Can we be personal for a moment?
Good. Thank you.
We want to discuss a particularly serious condition that affects millions of people in our culture from middle age on. It’s a condition known to be culture-specific, suffered by wealthy Westerners more than any other group of people. And its cause is said to be unknown to modern medicine. It’s called diverticulitis.
Diverticulitis is a pain in the butt for literally millions of people, since it involves the colon and rectum. What happens is that the wall of the colon, or large intestine, weakens over time due to increased pressure from an unknown cause. Pressure within the colon causes weakened areas to pocket outward, creating sacs for digested matter to accumulate and become infected. These sacs are called diverticula. When you have these bags it is said that you have diverticulosis. When diverticula become infected and inflamed, the condition is called diverticulitis, which can be just as painful as appendicitis and can lead to a rupture of the colon wall, a very dangerous situation. The key problem involved in this condition is the creation of increased pressure within the large intestine. It is the force of this pressure that causes the pockets to form.
So knowing what causes increased pressure is essential for the prevention and treatment of this condition. There was a time when medicine thought that the diet might be too high in fiber, causing a blockage in digestion and increased pressure in the colon. But reducing dietary fiber did not significantly alter the condition. It was then thought that too little fiber prevented adequate elimination and high fiber diets were recommended. Unfortunately, this didn’t help the condition either. Diverticulitis is also just as common among vegetarians as it is among carnivores. While special interest groups promoting certain diets present research to support their dietary view as a diverticulitis preventative, there is contrasting research to balance it out. Therefore, general research on diverticulitis has been inconclusive regarding the cause of the increased pressure in the colon that creates this terrible condition. And in the absence of knowing the cause, medicine may simply offer pain relief with medication, antibiotics for infections, and surgery for particularly nasty abscess pockets. As for prevention, the current suggestion is to eat more fiber, making the bowels need to have a bowel movement more frequently.
Of course, one thing was overlooked in the medical research on diverticulitis. The most common reason for increased pressure in the colon is not really a medical problem, but a cultural one. That’s why medicine has missed it. Furthermore, this cultural practice causes the medical profession to suffer from diverticulitis to a greater extent than its patients.
It all has to do with responding to Nature when she calls.
We live in a society that trains us from birth to retain our waste products. From the pressures of diaper training, the pressures of using the public restrooms at school, the pressures of working without the option of taking necessary bathroom breaks, or where there simply isn’t a bathroom available, our culture has put pressure on us. to contain us Of course, this creates pressure in the colon. After all, one of the easiest ways to increase colonic pressure is to close the anal sphincter while the bowel contracts.
Everyone has experienced this at one time or another. Perhaps the urge arose when you were involved in a social situation that you couldn’t conveniently stop simply because you had to respond to Nature’s call. Or it could have been while you were driving, and no rest stop or gas station was found. Even if there is a convenient bathroom, some people feel uncomfortable defecating in a public bathroom and prefer to wait until home. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that our culture makes personal waste management a problem that is not always easily solved, promoting procrastination rather than elimination. The result is increased pressure in the colon and the formation of diverticula.
In addition to retaining the waste, there is the even bigger problem of retaining the gas. The technical term for this is gas retention. It’s what most people are trained to do in public, from school days on. This is the reason why diverticulitis is more prevalent among the wealthy and professional Westerners than among the poor in third world countries. The higher your status, the less acceptable your flatulence will be. It seems that poverty buys the right to hang out when necessary, while wealth creates the need for greater discretion. However, the sad fact is that the fart pressure has to go somewhere. Either you expel gases or your intestines burst. The choice is yours.
Now you can see why medicine says the cause of diverticulitis is unknown. A cultural taboo shrouds this issue, preventing its impartial and honest consideration. Interestingly, there was an article that linked diverticulitis to gas retention. It appeared in the British medical journal Lancet in 1975. The article is titled “Flatus retention is the main factor in diverticular disease.” But the information was ignored. Medicine seems more comfortable prescribing drugs and surgery for diverticulitis than simply telling people to poop and fart more often.
For those who suffer from diverticulosis or diverticulitis, you can conduct your own self-study. Over the next three months, note how often you feel the urge to eliminate, but find yourself choosing, for one reason or another, to hold it back. Pay special attention to your need to pass gas and how often you don’t. Do everything you can to allow your body to do what it wants to do. If you have a partner, you may want him or her to try this self-study at the same time.