One of the strangest things about getting older is that you suddenly start talking about some things that as a younger person you’d never talk about because they’re uncomfortable. I hear that women talk about a lot of stuff that men would never entertain broaching, but even this topic is beyond many of them.

Some quick history. I’ve had a problem with my left leg for almost 2 years. My thigh is numb almost all the time to some degree. Actually, not the entire thigh, but the left outside area, near my knee. Sometimes it’s fairly mild, not even an inconvenience; sometimes it’s much worse and spread over a larger area of my thigh.

In the last 6 to 9 months I’ve started having some other issues with my leg. Sometimes it hurts a lot, and sometimes it adds burning into the mix. Every once in awhile I have this nerve, called an IT Band, that pops out and goes down my leg and on the outside of my knee, and that’s when the most pain comes.

Mitchell doesn’t let pain stop him from doing anything, but I’m not a total male idiot either, so I finally decided to go to a doctor to take a look at it. He had me get a back x-ray (the first ever after having back and related trouble for more than 20 years), which I didn’t quite understand, but when the results came back it showed that I had some degeneration in my lower back on the left side, the result from back injuries in the 90’s, and he recommended I go to physical therapy.

I was about 3 weeks into physical therapy when the therapist asked me to go into one of the treatment rooms for a private conversation. Once in there, he asked me if the doctor had ever told me anything about the x-ray. I told him just that the doc said I had arthritis of the back, which is why I was there. He said that the x-ray also produced a second result saying that there was excessive stool in my colon. Supposedly, it’s not something radiologists will ever point out unless it’s serious, as it could have something to do with back pain.

I didn’t have any back pain before physical therapy, but now I was having some. However, I’d had that colonoscopy back in November, and the docs ended up saying my colon was slightly twisted, and that could be messing things up (yeah, I see the pun lol).

I came home to talk to my wife about it and I knew what was coming. If there’s anyone who’s always talked about colon health, it’s her. She’s done all sorts of things to keep herself regular and cleaned out, stuff I’d never consider doing. However, her suggestion to me was to go on a 14-day colon cleanse of some sort. She said it would get things going and that I might even lose some weight behind it (look another pun).

I decided to give it a shot, so I bought the product you see in the image above (click on it & it’ll take you to the page I bought the product from ) Organic Total Body 14 Day Cleanse, which is what my wife recommended I try. It’s an all natural thing that comes with 3 different bottles of pills, each one numbered.

Each day I started out taking 2 pills from the 1st bottle first thing in the morning. You have to take them either 30 minutes before you eat anything or 2 hours after eating; I took all of them before eating anything. Thirty minutes later you take 3 pills from bottle #2, then go about your day. At some point early evening you take 3 more pills from bottle #2 and 2 pills from bottle #3. Then you’re done for the night. The package also comes with 3 small packages of a natural laxative, in case you need a boost at some point.

I needed a boost on day one because I felt like I was already locked up. For years I’ve taken Metamucil to help me “go”, but I wasn’t going to take any of it while on this stuff. So I took the laxative the evening of day one.

On day two, things started happening, and I was mentally prepared for it but not physically prepared. I went to the bathroom 5 times that first day. Thing is, 3 of those times weren’t what I’d term “normal”. Okay, since I’m disclosing stuff, and you need to know it, the 3 non-normal times everything came out in liquid form. That’s kind of how it was when I had to clean my system out for the colonoscopy, but it just felt different this time around.

I’m not going to go into an every day thing, even though I kept a journal, just to see what would happen. Every day after the second day, except 3 days, I went 4 times. One day I went 6 times, one day 3 times, and the last day only once; that was weird. The day after the last pills I went 4 times, and I’m back on a regular schedule now.

How did I feel? Truthfully, at the end I didn’t feel any different, but based on how often I went I had to have been much cleaner than when I started. Every day when I went 4 times half of those times it came out as liquid; on the day I went 6 times it came out as liquid 4 of those times. I didn’t have any “cheap” bowel movements during this period either.

And I lost 2 1/2 pounds, which, along with previous weight loss, brought me to my lowest weight since 1997; wow! I’ve since put on a couple of pounds but that’s about it, and I think, since it just ended this week, that after the weekend I’ll get back on the stick and see if I can lose those couple of pounds and even more weight.

That’s my experience with a cleanse. My wife believes I should think about doing it every 3 months to protect myself. It seems that, if you do some reading, going regular is important to remove poisons from the body, and some of the stuff you learn if you don’t have good colon health is scary.

As for my leg… well, physical therapy has ended after 10 sessions, and I’ve learned some stretching exercises that help a lot. I have fewer episodes of pain when I’m not exercising and the pain I do have is less extreme. When I exercise, I know how to alleviate some of the pain every once in awhile and when I can’t, ibuprofen in my friend. I might end up having a nerve conduction study to see if more can be done about it, but one therapist said I might have to deal with the numbness the rest of my life; sigh… well, if it’s not painful, I can handle it.

Yes, this was one of those “I’m Just Sharing” posts that I’ve shared that you might not want to know about, but it’s important that you know, especially as you get older. Now I have to go find some cookies! 😉