Good responses. the little chemical enemas, are not like large warm enemas or colonics. They work by injecting phosphates which dissolve the fecal material and give you diarrhea. They also dehydrate and can cause some deficiencies of essiential minerals and vitamins etc. I never use them. Large warm enemas or colonics hydrate you flushing your kidneys, entire system and colon.
Enemas and colonics, yes they are different. A good enema, one that fills your colon, and an injection filling the colon from a good colonic can accomplish the same thing. The two differences are that one good colonic taking about 45 minutes is like having 12 good enemas, which would be very tiring and take many hours, so colonics are better, and you have to pay for them. Good enemas are virually free, a little baking soda, warm clean, non chlorinated water and they are very safe done properly---you are right about the contamination, but if you use your own bag or enema syringe the bacteria you are exposed to is your own.
Colonics are usually professionally done. And can do some things an enema can't, like rapid changes of temperature in the colon, ie cold fills mixed with warm fills. This exercises the bowel, makes it stronger by contracting it when you expell the cold (80 degree fills in patients who can handle this procedure. It shouldn't be done in some health conditions, and when a person has an infection.) If you use a service that is trained in sterile procedures or member of IACT, the international association of colon therapists and your therapist has taken thier courses, they will likely do a good job. But given the human mind, any time two people are plugged into the same machine, mistakes are possible.
Now the mucoid plaque etc., on colonoscopy, barium enema etc. it is not seen, so doctors say it is not there. Many colon therapists say it is. Both are right. Mucus, like in the nose, happens and is a sign of irritation, and as in the nose, and it can form plaques. But, with enemas retained for a while, they will dissolve and wash out. So on medical examinations it isn't seen, or considered significant. But colon therapists watching the results wash out the view tube see things. Medicine long before all the x-rays and examination tools used colon results for diagnosis as colon therapists tend to, even though in America it is illegal for anyone except an MD, DC, DO, or ND to diagnose, and even some of those can't diagnose, even though they go through as many years of graduate school learning how to diagnose as do MDs, depending on the state. I haven't found a good book on fecal material diagnosis, but it would be useful. We diagnose our cars based on the exhaust. It tells how efficiently the machine is running and using its fuel. The human body is the same.
I have seen the plaques wash out of a patient like a snow storm in the colonic tube. It is something. What is where the problem comes. When we are doing a colonic just before when the white snow storm of little flakes start, the patient feels awful, then when it stops they feel great, so we all tend to think we have washed something bad out of their colons.
And with fasting your body discharges waste. Colon therapist tend to claim it is old stored material in the colon. From having read approaching a thousand barium enema studies, I don't see it there. What I think is happening, is that when you do enemas or colonics, the body decides you are dumping garbage and dumps it. There are things you can't get rid of any other way except via colon, so it is a dump site. My best guess is that much toxic waste is stored in the fat, if the body can't get rid or it, and that as you fast, the fat is used, or you are just in a dumping mode, that this material appears in the colon via being transported there. I describe all this in my first book on enemas.
In any case fasting without enemas, I consider only partially functional. The point of a fast for health is to clean the body. Cleaning the body without flushing the garbage, and fasting without something moving bulk or water through your anus blocks this avenue of cleansing, and as I said, some things only flush via the colon, is like taking a bath to clean the skin without water, a lot of smearing around, but the dirt is still there.
Jerry