Doctors Who Strongly Disapprove Enemas

Has this type of situation happened with anyone else??? aka Why do Doctors hate Enemas?

Today I felt bloated and uncomfortable when I went to my Family Doctor (who has the personality of an ASS - but he is a friend of a Doctor friend of mine.) They went to Medical School in Dallas together.

He asked me about my bowels. Long story short. I was honest and told him. He then raised his voice to me and was furious when I told him I was going to start taking bag enemas again. They make me feel so much better, lighter and less bloated. I’m tired of taking Dulcolax/Miralax (or any laxative) to have a puny unexpected bowel movement. Those laxatives do not make me feel better!! I still feel stomach discomfort after the “so-called” BM.

I’m serious - his face turned red and he raised his voice LOUD, expressing that “taking enemas was WRONG and DANGEROUS to your body”. He really got downright angry and most embarrassing was when he opened the exam room door and all the front office staff could hear. He said “If you want to ruin your G.I. tract, be my guest but I don’t want to hear about it. ENEMAS ARE A FAD! Just like colonics.”

If I were to tell you that I was humiliated would be an understatement. I left composed but in silent tears. It has been a long, long time since I felt degraded to the point that I was today. He came across as abusive in every sense of the word and it sure seemed like he wanted to embarrass me in hearing distance of the Front Office Staff and waiting patients. I think he prided himself on trying to embarrass me.

I won’t ever see him again. He’s been my GP for 8 years.

P.S. I AM going to start back taking enemas every 2-3 days. Or as often as I WANT or NEED one. I will NEVER STOP. Until I can’t get around any more. I am a Klysmo, just as my Mother was.

I’m so sorry this happened to you, MEG! I would also be looking for a new doctor.

You should write a letter to your ex-doctor, spelling out how he humiliated you in front of others and reminding him about doctor-patient confidentiality!

Writing to him would fall on deaf ears, @Iris1858.

I do think he may have broken the oath of Doctor-Patient confidentially when he opened the exam room door and got incredibly loud. Anyone seated in the front waiting area and front office personnel (even passers-by) could hear every word he said to me.

Sorry that happened to you @Moms_Egirl, I hope you are feeling better after a few enemas.

My Dr. in Berwyn, IL knew about my enemas...I told my Dr. in Wisconsin, when she asked in a 'concerned manor', that I don't do enemas 'anymore'...Of course I 'forgot' the second half of that...I don't do them any less either:-)! I told the 'acceptable truth'...

That 'Dr.' sounds like an A$$...

My Dr. in Wisconsin is a DO (I have had 'better luck' dealing with the PA...) and still has no idea on many things...Do your independent research and go into your new Dr. with a take no B.S. attitude and when you find one will to work with you, do some research, and meet you on common ground you have a 'good' Dr., DO, or PA...

I am 'stuck' with the Dr. that I have or at least the 'Practice' - Due to being on Medicare and the lack of practices in my somewhat small rural area...When I move in a few years perhaps there will be more choice...

@Moms_Egirl, you're in your seventies and you've been taking enemas all your life. Evidently, 1) you've made it this far unscathed and 2) enemas make you happy. For these two reasons alone, screw that doctor. You know yourself, your body, your needs, and your desires more than anyone else, and he's known you for only eight years. So yeah, screw him, and continue doing what YOU know makes you feel good.

Hmmmm…. Certainly sounds like a teaching moment. It seems to me that if you have a patient that has an ongoing chronic condition and is dealing with it effectively in the same fashion for literally decades, with no ill effects, why even go there? With many of us, particularly those of us who are elderly, the large volume soap suds enema is incredibly ego-syntonic to us and has cultural significance in addition to being the world’s best cure for constipation. The whole anti-enema culture is nothing more than a group that is short on scientific evidence and long on self righteousness. My experience is that most docs are okay with enemas if it is a patient preference and the patient makes them aware. This doc is not really worth messing with but it might be good for him to experience a peer review concerning his acting out behaviors. People have strong feelings about enemas and his blatant over reaction may indicate he is harboring his own latent issues concerning enemas. I suppose my summary sentence here is, you just never know for sure where the hell people are coming from. 😁

@Moms_Egirl I was devastated to read about your experience. I can not believe that a medical professional would behave like that. Today is my day to see the Consultant Proctologist I just hope he is as understanding as Doctor Caroline. I am still in two minds quite how much I tell him about my regime. I just hope that Caroline's referral notes will say enough.

Caroline was so understanding and didn't criticise my bowel management regime. She even wrote me a repeat prescription for Microlax mini enemas!

So last night I started the pre-appointment cleansing process. I took two Ducolax tablets and after five hours my insides told me they needed the toilet. Today I will take a series of enemas before leaving for the hospital midafternoon. I am so hoping he, it definitely won't be comfortable talking to a male about my bowel, will tell me I need to have defecography and anal-rectal manometry tests. Maybe even a colonoscopy.

After sixty years of irrigation, enemas and colonics, I am not going to stop. Everyone says how well I look!!!

@Moms_Egirl what a lousy experience; I’m so sorry you had to go through that.

I haven’t had a similar experience because I’ve never trusted any of my physicians with that info, which means we also don’t discuss my IBS.

Ideally I’d like help identifying more of my trigger foods and beverages because I don’t have things managed 100% with enemas, but I strongly suspect I’d leave with a lecture not to take enemas and prescriptions I don’t want.

In the meantime I have learned on my own to avoid diet drinks sweetened with sugar alcohols (for me, two in one day is the path to abdominal pain so intense that I would have thought it could only be triggered by some cause requiring surgery!) and I suspect that wasabi, radishes, and mustard might worsen if not create flares.

I’ve had a clean CT during a long-ago flare we all thought was appendicitis, and I’ve recently had an unremarkable colonoscopy, so I have high confidence whatever happens to me is purely functional.

Meanwhile I’m still working with my physician to try to solve more pressing issues with silent reflux that can ruin my sleep and irritate my respiratory tract, and we haven’t fixed that at all. So far the lifestyle changes recommended by people on Reddit have been more helpful than the drugs we’ve tried.

We also discovered I’m hypertensive and are in the process of controlling that with medications and lifestyle changes on my part. The encounter system of medicine seems to force clinicians to work on one problem at once, and something I can mostly manage with enemas hasn’t risen to my “one problem” level.

So, while I don’t avoid medical care or drugs that work when I need them, I would only tell a physician I took enemas if I’d somehow injured myself taking one and it became need-to-know info.

No one could convince me enemas are just a fad at this point—for me they’re an essential path out of pain and discomfort, with a side benefit that they can also be fun when administered by a partner.

@Moms_Egirl I hope you've found a doctor who's at least neutral on this subject. There are a few who practice like you, but they're very rare. Kisses.

@Moms_Egirl , your doctor is an arrogant arsehole, an opinionated prick. He thinks he knows it all. Unfortunately a sizeable percentage of health professionals carry this attitude. They know it all, and how dare you question their authority and infinite medical wisdom!

As I get older, I realize more and more how little we really know about anything, no matter how qualified and experienced we are. As for myself, I've been taking daily enemas for decades, and I'm probably the healthiest person I know. Enemas finally gave me a means to completely mitigate my IBS - something which mainstream medicine to this day cannot really do effectively for IBS sufferers. I was shocked to learn that many doctors refuse to even acknowledge the existence of IBS, in this day and age.

So, you take you enemas, girl - and to hell with your arseholish doctor (apologies, @Iris1858, if my spelling sucks on this one! 😄)

General surgeons use them routinely, technically for bowel surgery. But primary care guys are not interested.

I do intestinal /colon and gut brain research you should see the wall that the medical/universty research world hides behind they do not want any info from an outsider its very frustrating

I have been fortunate to not be scolded so severely for using enemas, but I believe such negative reaction is real. Prior to my last colonoscopy, during the office review ahead of the actual procedure, my gastroenterologist asked about my bowel habits. She asked if I had problems with constipation, and if I took something for it. I told her that I occasionally had an issue, but a small warm water enema takes care of it. I did not tell her how often I did an enema or that my favorite was a coffee retention enema. She said that she would prefer that I take MiraLAX or similar instead of an enema. I did not tell her that I hate oral laxatives. Nothing more was said and the colonoscopy turned out okay. But I often wonder if she could tell by the colonoscopy that I do frequent enemas?

@Moms_Egirl @Cheryl77177 @Iris1858 Today was the day for my appointment with the Proctologist at our local teaching hospital. I had a lengthy interview with a very nice junior doctor. She asked me lots of questions about me, my bowels and how I manage them We talked about enemas and colonics and again, like my wonderful doctor, she was really positive. We even had a discussion about the brain gut connection and how irrigation could improve mental health.

She then went and conferred with the Consultant. He came and basically said "what you are doing is fine, do the poo screening (for bowel cancer - which I do) and be aware of any changes, but carry on with irrigation". He said there was no point doing a proctogram as it wouldn't tell anything new. He also said "people start with laxatives, go on to suppositories, take enemas and end up on colonics, but you are there"!

So sadly I will not have the pleasure of having a ride on that special toilet or have a balloon expulsion test but it is good to know the senior medics see no harm in what I do! And no DRE either!

Stray thought, something I did myself many years ago when I felt similarly humiliated (over something unrelated to enemas), a doctor shrieking at me and surely overheard by others in that part of the building...

1) Is this doctor who treated you so badly a solo practitioner, or is he a part of a medical practice? Few doctors are solo these days. Telling him how badly he behaved might well fall on deaf ears, but his business partners may not feel the same. Write that letter and send it to all of them.

2) There are also multiple places online where patients can rate their doctors. Sticking entirely to the facts, you can rate this doctor and write exactly why you are giving the rating you do. There's no need to mention enemas specifically, especially if they require a name.

3) The Federation of State Medical Boards (https://www.fsmb.org/contact-a-state-medical-board/#:~:text=FSMB,Contact%20a%20State%20Medical%20Board) offers contact information for you to file a complaint with your state's medical board, which oversees the licensing of physicians. It's not just incompetence or medical malpractice they care about but also unprofessional behavior, and your former doctor's actions qualify.

4) Your health insurance company might want to know about this as well, especially if you have trouble finding another in-network physician who is taking new patients.

When I wrote to the other doctors in my verbally abusive doctor's practice, I don't know what they did. But I do know he moved to another state a few months later. I like to think they kicked him out, probably not over a single incident but with my report being the last straw of a series of similar complaints.

Growing up in the 50's / 60's, I never saw a person dying from an enema. Now it's all medical representatives to encourage doctors to recommend a drug.

I suspect that most doctors who are still practicing, are from a different generation than those who believed in the efficacy of enemas to manage the various maladies related to the digestive tract. Medical schools are teaching that enemas are an ancient, dangerous, and disproven methodology. Those who believe that the pharmaceutical concerns have denigrated enema use as an "old wives tale", are pretty common.

I peruse the "Wayback Machine" and "Google Books" where collections of old medical and nursing texts, cover those older procedures that were utilized in the medical world. I've also opined in various forums that mom and/or grandma didn't kill me, or anyone in our family, with the administration of enemas. Our family physicians used to regularly prescribe an enema to address the nagging maladies.

I still advocate safe and sane solutions and volumes. My enema bags and bulbs are not weapons of mass disdain!

Doctors are taught to prescribe drugs that they get payed for. Thats all they know very few in my book never take the time to ask why or what is causing the issues you are have. Just Pill Merchants, it's shocking😳

@Cheryl77177, yes doctors can tell during a colonoscopy . Frequently enemas can result in Melanosis coli a harmless condition that causes your colon to appear darkened on imaging tests. This can happen when you take laxatives with a compound called anthraquinones in them. Examples include aloe, rhubarb and senna. It’s reversible once you stop taking the laxatives.

Melanosis coli is a benign (noncancerous) condition that causes the inner lining of your colon to be a darker color than usual. It typically makes parts of your colon appear dark brown or black. The condition itself doesn’t cause any symptoms. Instead, a healthcare provider may notice the discoloration during an imaging procedure.

Learning your colon is an unusual color may feel alarming, but it’s not a sign you’re sick or have developed a serious condition. The dark color is from a pigment found in your colon wall called lipofuscin. It can build up if you’re taking certain types of stimulant laxatives for too long. Stimulant laxatives cause the nerves in your gut to contract, so you can have a bowel movement (poop).

Still, your provider will advise you to stop taking the laxatives causing melanosis coli once they diagnose the condition. Once you stop, your colon will return to its normal color.

I am NOTa docter so my perspective is purely personal . I love everything about enemas especially when in a bdsm atmosphere. The only precaution I take is to avoid becoming dependant on them by ensuring that they are not regular . If I did need them I would certainly prefer them to taking oral cure which, just like the enema ,could be habit forming.

Blessedly, “Dr. Grams” (as in grandma) was my family’s primary care doctor for many years until she retired at the young age of 81!

When one of us (husband, two daughters or me) was ill and needed her wisdom or treatment (or her nurse’s who gave the shots) she always had a list of questions, suggestions and prescriptions, which I kept handwritten notes taken over the phone or in her office. I kept the stack in a little box. It’s nearly a family history of our ailments, and my notes what to do. You’ll find “give an enema” among my notes over the years, even when “Dr. Grams” said to “add a little Castile soap.”

Would that happen with MDs today? I seriously doubt it.

Well, crumb. Last night I had an atypical but very horrible IBS attack that I put together after the fact is the worst but the third of its kind since summer. Unlike my usual IBS attacks it was in the small bowel, or so I deduced when an enema did absolutely nothing for it. The first two happened during times of poor air quality; I took them for atypical asthma that happened to make me throw up a little.

There was nothing “a little” about this one. While not painful per se, it came with a sensation of stuck bloating that made it hard to breathe and meant I could not be comfortable in any position, with hours of vomiting that began to imbalance my electrolytes, yet I couldn’t keep even a sip of water down.

The trigger recipe for this type of attack seems to be something from the cruciferous vegetable family plus a low-quality ice cream product sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. I will gladly give up cheap ice cream sandwiches and fast food milkshakes, but you can pry roasted Brussels sprouts and thinly sliced crispy red cabbage from my cold, dead hands. But like all things IBS, I’m sure I’ll stumble upon more triggers over time.

If I had a GP who wouldn’t lecture me, I’d be making an appointment to add an anti-emetic suppository to my IBS tool kit. There’s no reason any one human needs to vomit for four hours. Two hours was enough to relieve some of the pressure, and the next two were cruel and gratuitous. But it seems those suppositories are prescription-only, and I am not sure how to broach the subject without getting into why I never mentioned 3+ decades of IBS, denied having bowel problems of any stripe, and didn’t say a word about the enemas that leave my large-bowel attacks fairly well managed such that I never mentioned them.

After watching this GP react to an off-label use of a medication my last GP comfortably supported me in using at a less-frequent-than-label schedule, or that I ordered a reflux medicine from the UK not sold here in the States, I can tell he is very by the book…even if something works.

Maybe I need to act like someone who only has small intestinal IBS to get my anti-nausea prize, but I’m sure that would get me asked many questions I’d need to lie left and right about.

Is the old saw about never lying to your lawyer or your doctor really true if you’re a person who takes enemas?

@Sweetest_Relief, I’m truly sorry to hear your problems. I was unacquainted with you until very recently. As I posted on my blog page, in 2023 I had two bowel surgeries, the first to re wo;rk a ruptured intestine and place a temporary colostomy, the second to reverse the colostomy. In the process, I lost quite a bit of my colon, my sigmoid, my appendix & my ileocecal valve. The surgeon who did the reattachment told me that I could expect to have 5-20 bowel movements a day. He was right. I have changed from relatively normal bowel activity to what my surgeon described as my “new normal.” The condition has resolved itself into what is called LARS, or Low Anterior Resection Syndrome, which means I have a sort of an IBS, because of the many bowel movements a day but not really Since I don’t usually have much pain. Now about enemas. They are actually prescribed by some for those with my condition, because a good cleansing can give about a day’s relief. All this to say that I understand your dilemma. Docs hate the only thing that helps, and even if you try to explain, they don’t listen. I would have sent this by DM, but you don’t accept DM’s from non friends. I sympathize, and perhaps the docs will see the light at some point. Anyway, please take care, and all the best.