Please note that since this article was written (in March, 2008), the evercleanse.com web site has changed significantly and many of their “claims” have been removed. This article refers to the earlier version of the site.
You can see an updated piece on Evercleanse here.
“What do you think of Evercleanse?”
“I’m ready to get rid of the beast that lives within.”
If you’re a skeptic, that may just sound like the dumbest thing you’ve read all day but that little sales spiel is taken directly from the Evercleanse.com web site. It took fewer than 5 minutes to find several troubling statements on the evercleanse.com web site. Here’s some of what I found and my answers to them:
Can You Really Trust This? Or Take It Seriously?
The site Evercleanse.com has only 3 pages but on only those 3, I found a number of statements I find troubling. Let’s look at a few “up-close”:
Statement #1. “Yes, it is possible that we are carrying between 6 and 40 pounds of undigested food, waste and feces… . “
Fact: We are all carrying around undigested food and fecal matter. But it’s not “40 pounds”. Remember, your colon isn’t like a garden hose. A garden hose is full of water when the faucet is on and empty when the water is turned off. But your digestive tract is constantly in motion and “full” of food in various stages of digestion.
Fact: 40 lbs. of “undigested fecal matter” would almost fill a 5-gallon bucket. Let’s put that into perspective. Could you fit the contents of a 5-gallon bucket into your abdomen? I’m willing to bet that most people couldn’t. So how could you possibly be walking around with 40 lbs. of fecal matter stuck to the inside of an organ that’s only about 5 feet long to begin with?
Statement #2. “Laxatives weaken the body.”
Fact: While it’s true that ANY stimulate laxative—if abused—can lead to a loss of bowel “tone”, this is true of both pharmaceutical laxatives and “natural” laxatives like Cascara sagrada.
Statement #3. “The only sources of these “Friendly Bacteria” is fortified foods like buttermilk and yogurt … .”
Fact: The truth is, those “beneficial bacteria” are all around us. Normal intestinal “flora” begin to appear in the feces of infants within hours of birth—babies don’t need special food to properly “colonize” their colons and neither do you.
Statement #4. “Supporting a [healthy] colon allows your body to absorb nutrients and break down food properly.”
Fact: The majority of nutrient absorption takes place in the small intestines—not the colon. Your colon’s main job is to remove excess water and return it to your body. Your small intestine is custom-designed to absorb nutrients through its villi but your colon has no villi because its main job is to recover water.
Add in the fact that we could find almost no information about what’s in this cleanser that’s “made to the highest degree of science” and the fact that we had to look up the domain registry information to find anything about the folks behind the site and … well … what do you think about Evercleanse?
References:
No Author Listed. (No Date Available). Retrieved from evercleanse.com on March 16, 2008.
Palmer, C., et al. (2007). Development of the Human Infant Intestinal Microbiota. PLOS Biology. Retrieved March 16, 2008 from http://biology.plosjournals.org/archive/1545-7885/5/7/pdf/10.1371_journal.pbio.0050177-L.pdf.
