Hi Nicole,
Just wondering if you have heard or had any positive experience with carnivora (venus fly trap extract) for UC in capsule form. Like many of us i love to research many healing methods and do follow the LTYG book. I find that not everything works for my body and still like to lok outside the natural healing square. Another article i have read of late is from a fella named Sheldon who had great success with vitamen E retention enemas. I have tried vitamen E, slippery elm and probiotic retention enemas for a week with little success so far but wonder if there is any harm in prolonged use? It seems we could almost be jailed for using comfrey internaly here in Australia and cannot get hold of it. Every natural therapist i speak to said that comfrey is the most rediculous idea they have ever heard and strongly advise against it.
I feel there can be a lot of benefit through a retention enema as it get directly to my lower bowel inflamation, it's just knowing what to use?
Any suggestions please?
Paul

Hi, Paul.

Yes, there certainly had been a strong outcry against comfrey in the media some years back and as a result, I can understand why even some natural practitioners would be cautious about recommending it.

My own take is that it's an herb that has had a long history of safe use over hundreds of years. So while I wouldn't ingest massive quantities of it, I certainly wouldn't hesitate to use it short-term in retention enemas. Especially as it is very effective in calming inflammation and healing bleeding. (In fact, allantoin, which you will find in many skin creams, is a derivative of the comfrey plant.)

Still, you may feel differently and that doesn't solve how you'd be able to get ahold of it even if you were in complete agreement with me. (Growing it is one option; it's one of the easiest plants in the world to grow, although wise to sequester it as it is a spreader.)

I have not heard of using carnivora, so I can't comment from an experiential standpoint.

However, here's some advice that Jini gave to someone else who wanted to try a therapy that she'd never tested:

So, one of the problems here, is that most of these trials were done on people with 'normal microflora'. So the way to proceed to see if this therapy is going to be of any use for people with IBD, is for Chris to test it on his own body first. Here's the method I use: You need to go on and off a substance a minimum of three times (for a 2-3 week duration) - leaving at least 3 weeks between trials - before you can reliably say that "this substance produced this result in my body". This helps to eliminate other factors that also produce effects in the body like stress, emotional problems, particular foods, drinks, environmental factors, etc.

Then, once Chris has trial tested this treatment, he can then post it here, with full instructions and get others to trial test it. Once you have about 20-30 people weighing in with their results, you'll be able to make some conclusions about whether this is a good therapy for people with IBS and IBD to try.

This is the procedure I followed in developing my newest Wild Oregano Oil Protocol (except the forums weren't set up then so I had my consultation clients test it).

To answer your other question, I definitely see no harm in prolonged use of probiotics in retention enemas. Slippery elm would likewise be safe and well-tolerated for most people over the long term. I have heard of people having allergic reactions to Vitamin E when applied to the skin (although I wonder if this may be due to using synthetic vs. natural preparations or some other factor in the manufacturing process). If this is a concern to you, you can try painting some on your inner arm as a patch test to see if there is any reaction.

I would recommend using the probiotics in isolation, however, just as you would take them orally in isolation. Perhaps do the probiotic retention enema last thing before bedtime, then do a retention enema containing vitamin E and slippery elm in the morning. Or do them on alternate days. Whatever seems right to you.

Other herbs with a soothing action are plantain leaves and calendula petals; you might add them to the slippery elm/vitamin E mixture. One other substance that I've found powerfully healing and soothing to the skin is the mucilage from flax seeds....but I'm not sure how well that would work in an enema.

One last word: In choosing therapies, don't forget to look beyond the purely physical. Stress and emotions can (and have been shown to) have just as powerful an impact on the progress of any disease as what you eat, what supplements you take, etc. So to the best of your ability, try to cover all of the bases.....

All the best,
Nicole