Fifty percent of Americans over the age of 50 have never had a colonoscopy, according to a 2008 study conducted by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Many people find the idea of fasting, undergoing slight sedation and having a tube/camera up their rectum and into their intestines to be quite unnerving. No one wants to believe that metastatic colon cancer could happen to them. The virtual colonoscopy has emerged as a new way of testing for colon cancer, without all the invasiveness of traditional testing.

To prepare for a virtual colonoscopy, you will need to complete a bowel prep, just like with a normal colonoscopy prep. You will need to empty all solid waste materials from your gastrointestinal tract by sticking to a clear liquid diet for 1 to 3 days before the procedure. This means you may only consume fat-free broth, strained fruit juice, water, coffee, tea, Gatorade and Jell-O. The night before your colonoscopy screening, you will take a laxative (in pill or powder format) to loosen your stools and increase the frequency of your bowel movement until everything has been cleared from your system. Just before the exam, you’ll drink a contrast liquid, which will make your large intestine appear very bright during the scan so abnormal cells will stand out better.

The main difference between a traditional colonoscopy procedure and a virtual colonoscopy is how the doctor sees into the colon. During a regular colonoscopy, a long, lighted, flexible colonoscope with an affixed camera is sent into the anus, rectum and entire large intestine. However, with the virtual method, a thin plastic tube is inserted into the anus and rectum, puffs up the large intestine with air and uses a CT or MRI machine to scan the entire colon, less invasively. Unlike a conventional colonoscopy, the patient does not need to be sedated. Many elderly patients, people with inflamed intestines or frail individuals prefer this method to the traditional screening tests because it’s less stressful on the body, not to mention it’s more cost-effective as well.

One of the virtual colonoscopy’s limitations is that patients still have to endure the liquid diet regiment and they still need to have something inserted into their anus and rectum. Many people don’t like the idea of that, despite its propensity to save lives. Additionally, there is limited availability for this new procedure in some locations and Medicare currently does not cover the cost of this exam, although most private insurance companies do. In a website memo, Medicare representatives said: “We have determined that there is insufficient evidence on the test characteristics and performance of screening CT colonoscopy in Medicare-aged individuals, and that the evidence is not sufficient to conclude that screening CT colonoscopy improves health benefits for asymptomatic, average-risk Medicare beneficiaries.” Even though there have been several studies demonstrating the virtual test’s efficiency at colon cancer prevention, Medicare has not yet accepted these new findings.

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A healthy colon cleanse benefits the body, as well as the mind. Its been said that the body is a temple, and can withstand a great amount of abuse. In some ways this is good and in some ways it can be bad. It’s good because with the abuse we put our body through daily with a bad diet, lack of water and nutrition, and of course the free radicals from the sun, bad air, and even our food, our body needs to be tough.

The bad side is that people often take it for granted and end up putting themselves into a very unhealthy state of being, where energy is low, and the immune system is barely hanging on for dear life. The body has several filters that work hard to detox the body, but they can’t do their job if the body can’t flush out the toxins that enter the body on a daily basis. If your colon is backed up, then there are going to be a lot of toxins flooding your digestive tract, as well as the stored up fecal matter in your colon putting toxins that can’t escape back into the blood stream affecting all your major organs.

Being tired is often a sign of a clogged up colon and this sends a domino effect up throughout the rest of the body. This is not something that energy drinks can fix. They actually make things worse. What do you do now?

You can achieve great colon cleanse benefits by using a supplement product that contains herbal supplements that work with your body to flush out the colon, allowing toxins to escape as they should, and the whole assembly line of problems start to clear out with it. As the body cleansed itself and the organs begin to function properly again, the colon cleanse benefits will be apparent and you will no longer need any energy drinks to feel a pick me up. Other colon cleanse benefits are your body starts to become more efficient and your vitality levels rise, you find yourself needing less sleep and waking up with incredible energy and optimism.

Some of my favorite natural benefits of colon cleanse are that the ingredients scrub my body clean by lubricating the septic system (the colon, liver, and kidneys to name a few) and helping the body to do what it was designed to do. You start to feel so healthy that when you do eat processed foods, or too much sugar, caffeine, and so forth, you “feel” how bad they are for your body and no longer desire them. Before the colon cleanse benefits kicked in, I was dependant on them, but now I have no desire at all for them.

After using this amazing supplement I feel better than ever, and I cleanse my body at least once a month, sometimes once a week depending on how I’m feeling. For years I could not get my energy back no matter what I did, even if I did eat right, exercise, and drink plenty of water. I came to discover that until your body is clean and your colon flushed out, none of these things will work anyway.

The amount of colon cleanse benefits are simply incredible! A good colon cleanse can take care of a wide range of symptoms and a nice benefit is you could also lose up to 25 lbs (it wasn’t just fat that was pushing your tummy out!), energy gain, and a feeling of vitality as your body returns to its optimal function, no longer slowed down by all those toxins. This is the best thing you could do for your body!