[Cog]

Just recently had mine and wanted to walk you though the process. Many GP's will recommend one at age fifty or fifty-five. Since I don't like needles or going to the doctor in general, I put it off until age sixty. Don't be like me. I will describe the process below. Information removes fear.

Prep day:

The day before your procedure, you will need to cleanse your lower tract, the colon, so the gastro-enterologist can navigate his instrument through the lower colon to look for polyps and cancer. On this day, you drink nothing but clear liquids like broth, tea, or other clear liquids. You will also consume the prep liquid. I used something called Suprep. A very foul tasting liquid diluted with water. You will need to stay close to the bathroom as you will soon be going quite a lot. In my case, two separate doses, separated by 5 hours. This is the worse part of the whole procedure. Have some wet wipes handy as toilet paper tends to irritate your anus after a while.

Day of procedure:

Arrive and fill out the paperwork. You go back to a preparation room and they take some vitals. You get naked and put on a hospital gown. The last thing they do is hook you up to an IV. After some period of time they wheel you into the procedure room. There you will lay on your side. The anesthesiologist will administer the sedative into the IV line. Don't bother to count down from 100. Its literally lights out. One second you are waiting for the happy juice to kick in, the next second(from your perspective) you are in the recovery room.

I encourage you to do this, even for fraidy-cats like me who hate doctors and procedures.

*edit If you have any questions feel free to ask them. The actual procedure lasts about 20-25 minutes in which you are unconscious. I went back for prep at 0730 and was walking out of the facility at 0900. Grilled a steak later in the day and felt fine. No after-effects of the anesthesia.

[KaiserJeep]

I have had two such procedures since turning 50 years of age. The second procedure uncovered a bleeding stomach ulcer near my esophogus which had allowed me to digest a third of my blood supply. I was hospitalized for a week while they treated it.

Lest you forget, they use probes at both ends of the GI tract. the one down your throat requires that you be given a general anesthetic, and it's even more unpleasent than being probed in the lower end. Both procedures should be done at least every 10 years - and on 1 day's notice when you display symptoms of bleeding.

[Cog]

I wanted to add something to this. Its a minor point but might spare you some discomfort. I like eating hot things. Jalapenos, habaneros, scotch bonnets, etc. The day before your prep day don't eat those things. Instead do a bland diet. When you are flushing the previous day's food through your system, you don't want hot items as part of it. Trust me on this.

[jedrider]

Question Kaiser: Did you have any symptoms before the Colonoscopy that would have led you to suspect something was wrong?

I'm a bit skeptical of all this frequent testing. I had mine done once at age 50 and it's over ten years now. But, I have no inclination to get any testing done. So, how did the routine colonoscopy reveal that you had a problem on the other end?

[KaiserJeep]

My first colonoscopy was routine and showed nothing of concern. Seven years later the second test was not routine. My symptom of bleeding was no sense of hunger for three days, while I bled into my stomach and digested the blood, slowly got weaker, and wondered what was happening. Then my solid waste turned absolutely jet black, the first indication that this was not a bug but something serious. I called my GP who told me to get down to his office, then examined me, and then had me admitted to the hospital, and ordered the prep and colonoscopy test. I wish they had started with the mouth and not the colon, as the first part of the test was completely negative. The diagnosis was that the low dosage aspirin I had been taking for a number of years had eroded the stomach lining and caused the bleed. I have avoided aspirin in the years since then.

I believe that the every 10 year suggested colonoscopy interval is because most colon cancers are slow growing, and often start with smaller benign colon polyps that get removed routinely during the test, These polyps are biopsied and if cancerous or pre-cancerous, you can be further tested and treated while your disease is in the early stages. Thus the test both prevents disease and diagnoses cancer before you have noticeable symptoms. Admittedly, the test itself is unpleasent and uncomfortable.

[jedrider]

The diagnosis was that the low dosage aspirin I had been taking for a number of years had eroded the stomach lining and caused the bleed. I have avoided aspirin in the years since then.

So, you were following doctor's advice taking low does aspirin every day. Figures. That's why I stay away from doctors as much as I can.

[KaiserJeep]

Doctors use the scientific method, they calculate the statistics, they draw valid conclusions from the data they collect. Those who feel their way through life using their emotions and desires are simply self-deluded fools. You can acknowledge their expertise and the body of knowledge they have painfully accumulated from treating millions of people, or you can deny them and their desire to help you heal.

It very definately is your choice to make. In the end it is simply another form of evolution in action.

[SeaGypsy]

I'm vegan, chances of colon cancer about zero.

[Subjectivist]

Doctors use the scientific method, they calculate the statistics, they draw valid conclusions from the data they collect.

Sadly this is rarely actually the case. Doctors spend a long time memorizing patterns and using those patterns to treat conditions The also get a great deal f pressure from pharmaceutical sales people to perscribe the latest greatest drug on the market. The problem is 90% of the information used by the doctor perscribing the new medicines is straight from the company selling it. You see the FDA doesn’t actually test medicationscoming nto the market, they just review the studies provided to them by the manfacturers. Not that I think big Pharma wants to kill their clients, but expecting all of their test results to be clear and unbiased is crazy, even for a government agency.

Take Statin drugs as a major example. There is a very small positive nluence for male patients who have already suffered a heart attack. However there s no evidence of positive results for female patients of any age or health condition, nor are they useful medication for any patient over the age of 65 who needs the mechanism blocked by the Statin drugs to mantain their connective tissue functional. Even worse about 35% of patients taking statin drugs develop moderate to severe joint and muscle pain, also because statins interfere with the connective tissue and mscle repair functions. How many Doctors do you know who do not reccommend statin drugs to female patients, patients over 65, or patients with connective tissue problems? If your Doctor recommended you take them did they even mention these serious side effects that cause cnnectve tissue pain and/damage to a large minority of patients? Did the Doctor tell you that in real scientific testing of 100 heart patients taking statins 2 can avoid a future heart attack? If you actually read the studies on the efficacy of Statins and you know how to do math you can work out the statistics for yourself. But even my physician, who I happen to think is a stand up guy doing his best, just parrots the lines fed to him by the drug companies because he did not take the tine to review the actual clinical trials and do the math for himself. Just to be clear, I am not a heart patient and I do not have “high cholesterol” but because I am pre-diabetic the recommendations are I shoukd be taking a statin on to of the other seven pescriptions I take with no concern about side effects or drug interactions.

My doc is a good decent human being, but his education and training are to trust the FDA and AMA without even knowing they allow the drug manufacturers to do all of the clinical testing in the USA.

[Cog]

I'm vegan, chances of colon cancer about zero.

You might want to reevaluate your position based on the studies that have been done on that. Your risk does not go to zero based on diet.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/142427.php

UK researchers found that vegetarians had a lower overall cancer rate than meat eaters, but contrary to suggestions from other studies, they found a higher rate of colorectal cancer among the vegetarians than among the meat eaters.

The study was the work of researchers working on the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Oxford (EPIC-Oxford) and the findings were published in the online issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on 11 March.

In their background information, lead author Tim Key, a Cancer Research UK epidemiologist who is based at the University of Oxford, and colleagues wrote that few prospective studies (where groups of people are followed over a period of time) have looked at cancer rates among vegetarians, although the "5 a day" recommendation is geared to lowering risk of cancers and other diseases, so they decided to look at overall and individual cancer incidence rates among vegetarians and non-vegetarians.

For the study they examined EPIC data on 63,550 men and women aged 20 to 89 recruited throughout the UK during the 1990s. They got the cancer incidence figures from national cancer registries.

The results showed that:
•The standardized incidence ratio for all cancers for all participants was 72 per cent (that is lower than the overall population).

•Compared with meat eaters in the cohort, and after adjusting for age, sex and smoking status, the vegetarians in the cohort showed an 11 per cent lower incidence rate of all cancers.

•However, for colorectal cancer, vegetarians showed a 39 per cent higher incidence rate compared with meat eaters.

[Outcast_Searcher]

The diagnosis was that the low dosage aspirin I had been taking for a number of years had eroded the stomach lining and caused the bleed. I have avoided aspirin in the years since then.

So, you were following doctor's advice taking low does aspirin every day. Figures. That's why I stay away from doctors as much as I can.

Disclosure: I'm not in the medical profession.

IMO, one must look at the overall statistics, instead of cherry picking an individual "bad result". It's easy to Monday Morning quarterback. Not so much to try to make the entire population healthier and have NO adverse outcomes.

Aspirin thins blood. Thus, it helps prevent heart attacks and strokes. On the downside, there is the risk of bleeds. Depending on the age and health of the patients being treated, is the risk worth it? That's what I hope the medical community makes an intelligent decision on -- not knowing whether person X is one of the many less likely to have a heart attack or stroke (two major high risk killers of the elderly) or the few likely to have a significant bleeding incident (which often aren't lethal, and are already treated with caution, for example, when surgery is scheduled).

I'm the LAST person to blindly follow all medical advice without any self-education. However, OTOH, expecting medicine to be perfect, Monday morning quarterbacking specific outcomes after the fact without considering the larger context, is a completely unreasonable standard.

If we're going to do that, why have any medicine at all? We could all lose our teeth by age 30, and die young. Blood pressure would have likely gotten me by age 40. In an imperfect world, I'll take the risks, thank you very much. I'd just like the risks explained better. Thanks to lawyers, defensive medicine is less keen on doing that over time.

Example: When I was 35, it was no problem to have your colonoscopy videotaped (for me, it was about education). By the time I was 40, that was no longer allowed -- the lawyers were cited. By the time I was 45, they wouldn't even let me sit in the room and look at the image when my father had one.

Progress? Only for profits for the legal profession, IMO.

[KaiserJeep]

I am also not a medical professional. However I am a professional with a code of ethics and I do understand the scientific method.

I will say only that while no group of people are all perfect, the medical profession is by a considerable margin the most uniformly professional group I know. I also believe that even more than the patients, the doctors, nurses, and med techs have been victimized by those who sell medical insurance and administer medical claims.

[Cog]

The patient in many cases still determines the outcome. I had a conversation with my doctor about obesity. I asked her why instead of just telling a patient to lose weight to moderate high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes, that the doctors instead prescribed pills for each one of those disorders.

She replied that she did indeed recommend weight loss but the patients seemed never to get to that point to do so. So what are doctors left with? To prescribe pills that moderate all of the things that arise from simply being overweight. Losing weight is difficult while taking a pill is not. If you choose to live in a unhealthy way its not like a doctor can force you to do otherwise. I fully realize that for some, they have to take meds for those conditions described above, but for a lot of people its their lifestyle that dictates it.

[Tanada]

I am also not a medical professional. However I am a professional with a code of ethics and I do understand the scientific method.

I will say only that while no group of people are all perfect, the medical profession is by a considerable margin the most uniformly professional group I know. I also believe that even more than the patients, the doctors, nurses, and med techs have been victimized by those who sell medical insurance and administer medical claims.

The 'aspirin a day for heart health' thing is another of those funny stories like the one about Statins related above. I happen to know the Statin story well because my spouse was perscribed them and within a week started having constant muscle and joint pain. I researched it extensively and discovered those very issues were listed as side effects, convinced the spouse to stop taking the Statins and about three weeks after stopping the pain and aches stopped.

So think objectively about the aspirin a day regimen. Originally Aspirin came in two doses, baby size with candy flavor and adult size. Most parents had both kinds at home because they used the baby variety for the kids and the adult variety for themselves. I even have a nearly 50 year old Niece who as a child got a hold of the baby aspirin and ate the whole thing because she though it was candy and had to have her stomach pumped when her parents found her crying from the tummy ache they gave her. Anyhow when I was still relatively young a condition called Reye's Syndrome was discovered that only afflicted a tiny portion of children who were given Aspirin as a painkiller. Over a period of several years Bayer (the biggest producer of Aspirin) saw one medicine after another switch from using Aspirin in their formulas to using Acetaminophen and actual baby aspirin sales plummeted in North America. Then one day like magic someone did a study and proclaimed that taking one baby aspirin a day acted as a gentle blood thinner and was good for heart patients. Then just like magic and just like Statin marketing what was good for Heart Patients suddenly became what was good for everyone over a certain age. Baby aspirin sales skyrocketed back up to even higher levels than they had before Reye's Syndrome was discovered.

Now I ask you KJ, as a person who believes in the scientific method. What is the scientific reason for giving every person of a certain age group medications (specifically baby aspirin and Statin drugs) that were proven to be slightly effective in Heart Patients, but ONLY in Heart Patients? Newer studies have demonstrated that taking an Aspirin a day has a TEMPORARY blood thinning effect because your body likes its blood to be a certain consistency and it compensates. The same is true of the heavy duty blood thinners like warfarin, if you read the warning label it expressly tells you not to stop taking the medication suddenly. Almost any medication is a 'poison' of some sort, that is the whole point after all to stop something that is making you sick from continuing to do so. Warfarin was originally invented as bait poison for rats inhabiting the wares and warehouses where they were stored by the Longshoremen when the ships pulled up to the Wharf (the wooden dock). When the idea of using blood thinners for clots was thought of by a researcher it was discovered that the rat poison which worked by causing internal bleeding in the rats could be used in very low dose as a blood thinner for human beings and Warfarin was born as a medication. However the first patients who were taken off the drug at the end of the studies had a very high incidence of blood clots for days to two weeks after stopping the medication. Why? Because the body is homeostatic and whenever possible it adapts to a poison with compensatory mechanisms, in this case by making your blood marrow produce extra clotting factors to compensate for the blood thinner making clotting more difficult. As a result if you have been on a blood thinner for more than about 40 days your blood is right back where it was in terms of clotting capability. If you then stop taking the blood thinner suddenly your body needs a week or two to reduce the compensatory supply of clotting factors, so stopping a blood thinner suddenly can be deadly, you have to go off of them in stages depending on the dose so your body has time to lower its compensation over time back to normal.

From a marketing point of view the big pharma companies want to sell every drug they produce to every person in the population to maximize profits. This leads the marketing departments to push the idea that all drugs are great and every person even slightly eligible by any tangent to the effect they are treating should be on them 'just in case'. As a result you have two classes of drugs, Statins and Blood Thinners, now being marketed to every person over the age 50 despite the fact that the only patients with known positive outcomes for these medicines are Heart Patients.

[KaiserJeep]

Tanada, the medical profession keeps careful records and statistics and uses the double-blind test method. Aspirin for example is one of the most studied drugs on the planet. I was prescribed aspirin following a stroke and I have long had my blood pressure and cholesterol under control using Plavix, Lipitor, Atenolol, and Atorvastatin, and in the past couple of years my GP has added three different drugs to reduce insulin resistence. I also have a daily prescription strength NSAID for musculoskeletal pain. When that does not cut it, my GP trusts me with an opioid painkiller, and I have managed to keep my consumption of these potent pain killers to less than 50 tablets per year for several years.

I monitor blood pressure and glucose daily and my doctor monitors A1C and cholesterol monthly, and does a quarterly liver panel to check for side effects of these potent medications. After a number of years my cholesterol figures are one fifth of what they were unmedicated. The blood pressure is in the lower 20th percentile for my age group, and these changes came about because of the drugs.

I could take about six fewer drugs if I could increase my activity and lose weight by eating less. But I struggle with that, every damned packaged food has sugar in it, and I'm hooked on it. When I increase my treadmill time my joints scream and my painkiller consumption increases. I will eventually have to consume opioids daily but I have been postponing this step for years.

Now understand this. EVERYBODY would like to think that they can use lifestyle changes to improve their health. It would be so convenient, and it would save money and minimize medication side effects. But it is harder to do and less effective than taking pills.

Not to mention, that there is a major market in the First World for what I call "heal yourself" books, most of which involve diet, specific forms of exercise, and even Eastern philosophies. These books are completely unregulated, there are no organized studies of lifestyle changes, and everything you think you know about such things is anecdotal evidence. That is not the same as saying that lifestyle changes do not work, because obviously they do work. However, it is difficult to keep detailed records of calories, types of food, and types and amounts of physical activity. But the doctors are trying and there is a new generation of implantable devices and activity monitors that can be networked and monitored by your physician, so these things may change.

Meanwhile, the AMA and the other medical professional societies are studying and publishing, and even if parts of these studies are paid for by Big Pharma, that does not invalidate these carefully made and carefully published studies. My participation in this thread has caused the embedded Forum advertizing to temporarily switch to medicinal products, because every thing that we do or say or debate is being monitored by the digital version of Big Brother. The words that we are using in this thread will cause feedbacks that will alter the ads and the e-mails we get and morph the content of every search engine inquiry. Your opinions on these matters were once entirely yours, but today your thoughts are effectively being managed and modified by this digital ocean that we choose to immerse ourselves in. You really have little idea how pervasive and effective this is. We are not actually holding a dialog, there are in fact dozens of bots targeting and indirectly influencing our thoughts. Your knowledge of the world should from this day forward include an ever-increasing knowledge of how the personalized-for-you net is effectively influencing what you think.

[jedrider]

Meanwhile, the AMA and the other medical professional societies are studying and publishing, and even if parts of these studies are paid for by Big Pharma, that does not invalidate these carefully made and carefully published studies. My participation in this thread has caused the embedded Forum advertizing to temporarily switch to medicinal products, because every thing that we do or say or debate is being monitored by the digital version of Big Brother. The words that we are using in this thread will cause feedbacks that will alter the ads and the e-mails we get and morph the content of every search engine inquiry. Your opinions on these matters were once entirely yours, but today your thoughts are effectively being managed and modified by this digital ocean that we choose to immerse ourselves in. You really have little idea how pervasive and effective this is. We are not actually holding a dialog, there are in fact dozens of bots targeting and indirectly influencing our thoughts. Your knowledge of the world should from this day forward include an ever-increasing knowledge of how the personalized-for-you net is effectively influencing what you think.

Russian Brides. Just to get our ads back on track

I do see a problem with taking drugs that have significant side effects and I would not take them unless pressed against a wall with no other choice. That said, I do take several medications, that I'm grateful for. I just have a qualm about believing the medical advice fashion of the day. Also be aware, that doctors and AMA and insurance companies are locked into the medical advice lore of perhaps 10 or 20 years ago. That alone invalidates your idea that you should follow your doctor's advice unwittingly.

[Outcast_Searcher]

The patient in many cases still determines the outcome. I had a conversation with my doctor about obesity. I asked her why instead of just telling a patient to lose weight to moderate high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes, that the doctors instead prescribed pills for each one of those disorders.

She replied that she did indeed recommend weight loss but the patients seemed never to get to that point to do so. So what are doctors left with? To prescribe pills that moderate all of the things that arise from simply being overweight. Losing weight is difficult while taking a pill is not. If you choose to live in a unhealthy way its not like a doctor can force you to do otherwise. I fully realize that for some, they have to take meds for those conditions described above, but for a lot of people its their lifestyle that dictates it.

This is an excellent point, and the doctors then often (at least anecdotally, by the public) get the blame when the obese and morbidly obese populations, completely predictably, have statistically bad health outcomes when they age.

I've had a brief discussion about this with a couple doctors when they recommended we not do anything about condition X, and then the doctor acted a bit surprised when I voiced no objection.

One conversation was about how a huge proportion of people "want a pill, even for a cold", even when the doctor explains how in that case, a pill will do nothing, and the side effects are net detrimental. The patients wanting to "get something" more than medical advice for the cost/time of their visit, and the doctors needing to earn a living and not wanting to anger many of their patients were both mentioned.

The other conversation was about how many patients didn't like the "watchful waiting" method of dealing with MANY things that happen to people as they age, even though cost and medical procedure risk issues often make that the most prudent and effective strategy.

As tired as I used to get from having to explain to idiotic management with the math sense of a third grader why their intuitive perception of some database operation was "fast" was dead wrong in the real world (couching it in language that wouldn't get me fired) -- I can only imagine how doctors, having passed medical school and all the hurdles to become a doctor AND practiced medicine AND received updates to their education, must get having to waste lots of time trying to do things like try to talk people out of prescriptions for antibiotics that they don't need AND contribute to antibiotic resistant disease strains.

IMO, for those doctors who hang in there and do the job largely because they like helping people, they get a lot more points for "sainthood" than people who grow prosperous from the popularity of various mainstream religions, and doing what is popular with the parishioners.

[KaiserJeep]

IMHO the medical practioners define professional. The other profession that impresses me is airliner pilots. A few years back an acquaintance was on an Alaskan Airlines MD-83 airliner that plunged into the sea offshore from California. The black box audio tapes were made public. Essentially the pilots lost control of the jet's vertical attitude because of a stripped thread on the rod that positioned the tail planes. As the plane descended from a high altitude they methodically tried everything they knew, then tried experimenting with power settings and even inverted the entire plane, all in an attempt to position the plane in a survivable attitude for a water landing. They failed, but never paniced.

That is what "professional" means. Do your job all the way down until the aircraft impacts the water.

[SeaGypsy]

I'm vegan, chances of colon cancer about zero.

You might want to reevaluate your position based on the studies that have been done on that. Your risk does not go to zero based on diet.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/142427.php

UK researchers found that vegetarians had a lower overall cancer rate than meat eaters, but contrary to suggestions from other studies, they found a higher rate of colorectal cancer among the vegetarians than among the meat eaters.

The study was the work of researchers working on the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Oxford (EPIC-Oxford) and the findings were published in the online issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on 11 March.

In their background information, lead author Tim Key, a Cancer Research UK epidemiologist who is based at the University of Oxford, and colleagues wrote that few prospective studies (where groups of people are followed over a period of time) have looked at cancer rates among vegetarians, although the "5 a day" recommendation is geared to lowering risk of cancers and other diseases, so they decided to look at overall and individual cancer incidence rates among vegetarians and non-vegetarians.

For the study they examined EPIC data on 63,550 men and women aged 20 to 89 recruited throughout the UK during the 1990s. They got the cancer incidence figures from national cancer registries.

The results showed that:
•The standardized incidence ratio for all cancers for all participants was 72 per cent (that is lower than the overall population).

•Compared with meat eaters in the cohort, and after adjusting for age, sex and smoking status, the vegetarians in the cohort showed an 11 per cent lower incidence rate of all cancers.

•However, for colorectal cancer, vegetarians showed a 39 per cent higher incidence rate compared with meat eaters.

Vegans don't eat any animal products. A lot of vegetarians eat a lot of dairy. The study isn't relevant.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Vegans don't eat any animal products. A lot of vegetarians eat a lot of dairy. The study isn't relevant.

A bit of Googling makes me think this is like studies on gun control. You can find plenty of articles and statements that seem to be on both sides of the issue, re colon cancer.

If red meat contributes a lot to colon cancer, then why do vegetarians (who don't eat red meat, whether vegan or no) get more colon cancer?

How about the studies that show a REDUCED colorectal cancer risk from dairy, including from components of cows' Milk?"

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dairy-and-cancer

Do we throw out all studies that don't say the Vegan diet is "super awesome"?

I don't claim to know. It just looks like it's not a simple "oh, just blame dairy" as a slam-dunk.