Why can’t you bite things with your teeth when detoxifying and cleansing the intestines?

This statement is actually not a hard-and-fast rule in medicine, but more of an empirical requirement in a specific bowel cleansing scenario - the core reason is that the chewing action activates the body's full-link digestive reflex and interferes with the expected effect of bowel cleansing.

Two years ago, I accompanied my family for a colonoscopy. The doctor's instructions for pre-operative bowel cleansing specifically mentioned "Don't chew any food with residue, even sugarless chewing gum. Try not to touch it." I thought it was strange at the time, but later the nurse explained it to me. As soon as the teeth are chewed, the salivary glands immediately start to secrete amylase. The signal is transmitted along the nerves to the stomach. Gastric acid and pepsin immediately start to be synthesized, and the intestinal tract will also accelerate peristalsis. In order to prepare for receiving food, the purpose of intestinal cleansing is to empty the entire digestive tract and enter a resting state. However, upon reflection, not only the secretion of digestive juices will increase the residual liquid in the intestines, but the excited intestinal peristalsis may also cause the residues that should be cleared to get stuck in the folds. That time, my relative couldn't help but chewed two plums. At the end of the intestinal cleansing, there were still brown residues, so he drank two more bags of electrolyte water to get through.

But not all bowel cleansing scenes prohibit biting. I have asked my friends in the nutrition department before. If the "detoxification and bowel cleansing" you are talking about is just because you are too tired of eating during the holidays and want to rely on a high-fiber diet to reduce the burden on the gastrointestinal tract, then you should chew well and chew high-fiber foods such as celery, corn, and pumpkin before swallowing.

Many gastroenterologists even believe that for healthy people, there is no need to deliberately engage in "detoxification and bowel cleansing". The intestines have their own stable microecology and metabolic rhythms. Deliberately not chewing anything for several days and only drinking liquids will disrupt the balance of intestinal flora, which may cause dizziness and fatigue due to hunger, or may lead to constipation and digestive disorders. It is completely worth the loss.

So to put it bluntly, there is no standard answer to this request. It depends on what you are doing to cleanse your intestines. If it is for examination or pre-operative preparation for a specific medical project, then you are definitely right to follow the doctor's instructions and not bite anything.； If you just follow the trend of keeping healthy, then there is really no need to wrong yourself. Eat well and chew slowly, which is more reliable than "detoxification and bowel cleansing".