Mucoid plaque
| Claims | Claimed to be a harmful material coating the gastrointestinal tract. |
|---|---|
| Related scientific disciplines | Medicine |
| Year proposed | Early 20th century |
| Original proponents | Richard Anderson |
| Pseudoscientific concepts | |
Mucoid plaque (or mucoid cap or rope) is a pseudoscientific term used by some alternative medicine advocates to describe what is claimed to be a combination of allegedly harmful mucus-like material and food residue that they say coats the gastrointestinal tract of most people. The term was coined by Richard Anderson, a naturopath and entrepreneur, who sells a range of products that claim to "cleanse" the body of such purported plaques.
Many such "colon cleansing" products are promoted to the public on websites that have been described as making misleading medical claims. The presence of laxatives, bentonite clay, and fibrous thickening agents in some of these "cleansing agents" has led to suggestions that the products themselves produce the excreted product regarded as the plaque. The concept of a 'mucoid plaque' has been dismissed as having no anatomical or physiological basis.
Various forms of colon cleansing were popular in the 19th and early 20th century. In 1932, Bastedo wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association about his observation of mucus masses being removed by a colon irrigation procedure: "When one sees the dirty gray, brown or blackish sheets, strings and rolled up wormlike masses of tough mucus with a rotten or dead-fish odor that are obtained by colon irrigations, one does not wonder that these patients feel ill and that they obtain relief and show improvement as the result of the irrigation."
While colonic irrigation enjoyed a vogue in the early 20th century as a possible cure for numerous diseases, subsequent research showed that it was useless and potentially harmful. With the scientific rationale for "colon cleansing" disproven, the idea fell into disrepute as a form of quackery, with a 2005 medical review stating that "there is no evidence to support this ill-conceived theory that has been long abandoned by the scientific community." Similarly, in response to claims that colon cleansing removes "toxins" Bennett Roth, a gastroenterologist at the University of California stated "There is absolutely no science to this whatsoever. There is no such thing as getting rid of quote-unquote 'toxins.' The colon was made to carry stool. This is total baloney." The preoccupation with such bowel management products has been described as a "quaint and amusing chapter in the history of weird medical beliefs." Nevertheless, interest in colonic "autointoxication" as a cause of illness, and in colonic irrigation as a cure, enjoyed a revival in alternative medicine at the end of the 20th century.
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