Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to w Chuck, Brian over there, Jerry's here, so bend over and let's get started. Everyone warning, body horror. Yeah, this is about Enema's trigger warning. Obviously if you see the title, you're gonna know what's going on. But you know there's gonna be some gross stuff. And there's also a small section that does uh you may not want your kids to hear. Uh. I would just say, if this is probably not family road trip material, yeah, just skip to the next one. Yeah, unless that next one, no, it's probably safe lately. Oh yeah yeah yeah. And it's really just that one part to tell you the truth. And even then it's not like we're being like, you know, lascivious or body. No, it's nothing to be ashamed of it, like you just just tread carefully with kids around, everybody's like, what are they talking about? I've never been more intrigued via Stuff you Should Know episode and you'll know when did we get there? So keep your pants on? That was terrible but great also at the same time, um, so we're talking enemas and yeah, they were probably about seven eight times researching this where I was like, I'm gonna faintly, yeah, and I'm really surprised that I've actually gotten high colonics before, like I've done this stuff. I think I remember that. And you were into this, right, yes, actually, yeah, that's a good way to put it. I was into it for a while. Um and because there were times where I would get one and be like, I've never felt more positive and energetic than I've ever felt my life. Then other times I would get them and I would feel like gray and couldn't look anybody in the eye afterward. Like it's really strange how it can affect you. But you know, when it does make you feel it, you can understand why people do it. The thing is is we'll see the reason that I was doing high colonics and why most people do high colonics, especially outside of a formal medical setting. It's just basically bunk. That's true. I remember now you talked about this in our live Dr Kellogg episode. Yeah, because I remember you when you said you felt gray. That's how I described it on stage. There's no other way to put it. That always gotta laugh. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Also gotta laugh. That's true. Jokes, No, for sure. So um, I'll talk a little. I'll pepper this episode with with my memories of that. How about that? Great? But instead, I've never done it. You've never had an anima even, no, no, nothing like that. Okay, alright, exit only so far and so in that ruling anything out. But that's the thing. So like Ed helped us with this one, and he specifically spells out, there's no reason for you to do this. That's true. And just let me correct myself real quick. I did have my colon oscar be so I'm officially not exit only. Oh congratulations, man, that's a good thing to do. No one told me two things going into this, one of which is that the people coming in there to do it walk in like wearing rubber smocks basically, and when you see it, you're like, oh, sure I would do uh. And the other thing no one ever told me, and I think people don't tell people this maybe just because it's a fun surprise, is that all you do afterward for thirty minutes is fart. I don't remember that I was sitting there, but pre op they brought a guy out next to me behind the curtain and he was just blowing gas every fifteen seconds, big ones, and I was dying and the guy I was it was so funny to me. I mean, I mean still five years old. The guy came in to wheel me in the anesthesiologists and I was like, is that him? And he that's everybody, and I went so all day long and he went a cacophony of farts and I was like, what a job, and he just kind of laughed and he said it'll be you two. And I came out and I was in that beautiful propof all haze and I told the lady, I said, I gotta go to the bathroom right now, and she went, you just have to pass, honey. She would just go go ahead and start doing it, and sure enough I just started. I just started blowing heat for how long? Because I really did that. I must have been like just basically out while I was doing it. Now maybe well Emily didn't remember either, but she I was in there with her and she I think was pretty farty. So anyway, all that to say, uh, I did have the camera, uh you know, going inside of my body. So you have been an inny now not just that, I guess, so I was looking for the right word and any sure, so um, well, let's just let's get to the nitty gritty here. Okay, Yeah, what's an enema. It's when you have fluid injected through your anus into the rectum. Sometimes, depending on the amount of fluid introduced and how long you can hold it, it can make its way up to the large intestine, which is five ft or one and a half meters long, so it can be a lot of fluid, almost two leaders from what I saw. Um, and then you try to hold it and then after a while you pass it and you're basically pooping a bunch of water out. And hopefully if you're doing this for basically a non medical reason, you're you're clearing out any remaining poop material in there. Yeah, which is when you go in for a calonic, they have you instead of doing a calonic or or a cinema, they give you the stuff to drink where you do nothing but poop for you know, twelve to eighteen hours or whatever for a colonoscopy. Yeah, because they don't want they don't want anything in there either, No, and because they can they can like not make it past whatever chunks are in there, or they can um they can kind of um block there the data that they're getting from it block their view. Who knows, but yeah, the uber right, like when I had to go one more time and I actually stopped the guy right as we were going in and said, I think you have to go one more time? Is that a problem? And he went no, please do say oh right, of course, it's like you want all of it out. So let's talk about where you're actually holding this water when you get in Eama. Yeah, to the five people still listening, you think, no, I don't know. I think there are some people that are I mean that listen to the poop episode. If they're into that, they're into this sure for sure. So um in your guts, you've got your digestive tract, which basically is your guts, you get your mouth, you're faring to your esophagus. That's where the food goes into the stomach, and from the stomach it goes into the small intestine. And the small intestine is long. It's really long. It's like twenty two ft long, all bunched up, and it's longer then large intestine. But it's much narrower, and that is where we suck all the nutrients out of food, right, and then once we suck all the nutrients out of food, it goes produp into the large intestine. That's right, all right. So from this point, uh, you're at the end of the small intestine, right am, I in the right part of the body. I feel like you shrunk me down and I'm listening to you on like out of here. Uh. You've got the liquid food material at this point, and it's going to pass through the iliosecal valve into the secum. And we talked about all this in the poop in the Digestive episodes, but it's a nice refresher and I think appendix too. Yeah. Probably, it's always fun to talk about it because it's such a weird system to that, like the answer is twenty two ft of intestines. Yeah, but it's just such a beautiful idea or such a great systems. It's pretty cool. Uh. So the secum is on the right side of the body and the lower abdomen, and then it's going to move into this the colon, which is that big, larger segmented tube that goes up the right side and takes a little turn actually not a little turn or very sharp turn across the body, uh, in the upper abdomen and is kind of curved and tucked underneath the stomach. Yeah, And then it goes down the other side and makes kind of a j at the bottom, and that's where it connects with the rectum. And colon, by the way, is just another word for the large intestine. Um. There's different types of colon depending on what section you're talking about. But the point is, as it's going through this wild ride in your large intestine, although the nutrients have been removed now the water is being removed a lot of the liquid so that you don't get dehydrated every time you poop, and that makes your poop not dry, but less moist than it would have been when it entered the large intestine. The point is this, when it gets to erectum and goes out of your anus, what you're doing is pooping. And the whole point behind enemas as it stands, and they've been around for a really long time, is the idea that maybe there's something stuck in there. And if there's something stuck in there and it's gross, we should probably try to get rid of it and we'll probably be healthier as a result. Yeah, and I think even beyond stuck, I think some people like the idea of just cleaning the pipes out really really well, you know what I'm saying. Sure, I know what you're saying. Like if they could get a one of those like test tube brushes, you can't, yeah, like a pipe cleaner, but you can't. And so the enema has come along, and and I think a lot of people still do it for that reason. They just like, maybe that's why you were doing it, like let me clean myself out. Yeah, um, I was doing it for the idea of like toxins being removed that kind of stuff. Um, which is it? It dates back to John Harvey Kellogg but even further as we'll see. But yeah, I think some people do just want to be cleaner. And I saw that there's a shower extension or attachment that is home and you can basically just give yourself an enema every day in the shower. Whether you should do that or not is highly debatable, and if you asked the doctor, they'll say, no, I don't even do it once, But some people do anyway. Interesting, uh, all right. So if you want to go back through history, um, you it's one of the earliest sort of medical procedures that you could get. Uh. It is in ancient ancient medical texts. Uh. We always talk about Pliny and Herodotus, they both wrote about enemas. The Egyptians were using enemas. Uh. That was apparently a bird called the ibis that they thought gave itself enemas with its beak, when in fact it was just expressing oil glands near the anus with its beak. But they looked at this bird and said, I guess, well, hey, if it's doing it, then maybe we should do um. But a lot of times with the Egyptians it was sort of a post um. She's almost said, postpartum, post die, post posthumous. Yeah, oh cheeze, its posthumous post. I was gonna cut all that out, but I should just own it, right, It's up to you. Now, you're gonna own it. I was. I could not think of the word posthumous. It was something they did after you died. Yeah, they would put a bunch of cedar oil up your poop shoot and let you, um, let your inners just basically dissolve that way. But they were also using it while they were alive, not using cedar oil obviously because that would have been horrible, but um, using other stuff like typically water sometimes oils um to basically clean themselves out. Again, that's long been and still is the basic idea of an enema for thousands of years. That's right. So as far as equipment goes, uh, you know, over the years, it's definitely uh, things have come and gone and what was available to them. Uh. Syringes have been around a lot longer than I thought actually before I researched this stuff. But depending on where you were and how much money you had, you might not have access to something like a medical syringe. Um. But one thing they would use is in certain parts of the world where bamboo tubes uh, and you would, you know, stick this up someone's butt and you would be very careful not to inhale with your mouth on the tube, and you would blow, uh blow in and you would force liquid in through there. And this was something that they used. I think bellows came along because people actually would occasionally inhale and that would lead to very poor results. Right, Yeah, because a lot of times you were getting animals for things like colera, and if you accidentally like coughed and inhaled while you're what you're supposed to be blowing, you could inhale color infested stool and you were in big, big trouble. Or even if it wasn't colera infested, it's just a very poor day, it really is. And they were like yeah, and like this is a it's a really basic idea, but over you know, the centuries, people added things to it, like you said, the syringe. When it started to become more widespread. Um there was a Dutch physician named Rignier de Groff who in the six hundreds realized that a lot of people could probably benefit from, you know, an enema, but they were too modest or embarrassed or something like that. So he really started to try to figure out how to make um enemas self administered, also to free the poor person who had to blow the water through the bamboo tube as well. It was way better if you could just do it yourself without that kind of thing. Sure, uh, you know things like water bottles that used these days in certain applications. Back then they would use like animal bladders and things like that. Because they again like you said they tried to make it early on. I think even way back then they were they said, this is probably something we should try and get people to do themselves, no matter what tools they're using, Like, we gotta think of something to get everyone else out of the room. So, just like everything else, Um, there was an age of the enema and this actually happened during the the court of Louis fourteenth, who I believe rain during the eighteenth century. Correct, Yeah, I mean I think it was yeah, like early sixteen thirties to early seventeen hundreds. Okay, alright, correct, so I was half right. So during this time, like it was, it was just just as fashionable as as it could be to get enemas self administered or otherwise. And being the king Louis the fourteenth was like, um, I don't have to administer these myself. I'll have somebody administer them to me. And also being the king, I will just I'll take visitors during these sessions as well. Yes, and he loved these things. Reports say that he had over two thousand enemas during his reign. And uh, why this hasn't been like at least a movie scene at some point I have no idea where he's just kind of holding cord or taking a meeting while he's getting an enema. But um, you know, high society, the Parisians, they would show off there. They were called clister uh syringes, and they had several different ones, somewhere like mother of Pearl and very fancy, and they would they would, you know, say, oh, look at mine, I have several different you know, enema syrenches. And it was just a thing people did a lot, yes, until the around the nineteenth century, and they started figuring out that that they could make laxatives and pillform and it was way easier, and they started prescribing those instead UM, and it fell out of favor until John Harvey Kellogg came along and for much much greater detail in his um experience with enemas. You could go listen to our live Kellogg Brothers episode. But he he brought it back with a bang, and since then, his ideas that you're cleaning out toxins that otherwise will cause disease in you is still just the premise of enemas outside of the medical setting. That's right. Uh. A another couple of things that I know, I know one of them you mentioned and I couldn't remember, but I guess it was the drowning episode. Was they used to in England perform tobacco smoke enemas to revive people after drowning or if you lose consciousness, And I knew that sounded familiar. And then when it hit on the drowning part that had to have been the episode. But they would blow tobacco smoke up your butt with a rubber hose and will wake you right up. I guess yeah. Well, actually I think they found that it didn't actually work very much. Okay, so you want to take a break and come back and talk more about animals. Hey, let's stuck. I don't know that you know it stuck and stuck. It's a great name. That's the name of that. It's a great name. Alright, stuck within with an X. Right, So let's talk like the actual medical anima, right and how it actually works. Okay. Uh. The first thing you want to figure out is how much liquid to put in um and it varies. There can be situations where they're basically kind of flushing you in and out where there are gallons of liquid that are used. Uh, sometimes you might get a CT scan to actually determine a real volume to use, like how much space do you have to hold this liquid? And uh, usually though it's about a leader or so roughly, Yeah, um, I saw that the volume of the average coal in the large intestine is about one and a half leaders to maybe three. I think you're on the side of down. But if you think about it, if you're using a leader, say two leaders, you're filling up your entire large intestine with water. Lucky for you, there's that um ilo seql ealv um that prevents backflow from going from the large intestine back into the small intestine. Um. But that's actually like a big, big risk with UM self administered or non medical enemas or colonics is there's a concern that that could actually breach that and you would be in big trouble because you'd be infecting yourself with stuff that you shouldn't be infecting yourself with. Yeah, I mean, that's one good reason not to do it yourself exactly, So you're gonna probably be on your side. There's a doctor nurse who's going to be you know, administering it, and um, it's exactly what you think. They put a tube up your butt. They put the water whatever it is, into your anus, which goes up to your rectum and then possibly into your um large intestine and while you're while you're sitting there, you were overcome by the urge to poop. And it's not just that you're full or distended um. It's that the liquid actually can trigger the mucosa lining the rectum to to poop. It's basically like, there's two ways it's making you want to poop, and brother, do you want to poop? Right? So one is your full and the other is that mucosa is just start spasming because it's triggered. Uh. And that's why I use apparently why they use soapy water um or not always, but there is such a thing as the soapy water enema, and that soap is a lubricant which helps obviously for obvious reasons, but it also can be extra irritating to the colon and guess make you want to poop even more. But I'm sure there's people out there who presume that soapy soap water enemas are used to clean you out extra yeah, which is not the case, right, No, it's not. It's just for making you your colon spasm right, so UM, while you're holding this, like sometimes you have to hold it because there might be a bunch of um like impacted poop in there or something like that that they want to kind of soften up over time, so they may make you hold it for a while. You're going to cramp because you're not used to being this full. And also don't forget that you're your colon is spasming wanting to poop, and you just have to hold it for as long as you can and then finally you get to poop it out and you go home and cry for a couple of days. So I guess we should talk about some of the valid reasons before we get to like the reasons why you probably shouldn't just do one at home yourself to clean yourself out. Uh. There are plenty of valid medical reasons why you want to good with doctor or if you're in a hospital or something to get an enema. UM One is if you have UH, and we're not talking about just your garden variety constipation that happens to people. We're talking about constipation that has not responded to any other treatments UM or possibly if it gets so bad, something called fecal impactation can happen, which is just really long term I mean, it's what you think, it's really long term constipation where you're feces are just so hard and compact and dehydrated that it's probably not even possible to get him out other than with an enema, right, Um. And that's where you just sit there and hold it in for a while and just kind of let it loosen up, probably with like some warm water that's just breaking it up, maybe celine water too. Um you all right, Um, you also want might want to do it, like you said, for you, if you're going to go get a colonoscopy, they might have given you an enema back in the day. Um, although I wonder how long they've been doing colonoscopes. At some point, enemas and colonoscopes cross paths. But now since they figured out they can give you like that that magic drink that just makes you poop, poop, poop, they don't really need to do enemas any longer. But I think that was a that was a point at some time. They met in a bar one night. Yeah, we seem to have a lot in common. Yeah, I couldn't think I really wanted to. That was great, Chuck, there it is, thank you. Um here's another reason before having a baby. A lot of times when when someone has a baby, they can they can poop, And for a long time they said, well that's not a good idea because there could be bacteria in the feces. This is called cause infections, so you get an enema before you have a baby. But since the early nineteen eighties that has UH kind of gone the way of the dodo because there was a paper meta study in n that found that it did not reduce UH infection and it basically just added another stressful procedure UH to you know, pre birth that they didn't want people to go through. Yeah that yeah, you just why make it even even more stressful, you know exactly. Um. Also, if there's something wrong with your colon, they might give you an enema of barium sulfate, which um shows up as opaque on X ray. So if you have a colon full of barium sulfate, when the X ray you, they're going to be able to see every nook and cranny of your and it really helps quite a bit and you just get to poop out some barium. It's the bonus of that one. Uh. This one is something I'd never considered, but it makes a lot of sense. Uh. If you have to have a certain kind of medication, like for your colon, getting it there that way maybe a really good idea. Because if you think about it, if you take it, like maybe if it's alterative colitis or something, uh, and you take something orally like a steroid, you're gonna maybe metabolize a lot of that on the way down, and your body is also gonna have uh probably more of a risk of side effects because it is being metabolized in your whole body, Whereas if you just go right to the spot and get that steroid in there, it's sort of a one stop shop. Yeah. And also if the steroids just meant for the treatment of alterative colitis, say you don't want to like move steroids across your entire body, which will happen if you get it through ivy or orally. This is like it's just super laser focused medication, which is great, that's right. Um. And also that it's the same it's the same thing with suppositories too. Um. Sometimes they'll use a suppository if you can't keep something down or if they're trying to target that area because there's so many um blood vessels in your anus and rectum, I think particularly in your amus that um, they'll just take that medicine and food shoot it right through that area. Uh. And this is where ed the Grabster points out he helped us put this one together, is uh. He said, you'll notice that none of the medical reasons were you know, just to clean yourself out. Uh. That that is something that has you know, Uh, come on. I was about to say more recently, but Kellogg was doing it obviously a long time ago. And so we're the Egyptians, so never mind. There's also there was one other um reason for it that I thought was pretty cool. If you end up like Needing our Desert Survival episode one day and you're overheated, you show up at the hospital, they might give you a cool water enema and that will help reduce your core bo do you temperature real quick inside out method. That's pretty cool. But that is awful, but I'll bet it's I'll bet afterwards you're like, that was amazing. I can't believe that worked. But it didn't. Yeah, maybe so alright, chuck, how about our second break. We're making it. Man, I haven't felt faint once yet. I haven't either. Okay, good, Um, So we're gonna take a break and come back and finish up enemies. Stuck. I don't know that you know it. Stuck. It's a great name. That's the name of that. It's a great name. Alright, stuck within with an X. Alright. So it's been a pretty wild ride so far. We described the process medically speaking. Uh. Some of the liquids that you can use medically speaking, regular old tap water, UH, soapy water, which we talked about. Sometimes it will be saline water, uh, salt water enemas, different concentrations of salt. Depending on what you want to do, whether or not you want to draw water into the intestines or draw water out, you're gonna use different concentration layer levels of salt. Makes sense. What else we mentioned burying sulfite, but also oil, right, Yeah, I think if you're if you've got the your poop is just not coming out, um you, they might give you some sort of oil to really kind of break it up a little more. To kind of oil, I have a guess mineral oil probably to right, that would be my guess. Okay, sure that makes sense. I think so too. So. Um, you talked about how there's reasons that some people would want to be clean, Um, and there are times where you might want to be clean. There are sexual activities that you might want to be clearer for, and one of them is anal sex. Right, that's right. You just pass that right along pretty quickly, didn't you. Uh. Yeah, Apparently in the porn industry, Uh, it is very common practice if you have an anal sex scene on camera to get really cleaned out beforehand. Never really thought about that, but apparently that's the thing I didn't either. I also saw, um that it's fairly common, at least according to Vice magazine among bottoms in the gay community. UM, that they will they'll basically give themselves animals before sex. And in this article, the whole premise of it was like essentially that this doctor was saying, like, you don't need to do that, first of all, like most of like any remnant poop that's in there. Like here's the other thing, this is why you shouldn't do this in the first place, no matter what the reason, outside of a medical setting, you don't need to because most people who's like works are functioning properly, are expelling almost all of the poop that ever goes through their body. There's so little left over um that this is really unnecessary. And then also it's um with with anal sex in particular, you're rarely reaching the rectum. It's almost all anus, and there's not really any leftover poop in the anus. It would be in the rectum. Yeah. Plus if you get that bidet, it's crossing over with all kinds of episodes. You're clean up there anyway, exactly, You're yes, for sure. Uh. And along these same lines, the sexual pleasure is another reason somebody might uh want to do this, like and we're not just talking about um anal sex. We're talking about b D s M practices. Uh. It is the thing in that community where some people might be into, uh like a humiliation fetish where you are forced to hold in an enema as as part of control, or maybe a medical fetish. And this happens in the b D s M community. And that's another reason you might get an enema. Yeah, and not it's like the dy animal. It's not prepared ring for a sex act. It is in itself the sex act, right, that's right, part of the sex act. So I was reading about that too. Yeah, and I saw it was like humiliation, like you had to ask permission to to go finally, Um, that that was part of it. But I also saw, um, it can also be treated as like a loving gift or something like that. It just all depends on how it's approached. Basically, gotcha and that parents was the aforementioned section and now it's over. Did we talk about anything kids can't know about? Well, it depends on how open minded you are and hold your kids are. I think I was teasing, I know. Uh so I talked a little bit about it being a fad, but then I walked it back. But it is a fad and it has been for a while now. Um the notion like we've kind of harped on that. Um, you know, it's not super expensive. It's you can usually get like an enemy kit for not a whole lot of money, Like, it doesn't take a lot of high priced equipment, and it's something that you can do in the private to your own home. And I think along with like uh, fasting and juice cleanses, it's it's sort of in that same category as as this stuff where you're where you at least you're intending to clean toxins out of your body. And plus also it has a real goop vibe too, you know. And Gwyneth Paltrow's coup not just well well said yes yeah, so um again yes if you're if you're doing this and you're you're fine medically, if you don't have digestive issues, um, then there's no reason for you to do this. It's superfluous and it can also be potentially dangerous. That's the point. I don't think like the doctors who are saying like, don't do this if you don't need any help with your digestive tract are just trying to like, you know, pooh pooh, anyone's fun. But um, what they're saying is is like there's there's actual risks with this kind of stuff that you could injure yourself and in some really horrific ways. I think this is where the fainting for you really kind of stepped up. Yeah. Um, all right, well I guess we'll just start with uh perforations. Sure. Uh, if you are inserting something uh you know, into your anus, up into your rectum. There is a chance that you could perforate something. Uh. You could have one of those nozzles go through the wall of the rectum. You can make a even the tiniest hole in the wall of your colon because of the pressure of that fluid um. None of this is a good thing at all. It could lead to scepsis. Uh. It is all of a sudden you have um things that aren't sterile where they shouldn't be, and it's just not a good idea, right. Um. You can you can um infect your parietal peritonium, which holds your abdomen or your abdominal organs in place and doesn't want any poop water in there at all. It would be a bad jam. You can also even just do more minor damage to where you just kind of scrape it or dn't or something like that, and it's not going to feel very good. And the reason why you're at risk of perforating or denting or scraping your rectum is because it's not like a straight shot from your anus up to your rectum up to your um your large intestine. It's your anus goes one way and then all of a sudden it starts to double back and that's your rectum. So you really have to have some finesse here, and if you go too far, you can really be in some big trouble. Yeah. Absolutely, Um, we talked about drawing water out. That could obviously lead to some pretty severe dehydration if you lose a significant amount of water. Um sodium phosphate. Uh, if you use an enemy that contains sodium phosphate, that can really lead to severe dehydration. And we're talking like you know where your kidneys and your heart could be damaged. Yeah, because I mean we're talking electro lights here, so the electrical conductivity of your heart depends on that kind of stuff. So yes, if you have a heart condition, you should probably not be doing animals, especially sailine animals for sure. But also even if it's not sailing, if you introduce too much water into your body, you can suffer from water toxicity, which is basically like the opposite of that kind of imbalance of too much salt, you have too little salt, and that can cause problems too. Yeah, and aside from heart conditions and high blood pressure, which they don't recommend you get self administer animals in those cases, if you have any kind of complications with your coals, your colon, uh, any kind of underlying condition there. You don't want to be giving yourself anenema just to clean yourself out. Okay, got it? You got anything else? I got nothing else. I feel like this is pretty short one. We spent through this one somehow. Well, I was gonna say, we have a few minutes I could share my experience with it. Yeah, because you didn't really touch on any of it. So if you go and get a colonic um or colon, hydrotherapy is what it's often called. At like a medspa, they often have them. They're not gonna like administer an enema to you. They actually have a machine at that. All I owe is you to self administer a continuous enema that they basically leave on for about thirty minutes. And it's a really kind of weird ingenious contraption. But essentially it's like a the the kind of table that you would um give birth on, so your legs are kind of spread apart, but then in the middle of the table is a hole with a tube coming up from it, and that tube is what you have to like lower yourself onto. That's where you put the umbrella this un umbrella that's right, and then around the tube is where everything comes back out. Right, So UM in front of you is like a little shower nozzle and it's invariably UM the cheap home depot ten dollar like fake cut crystal plastic shower nozzle. You know I'm talking about UM. So you turn it on and and you're in control, so you control how much is going in at any point in time because you can feel it immediately start to fill up in your in your colon and your guts and UM. You'll probably try to hold it as long as you can, and you might think that that's gonna be a minute or ten minutes if you're really optimistic, but it ends up being like eight to ten seconds the most you could possibly hold it. For me, at least it was. And then when it comes back out, it goes through that tube or through that hole around the tube, through a plastic tube that goes to the that takes it out as waste of drains it away. And like I said, this contraption is really ingenious. They set a mirror up so you can see it coming through the tube, so you can see what's coming out of you and uh, it's really something. They leave you in there for about half an hour, and like I said, UM, you can either walk away feeling like wow, I really feel like a million bucks, which I still to this day don't understand. But it was not placebo effect because I'd had it before and that hadn't happened. This wasn't like the first time like it was, I don't understand what the mechanism could have been. Um. And then other times you can feel like really just just violated, is the only way to put it. Like you violated yourself somehow. So it's either walking on sunshine or a Smith's song pretty much. Wow. So is there a human in there with you? That's what I didn't gather. The human um explains it to you and then leaves and then runs and you see a little dust cloud. Basically. Yeah. The only time that the human will come back in while you're doing this is when you haven't inserted the tube far enough into your anus, because water starts spraying out and they'll they'll you'll basically be like, I think something's wrong, and they'll come in and really like you you don't have this far enough up and you're like, no, I really do, I really do, And they're like, you don't. You have to put it further up, and you have to put it further up, and then once you get it up there correctly, the water stop spraying out and you can get down to business. One thing I didn't look up was the coffee andema. Do you know what the deal is with that? Is that just a variation of the liquid? I yeah, as far as I know, I don't understand what it's used for, but I know that, like, because there's so many blood vessels there, you would be pretty hyped up on caffeine if you use like fully caffeinated coffee. Well that's probably the purpose, right, Well, yes, And then we should also say tangential that people have used alcohol in animals before, and that is potentially deadly, actually probably deadly, depending on what kind of alcohol you put in there and how often you do it. Um, because you're just absorbing alcohol way faster than you would if you would drink it, so your blood alcohol M volume can get really high, really fast, and you can give yourself alcohol poisoning. So under no circumstances do that. Oh my lord, Yeah, what is wrong with people? I don't know. I have nothing else. I'm just I'm in a feuge state. Okay, all right, I don't have anything else either. Um, well that's it for animals. Everybody chucks in a feuge state, which means, of course it's time for listener mail. Uh. We got a couple of replies, and this is, um, in lieu of you your assertion that there would be no cocaine in small town Michigan in the nineteen and nine. One person really schooled me. Yeah, I don't think this was it. Uh, this is from a West Virginian. No, this is the guy. Really. Yeah, not in a hostile manner. I'm saying that it took me to school. I got you. Um, I thought you meant in a you know, get in there and take your enema like a big boy way. Right. I have to ask permission. Greetings from a long time listener in West Virginia. I'm writing in regards to death from astral Projection, where the autopsy report determined that Robert's death was due to a cocaine overdose. Josh expressed skepticism about cocaine being in Ann Arbor and seventy five because of the high roller image. I can't speak to that directly, if you know what I mean, But I can tell you that cocaine was absolutely in Morgantown. Is that Morganton or Morgantowntown. It just sends like it'd be one of these places. It says, no, it's Morgan. Well, I said it was Morgantown, so that means, of course it's uh. And we sure have never been the epicenter of financial markets or a hang out of the rich and famous. But I was a college sophomore then, and it was in more than one room where it happened. A lot of the illegal drugs that make it to Morganton Town come from Detroit, and to this day, drug arrets here often involved people from there. If cocaine made it to the m town home of West Virginia University in nine, it's pretty much a certainty that also made it to ann Arbor. I love the podcast, of course, this is anecdotal's still I love the podcast. I'm happy to have a chance to write in and shed a little more light on an interesting mystery. Should you read this on the podcast, please don't use my name. If my ninety three year old mom got wind of this, she'd still ground me. So that is from Jeffrey Charles. That's anonymous. That's great, Thanks Anonymous, that was a fantastic email. I really feel like, yes, it is anecdotal, but they make just about as good a point as you possibly could, so I rescind it. I still don't understand why this this yogi would have suddenly gotten into cocaine. Agree with that when everybody in his life says no, including friends, not just his mom and his friends too. But but I mean, this guy makes a pretty good point. It's possible. It's possible. If you want to get in touch with us and let us know what's possible, we're always looking for that kind of thing. You can send it in an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to w Chuck, Brian over there, Jerry's here, so bend over and let's get started. Everyone warning, body horror. Yeah, this is about Enema's trigger warning. Obviously if you see the title, you're gonna know what's going on. But you know there's gonna be some gross stuff. And there's also a small section that does uh you may not want your kids to hear. Uh. I would just say, if this is probably not family road trip material, yeah, just skip to the next one. Yeah, unless that next one, no, it's probably safe lately. Oh yeah yeah yeah. And it's really just that one part to tell you the truth. And even then it's not like we're being like, you know, lascivious or body. No, it's nothing to be ashamed of it, like you just just tread carefully with kids around, everybody's like, what are they talking about? I've never been more intrigued via Stuff you Should Know episode and you'll know when did we get there? So keep your pants on? That was terrible but great also at the same time, um, so we're talking enemas and yeah, they were probably about seven eight times researching this where I was like, I'm gonna faintly, yeah, and I'm really surprised that I've actually gotten high colonics before, like I've done this stuff. I think I remember that. And you were into this, right, yes, actually, yeah, that's a good way to put it. I was into it for a while. Um and because there were times where I would get one and be like, I've never felt more positive and energetic than I've ever felt my life. Then other times I would get them and I would feel like gray and couldn't look anybody in the eye afterward. Like it's really strange how it can affect you. But you know, when it does make you feel it, you can understand why people do it. The thing is is we'll see the reason that I was doing high colonics and why most people do high colonics, especially outside of a formal medical setting. It's just basically bunk. That's true. I remember now you talked about this in our live Dr Kellogg episode. Yeah, because I remember you when you said you felt gray. That's how I described it on stage. There's no other way to put it. That always gotta laugh. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Also gotta laugh. That's true. Jokes, No, for sure. So um, I'll talk a little. I'll pepper this episode with with my memories of that. How about that? Great? But instead, I've never done it. You've never had an anima even, no, no, nothing like that. Okay, alright, exit only so far and so in that ruling anything out. But that's the thing. So like Ed helped us with this one, and he specifically spells out, there's no reason for you to do this. That's true. And just let me correct myself real quick. I did have my colon oscar be so I'm officially not exit only. Oh congratulations, man, that's a good thing to do. No one told me two things going into this, one of which is that the people coming in there to do it walk in like wearing rubber smocks basically, and when you see it, you're like, oh, sure I would do uh. And the other thing no one ever told me, and I think people don't tell people this maybe just because it's a fun surprise, is that all you do afterward for thirty minutes is fart. I don't remember that I was sitting there, but pre op they brought a guy out next to me behind the curtain and he was just blowing gas every fifteen seconds, big ones, and I was dying and the guy I was it was so funny to me. I mean, I mean still five years old. The guy came in to wheel me in the anesthesiologists and I was like, is that him? And he that's everybody, and I went so all day long and he went a cacophony of farts and I was like, what a job, and he just kind of laughed and he said it'll be you two. And I came out and I was in that beautiful propof all haze and I told the lady, I said, I gotta go to the bathroom right now, and she went, you just have to pass, honey. She would just go go ahead and start doing it, and sure enough I just started. I just started blowing heat for how long? Because I really did that. I must have been like just basically out while I was doing it. Now maybe well Emily didn't remember either, but she I was in there with her and she I think was pretty farty. So anyway, all that to say, uh, I did have the camera, uh you know, going inside of my body. So you have been an inny now not just that, I guess, so I was looking for the right word and any sure, so um, well, let's just let's get to the nitty gritty here. Okay, Yeah, what's an enema. It's when you have fluid injected through your anus into the rectum. Sometimes, depending on the amount of fluid introduced and how long you can hold it, it can make its way up to the large intestine, which is five ft or one and a half meters long, so it can be a lot of fluid, almost two leaders from what I saw. Um, and then you try to hold it and then after a while you pass it and you're basically pooping a bunch of water out. And hopefully if you're doing this for basically a non medical reason, you're you're clearing out any remaining poop material in there. Yeah, which is when you go in for a calonic, they have you instead of doing a calonic or or a cinema, they give you the stuff to drink where you do nothing but poop for you know, twelve to eighteen hours or whatever for a colonoscopy. Yeah, because they don't want they don't want anything in there either, No, and because they can they can like not make it past whatever chunks are in there, or they can um they can kind of um block there the data that they're getting from it block their view. Who knows, but yeah, the uber right, like when I had to go one more time and I actually stopped the guy right as we were going in and said, I think you have to go one more time? Is that a problem? And he went no, please do say oh right, of course, it's like you want all of it out. So let's talk about where you're actually holding this water when you get in Eama. Yeah, to the five people still listening, you think, no, I don't know. I think there are some people that are I mean that listen to the poop episode. If they're into that, they're into this sure for sure. So um in your guts, you've got your digestive tract, which basically is your guts, you get your mouth, you're faring to your esophagus. That's where the food goes into the stomach, and from the stomach it goes into the small intestine. And the small intestine is long. It's really long. It's like twenty two ft long, all bunched up, and it's longer then large intestine. But it's much narrower, and that is where we suck all the nutrients out of food, right, and then once we suck all the nutrients out of food, it goes produp into the large intestine. That's right, all right. So from this point, uh, you're at the end of the small intestine, right am, I in the right part of the body. I feel like you shrunk me down and I'm listening to you on like out of here. Uh. You've got the liquid food material at this point, and it's going to pass through the iliosecal valve into the secum. And we talked about all this in the poop in the Digestive episodes, but it's a nice refresher and I think appendix too. Yeah. Probably, it's always fun to talk about it because it's such a weird system to that, like the answer is twenty two ft of intestines. Yeah, but it's just such a beautiful idea or such a great systems. It's pretty cool. Uh. So the secum is on the right side of the body and the lower abdomen, and then it's going to move into this the colon, which is that big, larger segmented tube that goes up the right side and takes a little turn actually not a little turn or very sharp turn across the body, uh, in the upper abdomen and is kind of curved and tucked underneath the stomach. Yeah, And then it goes down the other side and makes kind of a j at the bottom, and that's where it connects with the rectum. And colon, by the way, is just another word for the large intestine. Um. There's different types of colon depending on what section you're talking about. But the point is, as it's going through this wild ride in your large intestine, although the nutrients have been removed now the water is being removed a lot of the liquid so that you don't get dehydrated every time you poop, and that makes your poop not dry, but less moist than it would have been when it entered the large intestine. The point is this, when it gets to erectum and goes out of your anus, what you're doing is pooping. And the whole point behind enemas as it stands, and they've been around for a really long time, is the idea that maybe there's something stuck in there. And if there's something stuck in there and it's gross, we should probably try to get rid of it and we'll probably be healthier as a result. Yeah, and I think even beyond stuck, I think some people like the idea of just cleaning the pipes out really really well, you know what I'm saying. Sure, I know what you're saying. Like if they could get a one of those like test tube brushes, you can't, yeah, like a pipe cleaner, but you can't. And so the enema has come along, and and I think a lot of people still do it for that reason. They just like, maybe that's why you were doing it, like let me clean myself out. Yeah, um, I was doing it for the idea of like toxins being removed that kind of stuff. Um, which is it? It dates back to John Harvey Kellogg but even further as we'll see. But yeah, I think some people do just want to be cleaner. And I saw that there's a shower extension or attachment that is home and you can basically just give yourself an enema every day in the shower. Whether you should do that or not is highly debatable, and if you asked the doctor, they'll say, no, I don't even do it once, But some people do anyway. Interesting, uh, all right. So if you want to go back through history, um, you it's one of the earliest sort of medical procedures that you could get. Uh. It is in ancient ancient medical texts. Uh. We always talk about Pliny and Herodotus, they both wrote about enemas. The Egyptians were using enemas. Uh. That was apparently a bird called the ibis that they thought gave itself enemas with its beak, when in fact it was just expressing oil glands near the anus with its beak. But they looked at this bird and said, I guess, well, hey, if it's doing it, then maybe we should do um. But a lot of times with the Egyptians it was sort of a post um. She's almost said, postpartum, post die, post posthumous. Yeah, oh cheeze, its posthumous post. I was gonna cut all that out, but I should just own it, right, It's up to you. Now, you're gonna own it. I was. I could not think of the word posthumous. It was something they did after you died. Yeah, they would put a bunch of cedar oil up your poop shoot and let you, um, let your inners just basically dissolve that way. But they were also using it while they were alive, not using cedar oil obviously because that would have been horrible, but um, using other stuff like typically water sometimes oils um to basically clean themselves out. Again, that's long been and still is the basic idea of an enema for thousands of years. That's right. So as far as equipment goes, uh, you know, over the years, it's definitely uh, things have come and gone and what was available to them. Uh. Syringes have been around a lot longer than I thought actually before I researched this stuff. But depending on where you were and how much money you had, you might not have access to something like a medical syringe. Um. But one thing they would use is in certain parts of the world where bamboo tubes uh, and you would, you know, stick this up someone's butt and you would be very careful not to inhale with your mouth on the tube, and you would blow, uh blow in and you would force liquid in through there. And this was something that they used. I think bellows came along because people actually would occasionally inhale and that would lead to very poor results. Right, Yeah, because a lot of times you were getting animals for things like colera, and if you accidentally like coughed and inhaled while you're what you're supposed to be blowing, you could inhale color infested stool and you were in big, big trouble. Or even if it wasn't colera infested, it's just a very poor day, it really is. And they were like yeah, and like this is a it's a really basic idea, but over you know, the centuries, people added things to it, like you said, the syringe. When it started to become more widespread. Um there was a Dutch physician named Rignier de Groff who in the six hundreds realized that a lot of people could probably benefit from, you know, an enema, but they were too modest or embarrassed or something like that. So he really started to try to figure out how to make um enemas self administered, also to free the poor person who had to blow the water through the bamboo tube as well. It was way better if you could just do it yourself without that kind of thing. Sure, uh, you know things like water bottles that used these days in certain applications. Back then they would use like animal bladders and things like that. Because they again like you said they tried to make it early on. I think even way back then they were they said, this is probably something we should try and get people to do themselves, no matter what tools they're using, Like, we gotta think of something to get everyone else out of the room. So, just like everything else, Um, there was an age of the enema and this actually happened during the the court of Louis fourteenth, who I believe rain during the eighteenth century. Correct, Yeah, I mean I think it was yeah, like early sixteen thirties to early seventeen hundreds. Okay, alright, correct, so I was half right. So during this time, like it was, it was just just as fashionable as as it could be to get enemas self administered or otherwise. And being the king Louis the fourteenth was like, um, I don't have to administer these myself. I'll have somebody administer them to me. And also being the king, I will just I'll take visitors during these sessions as well. Yes, and he loved these things. Reports say that he had over two thousand enemas during his reign. And uh, why this hasn't been like at least a movie scene at some point I have no idea where he's just kind of holding cord or taking a meeting while he's getting an enema. But um, you know, high society, the Parisians, they would show off there. They were called clister uh syringes, and they had several different ones, somewhere like mother of Pearl and very fancy, and they would they would, you know, say, oh, look at mine, I have several different you know, enema syrenches. And it was just a thing people did a lot, yes, until the around the nineteenth century, and they started figuring out that that they could make laxatives and pillform and it was way easier, and they started prescribing those instead UM, and it fell out of favor until John Harvey Kellogg came along and for much much greater detail in his um experience with enemas. You could go listen to our live Kellogg Brothers episode. But he he brought it back with a bang, and since then, his ideas that you're cleaning out toxins that otherwise will cause disease in you is still just the premise of enemas outside of the medical setting. That's right. Uh. A another couple of things that I know, I know one of them you mentioned and I couldn't remember, but I guess it was the drowning episode. Was they used to in England perform tobacco smoke enemas to revive people after drowning or if you lose consciousness, And I knew that sounded familiar. And then when it hit on the drowning part that had to have been the episode. But they would blow tobacco smoke up your butt with a rubber hose and will wake you right up. I guess yeah. Well, actually I think they found that it didn't actually work very much. Okay, so you want to take a break and come back and talk more about animals. Hey, let's stuck. I don't know that you know it stuck and stuck. It's a great name. That's the name of that. It's a great name. Alright, stuck within with an X. Right, So let's talk like the actual medical anima, right and how it actually works. Okay. Uh. The first thing you want to figure out is how much liquid to put in um and it varies. There can be situations where they're basically kind of flushing you in and out where there are gallons of liquid that are used. Uh, sometimes you might get a CT scan to actually determine a real volume to use, like how much space do you have to hold this liquid? And uh, usually though it's about a leader or so roughly, Yeah, um, I saw that the volume of the average coal in the large intestine is about one and a half leaders to maybe three. I think you're on the side of down. But if you think about it, if you're using a leader, say two leaders, you're filling up your entire large intestine with water. Lucky for you, there's that um ilo seql ealv um that prevents backflow from going from the large intestine back into the small intestine. Um. But that's actually like a big, big risk with UM self administered or non medical enemas or colonics is there's a concern that that could actually breach that and you would be in big trouble because you'd be infecting yourself with stuff that you shouldn't be infecting yourself with. Yeah, I mean, that's one good reason not to do it yourself exactly, So you're gonna probably be on your side. There's a doctor nurse who's going to be you know, administering it, and um, it's exactly what you think. They put a tube up your butt. They put the water whatever it is, into your anus, which goes up to your rectum and then possibly into your um large intestine and while you're while you're sitting there, you were overcome by the urge to poop. And it's not just that you're full or distended um. It's that the liquid actually can trigger the mucosa lining the rectum to to poop. It's basically like, there's two ways it's making you want to poop, and brother, do you want to poop? Right? So one is your full and the other is that mucosa is just start spasming because it's triggered. Uh. And that's why I use apparently why they use soapy water um or not always, but there is such a thing as the soapy water enema, and that soap is a lubricant which helps obviously for obvious reasons, but it also can be extra irritating to the colon and guess make you want to poop even more. But I'm sure there's people out there who presume that soapy soap water enemas are used to clean you out extra yeah, which is not the case, right, No, it's not. It's just for making you your colon spasm right, so UM, while you're holding this, like sometimes you have to hold it because there might be a bunch of um like impacted poop in there or something like that that they want to kind of soften up over time, so they may make you hold it for a while. You're going to cramp because you're not used to being this full. And also don't forget that you're your colon is spasming wanting to poop, and you just have to hold it for as long as you can and then finally you get to poop it out and you go home and cry for a couple of days. So I guess we should talk about some of the valid reasons before we get to like the reasons why you probably shouldn't just do one at home yourself to clean yourself out. Uh. There are plenty of valid medical reasons why you want to good with doctor or if you're in a hospital or something to get an enema. UM One is if you have UH, and we're not talking about just your garden variety constipation that happens to people. We're talking about constipation that has not responded to any other treatments UM or possibly if it gets so bad, something called fecal impactation can happen, which is just really long term I mean, it's what you think, it's really long term constipation where you're feces are just so hard and compact and dehydrated that it's probably not even possible to get him out other than with an enema, right, Um. And that's where you just sit there and hold it in for a while and just kind of let it loosen up, probably with like some warm water that's just breaking it up, maybe celine water too. Um you all right, Um, you also want might want to do it, like you said, for you, if you're going to go get a colonoscopy, they might have given you an enema back in the day. Um, although I wonder how long they've been doing colonoscopes. At some point, enemas and colonoscopes cross paths. But now since they figured out they can give you like that that magic drink that just makes you poop, poop, poop, they don't really need to do enemas any longer. But I think that was a that was a point at some time. They met in a bar one night. Yeah, we seem to have a lot in common. Yeah, I couldn't think I really wanted to. That was great, Chuck, there it is, thank you. Um here's another reason before having a baby. A lot of times when when someone has a baby, they can they can poop, And for a long time they said, well that's not a good idea because there could be bacteria in the feces. This is called cause infections, so you get an enema before you have a baby. But since the early nineteen eighties that has UH kind of gone the way of the dodo because there was a paper meta study in n that found that it did not reduce UH infection and it basically just added another stressful procedure UH to you know, pre birth that they didn't want people to go through. Yeah that yeah, you just why make it even even more stressful, you know exactly. Um. Also, if there's something wrong with your colon, they might give you an enema of barium sulfate, which um shows up as opaque on X ray. So if you have a colon full of barium sulfate, when the X ray you, they're going to be able to see every nook and cranny of your and it really helps quite a bit and you just get to poop out some barium. It's the bonus of that one. Uh. This one is something I'd never considered, but it makes a lot of sense. Uh. If you have to have a certain kind of medication, like for your colon, getting it there that way maybe a really good idea. Because if you think about it, if you take it, like maybe if it's alterative colitis or something, uh, and you take something orally like a steroid, you're gonna maybe metabolize a lot of that on the way down, and your body is also gonna have uh probably more of a risk of side effects because it is being metabolized in your whole body, Whereas if you just go right to the spot and get that steroid in there, it's sort of a one stop shop. Yeah. And also if the steroids just meant for the treatment of alterative colitis, say you don't want to like move steroids across your entire body, which will happen if you get it through ivy or orally. This is like it's just super laser focused medication, which is great, that's right. Um. And also that it's the same it's the same thing with suppositories too. Um. Sometimes they'll use a suppository if you can't keep something down or if they're trying to target that area because there's so many um blood vessels in your anus and rectum, I think particularly in your amus that um, they'll just take that medicine and food shoot it right through that area. Uh. And this is where ed the Grabster points out he helped us put this one together, is uh. He said, you'll notice that none of the medical reasons were you know, just to clean yourself out. Uh. That that is something that has you know, Uh, come on. I was about to say more recently, but Kellogg was doing it obviously a long time ago. And so we're the Egyptians, so never mind. There's also there was one other um reason for it that I thought was pretty cool. If you end up like Needing our Desert Survival episode one day and you're overheated, you show up at the hospital, they might give you a cool water enema and that will help reduce your core bo do you temperature real quick inside out method. That's pretty cool. But that is awful, but I'll bet it's I'll bet afterwards you're like, that was amazing. I can't believe that worked. But it didn't. Yeah, maybe so alright, chuck, how about our second break. We're making it. Man, I haven't felt faint once yet. I haven't either. Okay, good, Um, So we're gonna take a break and come back and finish up enemies. Stuck. I don't know that you know it. Stuck. It's a great name. That's the name of that. It's a great name. Alright, stuck within with an X. Alright. So it's been a pretty wild ride so far. We described the process medically speaking. Uh. Some of the liquids that you can use medically speaking, regular old tap water, UH, soapy water, which we talked about. Sometimes it will be saline water, uh, salt water enemas, different concentrations of salt. Depending on what you want to do, whether or not you want to draw water into the intestines or draw water out, you're gonna use different concentration layer levels of salt. Makes sense. What else we mentioned burying sulfite, but also oil, right, Yeah, I think if you're if you've got the your poop is just not coming out, um you, they might give you some sort of oil to really kind of break it up a little more. To kind of oil, I have a guess mineral oil probably to right, that would be my guess. Okay, sure that makes sense. I think so too. So. Um, you talked about how there's reasons that some people would want to be clean, Um, and there are times where you might want to be clean. There are sexual activities that you might want to be clearer for, and one of them is anal sex. Right, that's right. You just pass that right along pretty quickly, didn't you. Uh. Yeah, Apparently in the porn industry, Uh, it is very common practice if you have an anal sex scene on camera to get really cleaned out beforehand. Never really thought about that, but apparently that's the thing I didn't either. I also saw, um that it's fairly common, at least according to Vice magazine among bottoms in the gay community. UM, that they will they'll basically give themselves animals before sex. And in this article, the whole premise of it was like essentially that this doctor was saying, like, you don't need to do that, first of all, like most of like any remnant poop that's in there. Like here's the other thing, this is why you shouldn't do this in the first place, no matter what the reason, outside of a medical setting, you don't need to because most people who's like works are functioning properly, are expelling almost all of the poop that ever goes through their body. There's so little left over um that this is really unnecessary. And then also it's um with with anal sex in particular, you're rarely reaching the rectum. It's almost all anus, and there's not really any leftover poop in the anus. It would be in the rectum. Yeah. Plus if you get that bidet, it's crossing over with all kinds of episodes. You're clean up there anyway, exactly, You're yes, for sure. Uh. And along these same lines, the sexual pleasure is another reason somebody might uh want to do this, like and we're not just talking about um anal sex. We're talking about b D s M practices. Uh. It is the thing in that community where some people might be into, uh like a humiliation fetish where you are forced to hold in an enema as as part of control, or maybe a medical fetish. And this happens in the b D s M community. And that's another reason you might get an enema. Yeah, and not it's like the dy animal. It's not prepared ring for a sex act. It is in itself the sex act, right, that's right, part of the sex act. So I was reading about that too. Yeah, and I saw it was like humiliation, like you had to ask permission to to go finally, Um, that that was part of it. But I also saw, um, it can also be treated as like a loving gift or something like that. It just all depends on how it's approached. Basically, gotcha and that parents was the aforementioned section and now it's over. Did we talk about anything kids can't know about? Well, it depends on how open minded you are and hold your kids are. I think I was teasing, I know. Uh so I talked a little bit about it being a fad, but then I walked it back. But it is a fad and it has been for a while now. Um the notion like we've kind of harped on that. Um, you know, it's not super expensive. It's you can usually get like an enemy kit for not a whole lot of money, Like, it doesn't take a lot of high priced equipment, and it's something that you can do in the private to your own home. And I think along with like uh, fasting and juice cleanses, it's it's sort of in that same category as as this stuff where you're where you at least you're intending to clean toxins out of your body. And plus also it has a real goop vibe too, you know. And Gwyneth Paltrow's coup not just well well said yes yeah, so um again yes if you're if you're doing this and you're you're fine medically, if you don't have digestive issues, um, then there's no reason for you to do this. It's superfluous and it can also be potentially dangerous. That's the point. I don't think like the doctors who are saying like, don't do this if you don't need any help with your digestive tract are just trying to like, you know, pooh pooh, anyone's fun. But um, what they're saying is is like there's there's actual risks with this kind of stuff that you could injure yourself and in some really horrific ways. I think this is where the fainting for you really kind of stepped up. Yeah. Um, all right, well I guess we'll just start with uh perforations. Sure. Uh, if you are inserting something uh you know, into your anus, up into your rectum. There is a chance that you could perforate something. Uh. You could have one of those nozzles go through the wall of the rectum. You can make a even the tiniest hole in the wall of your colon because of the pressure of that fluid um. None of this is a good thing at all. It could lead to scepsis. Uh. It is all of a sudden you have um things that aren't sterile where they shouldn't be, and it's just not a good idea, right. Um. You can you can um infect your parietal peritonium, which holds your abdomen or your abdominal organs in place and doesn't want any poop water in there at all. It would be a bad jam. You can also even just do more minor damage to where you just kind of scrape it or dn't or something like that, and it's not going to feel very good. And the reason why you're at risk of perforating or denting or scraping your rectum is because it's not like a straight shot from your anus up to your rectum up to your um your large intestine. It's your anus goes one way and then all of a sudden it starts to double back and that's your rectum. So you really have to have some finesse here, and if you go too far, you can really be in some big trouble. Yeah. Absolutely, Um, we talked about drawing water out. That could obviously lead to some pretty severe dehydration if you lose a significant amount of water. Um sodium phosphate. Uh, if you use an enemy that contains sodium phosphate, that can really lead to severe dehydration. And we're talking like you know where your kidneys and your heart could be damaged. Yeah, because I mean we're talking electro lights here, so the electrical conductivity of your heart depends on that kind of stuff. So yes, if you have a heart condition, you should probably not be doing animals, especially sailine animals for sure. But also even if it's not sailing, if you introduce too much water into your body, you can suffer from water toxicity, which is basically like the opposite of that kind of imbalance of too much salt, you have too little salt, and that can cause problems too. Yeah, and aside from heart conditions and high blood pressure, which they don't recommend you get self administer animals in those cases, if you have any kind of complications with your coals, your colon, uh, any kind of underlying condition there. You don't want to be giving yourself anenema just to clean yourself out. Okay, got it? You got anything else? I got nothing else. I feel like this is pretty short one. We spent through this one somehow. Well, I was gonna say, we have a few minutes I could share my experience with it. Yeah, because you didn't really touch on any of it. So if you go and get a colonic um or colon, hydrotherapy is what it's often called. At like a medspa, they often have them. They're not gonna like administer an enema to you. They actually have a machine at that. All I owe is you to self administer a continuous enema that they basically leave on for about thirty minutes. And it's a really kind of weird ingenious contraption. But essentially it's like a the the kind of table that you would um give birth on, so your legs are kind of spread apart, but then in the middle of the table is a hole with a tube coming up from it, and that tube is what you have to like lower yourself onto. That's where you put the umbrella this un umbrella that's right, and then around the tube is where everything comes back out. Right, So UM in front of you is like a little shower nozzle and it's invariably UM the cheap home depot ten dollar like fake cut crystal plastic shower nozzle. You know I'm talking about UM. So you turn it on and and you're in control, so you control how much is going in at any point in time because you can feel it immediately start to fill up in your in your colon and your guts and UM. You'll probably try to hold it as long as you can, and you might think that that's gonna be a minute or ten minutes if you're really optimistic, but it ends up being like eight to ten seconds the most you could possibly hold it. For me, at least it was. And then when it comes back out, it goes through that tube or through that hole around the tube, through a plastic tube that goes to the that takes it out as waste of drains it away. And like I said, this contraption is really ingenious. They set a mirror up so you can see it coming through the tube, so you can see what's coming out of you and uh, it's really something. They leave you in there for about half an hour, and like I said, UM, you can either walk away feeling like wow, I really feel like a million bucks, which I still to this day don't understand. But it was not placebo effect because I'd had it before and that hadn't happened. This wasn't like the first time like it was, I don't understand what the mechanism could have been. Um. And then other times you can feel like really just just violated, is the only way to put it. Like you violated yourself somehow. So it's either walking on sunshine or a Smith's song pretty much. Wow. So is there a human in there with you? That's what I didn't gather. The human um explains it to you and then leaves and then runs and you see a little dust cloud. Basically. Yeah. The only time that the human will come back in while you're doing this is when you haven't inserted the tube far enough into your anus, because water starts spraying out and they'll they'll you'll basically be like, I think something's wrong, and they'll come in and really like you you don't have this far enough up and you're like, no, I really do, I really do, And they're like, you don't. You have to put it further up, and you have to put it further up, and then once you get it up there correctly, the water stop spraying out and you can get down to business. One thing I didn't look up was the coffee andema. Do you know what the deal is with that? Is that just a variation of the liquid? I yeah, as far as I know, I don't understand what it's used for, but I know that, like, because there's so many blood vessels there, you would be pretty hyped up on caffeine if you use like fully caffeinated coffee. Well that's probably the purpose, right, Well, yes, And then we should also say tangential that people have used alcohol in animals before, and that is potentially deadly, actually probably deadly, depending on what kind of alcohol you put in there and how often you do it. Um, because you're just absorbing alcohol way faster than you would if you would drink it, so your blood alcohol M volume can get really high, really fast, and you can give yourself alcohol poisoning. So under no circumstances do that. Oh my lord, Yeah, what is wrong with people? I don't know. I have nothing else. I'm just I'm in a feuge state. Okay, all right, I don't have anything else either. Um, well that's it for animals. Everybody chucks in a feuge state, which means, of course it's time for listener mail. Uh. We got a couple of replies, and this is, um, in lieu of you your assertion that there would be no cocaine in small town Michigan in the nineteen and nine. One person really schooled me. Yeah, I don't think this was it. Uh, this is from a West Virginian. No, this is the guy. Really. Yeah, not in a hostile manner. I'm saying that it took me to school. I got you. Um, I thought you meant in a you know, get in there and take your enema like a big boy way. Right. I have to ask permission. Greetings from a long time listener in West Virginia. I'm writing in regards to death from astral Projection, where the autopsy report determined that Robert's death was due to a cocaine overdose. Josh expressed skepticism about cocaine being in Ann Arbor and seventy five because of the high roller image. I can't speak to that directly, if you know what I mean, But I can tell you that cocaine was absolutely in Morgantown. Is that Morganton or Morgantowntown. It just sends like it'd be one of these places. It says, no, it's Morgan. Well, I said it was Morgantown, so that means, of course it's uh. And we sure have never been the epicenter of financial markets or a hang out of the rich and famous. But I was a college sophomore then, and it was in more than one room where it happened. A lot of the illegal drugs that make it to Morganton Town come from Detroit, and to this day, drug arrets here often involved people from there. If cocaine made it to the m town home of West Virginia University in nine, it's pretty much a certainty that also made it to ann Arbor. I love the podcast, of course, this is anecdotal's still I love the podcast. I'm happy to have a chance to write in and shed a little more light on an interesting mystery. Should you read this on the podcast, please don't use my name. If my ninety three year old mom got wind of this, she'd still ground me. So that is from Jeffrey Charles. That's anonymous. That's great, Thanks Anonymous, that was a fantastic email. I really feel like, yes, it is anecdotal, but they make just about as good a point as you possibly could, so I rescind it. I still don't understand why this this yogi would have suddenly gotten into cocaine. Agree with that when everybody in his life says no, including friends, not just his mom and his friends too. But but I mean, this guy makes a pretty good point. It's possible. It's possible. If you want to get in touch with us and let us know what's possible, we're always looking for that kind of thing. You can send it in an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.