A Student Drank 2 Liters Fiber Supplement For Dinner.
This Is What Happened To His Intestines.
CJ is a 22 year old man, presenting to the emergency room, with nausea, vomiting, and
constipation.
He tells the admitting nurse that it was only a matter of time before he would take the
biggest dump of his life.
He had been building up, since he hadn’t had a bowel movement for at least the last
3 weeks.
You see, CJ was a student who was obsessed with health.
He was studying nutrition and after reading articles on the internet, he was convinced.
All of his health problems like allergies, headaches, and insomnia were because his colon
needed to be cleansed.
He read online that humans should get 25 to 30 grams of fiber in their diet daily, but
Americans only average about 15 grams daily.
He thought about every single day of his life where he was behind on his fiber intake.
He liked cereals and grains and fruit, and those have some fiber, but it’s not enough,
he thought.
He remembered all those times in his life, when his bowel movements were inconsistent—
both in timing and in feeling, on the way out.
If there’s skid marks in the toilet, then it must be skidding in my colon too and causing
all of my health problems, he thought.
CJ eventually came to his own conclusion that for every day of his life he didn’t get
30 grams of fiber, he needed to make up for it.
He went to the pharmacy and bought large tubs of psyllium husk fiber supplement.
At first, he tried a few spoonfuls mixed in water and for a few days, and felt great.
His movements were regular and consistent.
He could feel the cleanse happening.
One day, he told himself he was ready.
He prepped his body and mixed at least 30 scoops of psyllium husk fiber with 2 liters
of water.
He watched it congeal in to a thick jelly before putting it down.
Immediately after finishing 2 liters of fiber supplement, CJ could feel his stomach expand.
He had trouble drinking it because the fiber had a consistency of jello and so he had to
chew it to swallow it.
As the hours passed, CJ’s stomach kept expanding.
He felt full and didn’t need to eat dinner.
But then he realized the fiber supplement tasted like orange jelly, and thought to make
peanut butter and fiber supplement jelly sandwiches for a midnight snack and have the cleanest
colon possible.
Only then can my body absorb the best and healthiest nutrients during the day.
But the feeling wasn’t good.
At first he felt a little burning at the top of his abdomen.
If the fiber jelly can be diluted with some extra water, then time to drink an extra glass
he thought as he went to bed, on an ever expanding stomach.
In the morning, CJ still could feel the fiber sitting in his belly.
But from everything he gathered in his online readings— that’s how it’s supposed to
be.
It needs time to scrub out years worth of skid marks.
Eating breakfast then lunch, and then having more fiber for dinner would undoubtedly push
it all down to wash in to his intestines.
But as the days passed, he noticed he was eating less and less.
He felt more and more bloated, and nauseous after eating.
He realized that it had been days since he had a bowel movement.
He tried convincing himself that it was the fiber doing a deep clean of his colon.
Until 10 days later.
CJ couldn’t eat anymore.
He couldn’t drink anymore.
All he could feel was his abdomen burning.
To cope with the pain he kept saying it needed time to clean.
But finally the hurt became too strong.
He could feel a giant lump in his abdomen with his hands, and when he pushed just a
little bit on it, a sour taste would flood in to his mouth from under his tongue, and
he could feel his stomach cramp and shake.
He would sit on the toilet until he could feel pins and needles pricking his feet, and
nothing would move.
He could feel a burning at the base of his neck.
The pain became too unbearable and he realized something was happening as he calls for 911,
and he’s brought to the emergency room, where we are now.
At examination, doctors found that CJ was agitated.
He’s breathing, he’s conscious and responsive so no problem there.
His stomach was swollen.
When doctors asked CJ if he had eaten anything, his eyes lit up and he told them that he had
been cleansing his colon.
He told them about some laxatives that he took when he noticed that he stopped having
bowel movements.
But then they asked him if he knew why he stopped having those bowel movements.
He told them about the 2 liters of fiber supplement he drank but actually chewed and peanut butter
and psyllium husk jelly sandwiches he ate for dinner.
And this gives doctors some clues as to what could be happening.
Psyllium is made from the husks of plant seeds.
It’s made of hemicellulose, which is fiber that in humans, isn’t digestible.
Actually, cellulose found in plants is long chains of glucose sugar.
Vegetable fibers generally don’t taste sweet to us, because we don’t break them down
to sugar, but in certain animal stomachs, cellulose can be digested that way.
Instead in humans, this becomes what we know as fiber, which is needed to bulk up your
stool, and helps things more easily pass through the intestines, so causing the regularity
you know about when it comes to eating enough fiber, which brings us to how psyllium works.
In this small science experiment, I put psyllium husk supplement in a glass of water.
The more psyllium I put in, the thicker the water gets.
It expands by absorbing water in.
Human intestines absorb nutrients from food.
You chew the food to crush it up.
Your stomach mashes it up a little more before sending it to the small intestines where nutrients
are absorbed in to your liver for processing.
The further down the food goes along the intestines, the more that has already been absorbed from
it.
If the large intestines are given enough time to absorb a lot of water, then the stool becomes
dry and hard, causing constipation.
But if fiber is present, then it puts more water in to the stool.
Psyllium helps to hold on, not only pumping water in to the stool, but it also lubricates
as it moves things along, for nice smooth movements out.
Moving things faster, reduces the time for the colon to reabsorb water.
So then there is no more dry stool.
Fibers also help stimulate gut bacteria growth which will help with digestion.
All of this, giving almost only benefits to the GI tract but something’s wrong.
If psyllium is mixed without enough water, it becomes a thick jelly like structure.
CJ told the doctors that when he took 2 liters of fiber supplement, he couldn’t actually
drink it, but he had to chew it because it had become like a jello.
You see, when psyllium is mixed with some water, it becomes thick.
That’s the way it’s supposed to work, by putting water in to the stool.
But the problem is, when it becomes like a jelly, adding more water, doesnt actually
cause it to dissolve or break down.
Even squeezing it with your hands, might not break it up.
And because the GI tract isn’t a rigid solid like the bones, a block of psyllium can expand
in the stomach and in the intestines, and push up against the sides of the walls, and
block all movement through.
And because the psyllium expands and doesn’t dissolve when more water is added, this blockage
can cause an impaction.
Even if the stomach and the intestines are big and long muscles, squeezing the psyllium
won’t “cut it up.”
Adding more water isn’t going to push it down, because it’s larger than the hole
that it’s in, and it keeps expanding.
If it stays there, not only will nothing pass through, but as things keep piling higher,
it can stretch the walls of the stomach and the intestines, and limit the flow of blood.
And because the gastrointestinal tract is a muscle that needs lots of oxygen to function,
disrupting blood flow can cause parts of it to necrose.
In the emergency room, doctors do a CT scan and find that parts of CJ’s intestines were
dilated, while others were collapsed.
All of this suggesting that a high grade obstruction was happening inside CJ, as he was sent in
for surgery.
Surgeons make small cuts and send scopes in to CJ.
They find the part of his intestines that was swollen and blocked.
Because psyllium isn’t hard like a walnut, or some other kind of rigid solid, they were
able to cut up the blockage gently to break things up, without cutting open his intestines.
The manipulation and fragmentation, were enough to clear the blockage and get things to start
moving along, as they sent CJ in to the recovery room, where he did in fact, have the largest
bowel movement hes ever had in his life.
A Mild dose of an additional laxative was given to him by medical staff, to just make
sure to move things along as he was moved to the step down unit.
Psyllium fiber is generally regarded as a safe supplement.
It’s been shown in clinical trials and meta analyses of those clinical trials, to lower
cholesterol and help with heart disease risk in patients with hypercholesterolemia.
Hyper meaning high.
Cholesterol referring to a waxy fat like substance that’s needed in your body to survive.
And Emia meaning presence in blood.
High cholesterol presence in blood.
Keep in mind, if you don’t have hypercholesterolemia, risk of heart disease is a little different
than if you do, so taking a small amount of psyllium as recommended on the label, if you
even want to take it at all, is the best way to do it.
So let me be clear.
Some psyllium as recommended by your physician or pharmacist, if you even need it in the
first place, is OK so long as you follow the label.
5 grams, 10 grams a day should be ok. 500 Grams in 2 liters of water, probably not ok.
And thinking that you’re cleansing your colon that way?
Probably not ok.
I may or may not have blocked my own intestines a long time ago, so I might be speaking not
only on CJ's experience, but my own.
It really hurts and if it can fix itself, it takes a really long time.
Mix it with lots of water, before you take it down.
If you don’t, you’re gonna block your colon at that point and create a need for
surgery, that you didn’t need to have, just like in CJ’s case.
If you'd like to see more about how psyllium husk fiber becomes jelly, check out the video
posted to my second channel Heme Review, link in the description below.
After learning a lesson about fiber supplement, and understanding that allergies, headaches,
and insomnia probably couldn’t be fixed by accidentally blocking his intestines, CJ
was able to make a full recovery.
Thanks so much for watching.
Take care of yourself.
And be well.