doing so.

This statement was of special interest to me, because for the last 25 years I have studied intensively and worked diligently in the field of detoxification as an Intestinal Hydropath.  Much of the information I have accumulated in learning how to assist the body in maximizing this process has come from my experiences in Germany on OIRF tours and seminars.

Dr. Adolphe Combe, MD (1859-1916) was a German/Swiss professor who invented the first return flow colon hydrotherapy instruments.¹ A professor of Clinical Pediatry at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), he was also Chief of Clinic for Children’s Diseases and President of the Swiss Pediatric Society. Combe writes that he saw not only adults but many children “…suffering from intestinal affections…”² which led him to create for himself special methods and procedures to deal with the “affections of the digestive tract.” To counter these “affections” he would prescribe specific diet regimens, return flow colonic hydrotherapy, certain medicines and other therapeutic means. Combe’s approach to the problem of intestinal disorders was so widely embraced at the time that his work was translated from German to English for immediate recognition (publication?).

At that time it was believed that the greatest advances made in physiological chemistry and experimental research had brought to light many indisputable facts pertaining to metabolism and the origin and action of toxins, as well as showing the relationship and interdependence of various glandular organs concerned with nutrition, their supplemental and complementary action and the effects upon the organism of their insufficiencies.

In his translation, Professor Combe details the methods he adopted after many years of experimentation, including a discussion of the relative merits of the various soured milks and lactic acid ferments, and his basic theory of autointoxication. Dr. Combe refers to a triple line of defense surrounding the intestines. The first line of defense Combe discusses is intestinal mucosa. If it were to be circumvented, the second line of defense, the liver, would come into action. The third line of defense, according to Combe, was the “anti-toxic glands” or the endocrine system and its related glands – the thyroid, pituitary, adrenals, etc. – and how these three worked with the body’s autoimmune response to toxins.

Another phrase that stood out for me at the OIRF tour in 2003 was Dr. Kremer’s description of a “toxic tidal wave”. I share his belief that eliminating or greatly reducing toxic materials from the body is essential to our health and wellbeing. As if we don’t already have enough to do to maintain or recover our health (dietary habits, genetics, constitutional tendencies, etc.), we have a literal tidal wave of heavy metals, chemicals and other pollutants to deal with.

To date, I have personally administered over 35,000 sessions. In the last year I have become alarmed at the number of new cases. Is it my imagination or are people getting sicker? After listening to Dr. Kremer, and in light of what I’ve seen and experienced over the years, I am convinced that people are becoming more and more poisoned at an ever more rapid rate. Like canaries in the coal mine (carried by miners into caves to alert them to the presence of poisonous gases), individuals in many species are beginning to show signs of toxic overload. But what happens to the canary eventually happens to us all.

A woman came into my office several years ago with cirrhosis of the liver. She had worked for a number of years cleaning computer parts with solvents. She hadn’t had a drop of alcohol in her life. I asked her to make a list of the chemicals she used. She came back with a total of twelve. When I looked up the first four, they were all said to cause cirrhosis of the liver!

According to Zane Gard, MD, in the 1987 issue of The Townsend Letter, “Three thousand chemicals have been identified as intentionally added to food supplies, and over 700 in drinking water. During food processing and storage, more than 10,000 other compounds can become an integral part of many commonly used foods. Add to the list body toxins, radiation, petrochemicals, industrial water, medical and street drugs, tons of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides.” What we now have in our environment is a gargantuan chemical tsunami, or tidal wave. This has stacked the deck against our bodies natural ability to rid itself of toxins.

In my last trip to Germany, at a conference on cancer and auto-immune illnesses, Dr. Kremer said the most recent statistics on manmade substances indicated that there are “17 million manmade chemical compounds”³ now in our environment!

Even if you are having regular bowel movements, the importance of colon cleansing is more essential than ever before. Your body’s four major channels of elimination are the skin, lungs, kidneys and colon.

The colon receives the heaviest load, both from the liver and the immune system. The liver filters 3 pints of blood every minute and its dumping ground is the colon.  White blood cells (or lymphocytes), the guardians of the immune system, are the paramedics, police, and street cleaners of the blood. The colon has as much as 80% influence in getting rid of used up white blood cells.

Psychological Testing for Constipation?

A woman in her late 30’s was sitting before me. It was her first appointment and during the session I asked her some of the usual queries to help my evaluation. “Why would you consider coming in for this procedure?” I asked.  “I just came back from my third colonoscopy (a procedure that examines the lining of the large intestine, using a flexible endoscope inserted anally) and I was told nothing could be found.” She answered nervously as she was talking her pallor kept changing from gray to white. She also looked to be about 30-40 lbs. overweight. She went on to share “I can’t sleep, I have no appetite, I’m dizzy. I was afraid that I had cancer but instead the enterologist referred me for psychological testing!”

Upon further evaluation I found she had only been having about one bowel movement a month, which she was told was “normal” for her! She happened to have a lower G.I. set of x-rays from her tests so I looked at them. Her colon looked like a pretzel! But she had again been told that was “normal.”

As stated in the previous installments,⁴ the colon is a muscular piece of tubing that, like any other muscle, can lose its tone. As I learned (through Dr. Sturm in 1998 at OIRF and Dr. FX Mayr’s digestive detoxification program protocol and other teachers⁵) through my years of training as an intestinal hydropath, I have been trained to evaluate the tone of the colonic muscle and can tell with mild visceral manipulation if a client has a compromised digestive tract. Sadly, few American doctors value simple touch as a diagnostic tool. I have often thought if a person came in with their arm tied in a knot, and the specialist couldn’t find cancer, they would tell the person that it’s all in their head!

A Colonic Conspiracy?

This has become the age of technology with cell phones, computers and instant information. Modern medicine is a part of this. The latest micronutrient, the newest test supplying the most up-to-date information, has all become the standard. I remember in my last trip to Germany, in a clinic, I saw probably the most sophisticated MRI equipment ever made. It could, starting with the skin, look layer by layer through the entire body. I was told that it was a $6 million piece of machinery!

The dilemma this seems to have created is that both the health professional and the individual seeking their advice have become overly reliant on these tests as the final and only word  to tell them “if something’s wrong.”

Back to Bowel Basics: The Five B’s

Did you know you have an instrument that you carry around with you that is more accurate and more valuable than any piece of the latest equipment? “The human body is called the master machine because it is the most valuable machine in the world… Failure to regularly eliminate the wastes of the body is one of the most frequent causes of illness…Exercise, proper food, and good habits are better than drugs to cure constipation.”⁶ this was written in an elementary school textbook!

Your Colonic Compass

Your bowels (intestines) are the center of your compass. Why? Because as stated in previous articles the rest of your body is dependent on:

1. the correct mechanical and chemical digestion, and its conversion into bodily substance and strength, and
2. eliminating unused waste products on time.⁷

A compass can be defined as an instrument for determining directions. By realizing this you can:  a) learn to read your Colonic Compass, and b) based on readings, reset and balance your Colonic Compass.

Constipation would be chief among the readings to discern that your compass is showing signs of imbalance. Autoimmune illnesses and cancers can be a sign of cellular constipation, when the cell is having difficulty throwing off toxins. Such bowel ailments might be colitis, diverticulitis, Crohn’s disease, diarrhea and other gastric disturbances.

Depending on how acute or chronic (i.e. being irregular for a day versus weeks, months, or even years). To that extent how it may affect your other points of the compass, which are your blood, bones, brain and body.

The Blood

Your colon directly affects both the liver and lymphatic system.

Constipation and Breast Cancer⁸

“Around the turn of the century, doctors blamed all sorts of diseases on constipation…this theory was laid to rest after researchers, using the primitive techniques then available, had failed to identify any toxic substances in the blood of constipated sick people.” Using more modern testing, however, this view has reversed. Dr. Petrakis, MD, of the University of California writing in the Lancet “…found that women who have two or fewer bowel movements per week have four times the risk of breast disease (benign or malignant) as women who have one or more bowel movements per day.”

In 1939, another doctor who wrote in the Journal of Clinical Medicine and Surgery, states “destructive criticism of intestinal irrigation has similarly involved the correlated subject of intestinal toxemia. Breedwell, Potter and Garrison wrote “on the subject of intestinal flora, intestinal stasis and lazy colon and intestinal autointoxication, the literature is enormous. There are popular arguments against the theory of autointoxication or intestinal toxemia, but this space will not permit their enumeration. Suffice it to say they can all easily be disproved. Furthermore, positive evidence is usually considered more valuable and trustworthy than negative. An innumerable throng of grateful patients who have been relieved of many and diversified symptoms incident to some chronic and supposedly incurable disability, indubitably attest to the clinical value of scientific intestinal irrigations.  The inability to demonstrate causative substances does not alter the clinical fact of autointoxication.” He goes on to say “Arthritis is a disease and high blood pressure is but a symptom yet they are often dependent upon intestinal stasis, which is a prolific and often unrecognized source of focal infection. ⁹

Other blood related symptoms are water retention, gallstones, compromised immune system and liver system functions.¹⁰

The Bones

In November 1882 George J. Cooke, professor of anatomy at Kentucky School of Medicine wrote: “when the processes of digestion and absorption of food are normal it is generally believed that they are completed above the ileocecal valve…it would seem strange if the large intestine is placed here only to receive and retain for a time, effete and indigestible substances.”¹¹

In fact evidence now indicates that vitamins, minerals (like calcium), and energy are taken up in nutritionally important amounts across the colonic mucosa.¹²

The Body

Just as a tree depends on its roots to absorb nutrients and elements for growth and strength, so do our body’s cells depend on our digestive systems optimal function. When you are constipated, fermentation and decay can cause a variety of symptoms, including muscles aches, fibromyalgia, and sciatica, just to name a few.

The Brain

Recent research shows the relationship between the liver, intestines and the chemistry of the brain¹³. Neurotransmitters such as serotonin, various elements and nutrients, are sent to the brain by these systems. This explains why some of the symptoms of constipation can be foggy-headedness and depression. Also as an anecdotal note, people often feel “lighter” and experience a sense of well being after an IOT session.

There is a relationship between the brain and the gut now known in gastro-enterology circles as the “gut-brain axis.”¹⁴

The Bowel affects the Blood affects the Bones affects the Body affects the Brain. Understanding this relationship can help you read your Colonic Compass and in turn enable you to balance and maintain it. What about the client that I began the column with? After 1 year of IOT sessions, working with her diet, she has lost 30 lbs and is having 2-3 bowel movements a day. She has learned to read and balance her colonic compass!

In closing, I’d like to share an “intestimonial” with you, written by a client of mine entitled “Toxic Love Affair.”

“I’ve had an ongoing love affair with glass for many years – glass that reflects the light, freezes a golden moment, creates a prism of color…glass is magical and alchemical in its transformative abilities, and it has had me inexplicably entranced. I took that magic, many years ago, indulged my passion and made creating beautiful glass objects my livelihood and career.

Many years of soldering with lead and tin, wrapping each color filled piece with copper foil, using an acid flux to adhere the solder – all done without proper ventilation – led me down a path of success as an artist/business woman, and simultaneously, the unknown path I was walking, gradually filled my body with heavy metals. But me, I’m a risk taker! It wouldn’t do me harm…I rationalized. Little did I know!

Twelve years later, the symptoms started. I stopped doing stained glass, tried to improve my health, but since I wasn’t sure what was wrong (and doctors didn’t seem to know, either), I didn’t get too far.

Since my love of glass was still very much present, I started making glass beads. This, too, was a very noxious occupation, and my ventilation with this endeavor was an open window!

Little did I know, my body was filling itself with everything from lead to arsenic, antimony to bismuth, tin to cadmium, and lots of mercury to complete the cocktail! After a couple of years, sleep started eluding me, various organs started malfunctioning, energy slackened, and my immune system wasn’t supporting me. I was not invincible, as youth had taught me I was, and the cost of being successful in my business was becoming increasingly clear.

With sixteen years of glass work without adequate ventilation under my belt, the journey to reclaim my health was embarked upon. Many, many chelation injections, both DMPS and EDTA, too many colonics to count, acupuncture, energy work, saunas, clay baths, BEFE system footbaths, QXCI sessions, cranial sacral therapy, chlorella, and on and on.

I was forced to stop working. I had no energy, couldn’t sleep and was functioning minimally. Two long years were spent searching, trying to get better – spending thousands of dollars on products, sessions with practitioners and doctors, tests, tests and more tests.

And … then … I found Intestinal Oxidative Toning (IOT)!  I knew immediately that I’d found that which would release the toxic burden I carried: ozone and return flow colon hydrotherapy. Within one short month, my sleep started improving and energy began slowly to fill me, which I had not experienced in years, my cloudy muddled thinking was gradually clearing, a sense of wellbeing was starting to become more the rule than the exception. Now, with nearly three short months of IOT therapy under my belt (no pun intended), I am confident that the journey back to health is well under way.

In the beginning of IOT therapy, my body drained toxic material from every orifice. My breath smelled like metal, my mouth tasted like I’d been chewing on metal, black crud left me, I had rashes in various places, and my nose drained non-stop. It could not be any more obvious that this therapy works very effectively, to ride the body of toxic debris. I love such tangible evidence!

The practitioner who administers IOT lends a wonderfully encouraging and supportive energy while I ride the waves of detoxifying my body…always reminding me, when I forget, that the body is NOT a bottomless pit. There is an end in sight, and I now have a glimpse of it. Thank you, Dirk!”

Thank you, OIRF, and Dr. Walter Sturm, for your help in a practitioner’s quest for knowledge!

An exclusive article for Members
From THE BRIDGE Newsletter of OIRF
Published April 15, 2006

Redaction by: Carolyn L. Winsor, OIRF

© Copyright 2006, Dr. Dirk Yow, Washington USA

References

1. The pH in Colonic Therapy, B.R. LeRoy Jr, AB, DO, Fidelity Pub. Co; Tacoma, WA, 1933
2. Intestinal Auto-Intoxication by A. Combe, MD, authorized English adaptation by William Gaynor States, MD, New York Rebhan Co., 1908
3. Author attended a two-day seminar by Dr. Heinrich Kremer, MD on Biological Medicine in November 2003
4. Colonic Chronicles Presents, Townsend Letter for Doctors, Aug. 2004 issue
5. Occidental Institute Research Foundation, Dr. F.X. Mayr, Level One Certification on Feb. 14 and 15, 1998, Dr. Walter Sturm, instructor.
6. The Human Body and its Care by S. Weir Newmayer, AM, MD Supervisor of Medical Inspection of Public Schools, Philadelphia. American Book Company, 1928.
7. Health Through Inner Body Cleansing by Erich Rauch, MD 5th English edition Publisher Haug Heidelberg, Germany, 1998.
8. Saturday Evening Post, April 1982
9. Clinical Medicine and Surgery, Volume 46, March 1939, Arthur Waddington, J.E.G. Scientific Intestinal Irrigation.
10. Chronic Intestinal Toxemia and its Treatment with Special reference to Colonic Therapy, by James W. Wiltsie, AB, MD Wm. Wood & Co, Baltimore 1938.
11. Is the Large Intestine only a Reservoir for Effete and Indigestible Materials? American Journal of Physiology, 1882.
12. Tropical Disease of the Colon by Michael J.G. Farthing, MD Noel W. Solomons, MD and Gerald T. Keusch MD. Gastroenterology 3. Publisher Butterworth & Comp. LTD. England 1983.
13. The Second Brain by Michael D. Gershon, MD. Publisher Harper Collins: New York, 1999
14. Volume 2 in Requisites in Gastro-Enterology of the Small and Large Intestine, Mosby Press, 2004, Anil K. Rustgi, MD