Colonoscopy is a vital diagnostic tool in colorectal cancer prevention. Early detection of cancerous changes can save lives, and being aware of key symptoms is crucial for timely medical intervention. As more individuals seek natural methods to improve gut health and reduce disease risk, this article explores not only the red flags for colorectal cancer but also effective alternative therapies that can support digestive well-being.

What is Colonoscopy and Why is It Important?

A colonoscopy is a procedure used to examine the inner lining of the colon and rectum for signs of abnormalities, such as tumors, polyps, or inflammation. It is one of the most effective ways to detect colorectal cancer early, allowing for prompt treatment and increased survival rates. Colonoscopy is generally recommended for individuals over the age of 50 or those with a family history of colorectal cancer.

Red Flags for Colorectal Cancer: When Should You Consider Getting a Colonoscopy?

Certain symptoms can signal potential issues with your gastrointestinal health, and experts suggest that they may warrant further investigation through a colonoscopy. These include:

• Change in Bowel Habits: Sudden, unexplained diarrhea, constipation, or alternating between the two without any clear cause.
• Blood in Stool: Even small amounts of blood in your stool, whether visible or hidden, should be evaluated by a healthcare provider.
• Persistent Abdominal Pain or Bloating: Chronic discomfort, cramps, or excessive bloating may indicate an underlying digestive issue.
• Unexplained Weight Loss: Sudden and unexplained weight loss may be a sign of colorectal cancer or other gastrointestinal diseases.
• Fatigue and Anemia: Ongoing fatigue and low iron levels in the blood may indicate internal bleeding, often linked to undetected colorectal cancer.

If you experience any of these symptoms, it is essential to seek medical attention promptly. Colonoscopy can detect potential issues in their earliest stages, making early intervention more effective. Delaying diagnosis can lead to more advanced stages of cancer, reducing the chances of successful treatment.

Herbal Remedies for Gut Health Support: A Natural Approach

While diagnostic procedures like colonoscopy are crucial for preventing colorectal cancer, there are also natural remedies that can support overall digestive health. These alternative methods may aid in promoting gut function and enhancing overall well-being. Though they should not replace medical treatments or diagnostic procedures, they can complement a healthy lifestyle.

1. Chamomile for Digestive Health

Chamomile is widely known for its soothing properties. It is often used to reduce inflammation and relieve bloating or gas. Drinking chamomile tea regularly can support digestive health, easing discomfort and promoting better digestion.

2. Flaxseeds: A Powerful Source of Fiber and Nutrients

Flaxseeds are packed with essential nutrients, including dietary fiber and mucilage, which help regulate bowel movements. Regularly consuming flaxseeds can prevent constipation, promote healthy digestion, and form a protective layer over the digestive tract, reducing inflammation.

3. Aloe Vera: Detoxifying and Healing

Aloe vera is well-known for its detoxifying properties and ability to promote cell regeneration. Aloe vera juice can support the healing of the gut lining and help eliminate toxins from the body. Its soothing and anti-inflammatory effects are particularly beneficial for those dealing with digestive disorders like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

4. Turmeric: A Natural Anti-inflammatory

Turmeric, particularly the compound curcumin, is famous for its powerful anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties. Studies have shown that turmeric may help reduce inflammation in the gut and may even play a role in reducing the risk of cancer. Including turmeric in your diet, whether through cooking or as a supplement, can provide a natural way to support digestive health.

5. Peppermint for Digestive Relief

Peppermint has long been used to relieve symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other digestive discomforts. Peppermint oil can help reduce bloating, gas, and abdominal cramps. Drinking peppermint tea or using peppermint oil capsules can support digestive functions and alleviate digestive distress.

Other Natural Ways to Support Digestive Health

In addition to herbal remedies, there are other alternative approaches that can help maintain healthy digestion and support the gut microbiome:

1. Probiotics and Fermented Foods: Nourishing the Gut Microbiome

A healthy gut flora is crucial for optimal digestive function and overall health. Probiotics and fermented foods like kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi can help maintain a balanced gut microbiome. Regular consumption of these foods can support digestive health, improve nutrient absorption, and enhance immune function.

2. Colonic Hydrotherapy: A Controversial Detox Method

Colonic hydrotherapy, also known as colon cleansing, involves flushing the colon with water to remove toxins and waste. Although some proponents of natural health advocate for this method as a way to promote gut health, it is controversial and should only be performed under the guidance of a qualified healthcare professional. It’s essential to weigh the benefits and risks before undergoing this procedure.

3. Acupuncture for Digestive Health

Acupuncture, a traditional Chinese medicine practice, has been used for centuries to support overall health. It is believed to help regulate digestive functions and relieve stress, which can often have a negative impact on gut health. Acupuncture treatments may help reduce symptoms of IBS, bloating, and other digestive issues by restoring balance to the digestive system.

Summary

Maintaining good gut health is essential for overall well-being, and colorectal cancer prevention is a key aspect of this. Colonoscopy remains the most effective diagnostic tool for detecting colorectal cancer early, but natural remedies like herbal medicine, probiotics, and acupuncture can provide valuable support for digestive health. If you experience concerning symptoms, it’s essential to consult with your healthcare provider to determine the best course of action. Early diagnosis and a healthy lifestyle are crucial for reducing the risk of colorectal cancer and supporting long-term digestive health.

By prioritizing preventive care and incorporating natural therapies, you can enhance your overall health and lower your risk of digestive issues and cancer. Regular check-ups, a healthy diet, and natural supplements are all important steps toward maintaining a healthy gut.

When caring for heart health, paying attention to the beverages we consume daily is crucial. Recent studies show that drinking sugary soft drinks significantly increases the risk of stroke, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation. Although they do not contain alcohol, the health consequences of such drinks can be severe. Why is this the case? And what alternatives can help us avoid these problems?

Why Are Sugary Soft Drinks Harmful to the Heart?

Sugary soft drinks contain high amounts of sugar in liquid form. This form of sugar is absorbed by the body more quickly, leading to excessive calorie intake. Unlike solid sugars, liquid sugars do not provide a sense of fullness, often causing people to consume more food or drink.

Regular consumption of these drinks increases the risk of:

1. Cardiovascular Diseases – Excess sugar raises triglyceride levels and “bad” LDL cholesterol in the blood, which can lead to plaque buildup in arteries.
2. Type 2 Diabetes – Excessive sugar consumption causes insulin resistance, increasing the risk of this chronic disease, which directly impacts heart health.
3. Obesity – The high caloric content of soft drinks contributes to weight gain, a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases.
4. Heart Rhythm Disorders – Sugary drinks can trigger inflammation in the body, affecting the cardiovascular system’s functioning.

Sugary Soft Drinks and Children

A concerning trend is the growing popularity of sugary soft drinks among children and teenagers. Young bodies are particularly sensitive to excess sugar, leading to:

• Childhood Obesity, which can cause health complications in early adulthood.
• Problems with Concentration and Learning, as high blood sugar levels affect focus.
• Deepening Unhealthy Eating Habits, which can be hard to break in the future.

Education about healthy eating should begin early to encourage informed choices.

Research Confirming Harmful Effects

Studies conducted in the U.S. and Europe show that individuals who drink more than one sugary soft drink daily have a 20–30% higher risk of dying from heart disease compared to those who do not drink them or consume them occasionally. Moreover, the combined effects of obesity and chronic sugar consumption worsen overall cardiovascular health.

Additionally, studies reveal that regular consumption of sugary soft drinks increases the risk of chronic inflammation, contributing to other chronic diseases, such as cancer or neurodegenerative disorders.

Alternatives to Sugary Soft Drinks

If you want to protect your heart, consider replacing sugary soft drinks with healthier options. Here are some suggestions:

1. Water: The best and most natural choice. Add lemon slices, mint, or cucumber for flavor.
2. Tea: Green tea contains flavonoids that support heart health, while black tea may reduce LDL cholesterol levels.
3. Coffee: Consumed in moderation (up to three cups daily), it can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
4. Coconut Water: Naturally low in calories, rich in electrolytes, and ideal for hydration.
5. Vegetable Juices: Rich in vitamins and minerals, they also help maintain proper hydration levels.
6. Fruit-Based Drinks: Homemade, sugar-free drinks can be a tasty and healthy substitute.

How to Reduce Sugary Soft Drink Consumption?

Changing habits takes time, but it is possible. Here are some tips to help reduce sugary soft drink consumption:

1. Gradual Reduction: Instead of eliminating soft drinks completely, try reducing their amount gradually. For example, drink them only on weekends or special occasions.
2. Switch to Healthier Options: When you crave a fizzy drink, choose sparkling water with natural lemon, lime, or orange juice. You can also try fruit teas or herbal infusions served cold.
3. Avoid Temptation: Avoid keeping sugary soft drinks at home. Instead, stock up on healthy alternatives, like water with fresh fruits or filtered bottles to have on hand.
4. Drink More Water: Many people reach for sugary drinks due to thirst. Regular water intake throughout the day can prevent this. Try using apps or reminders to maintain proper hydration.
5. Calorie Awareness: Pay attention to product labels and understand how much sugar soft drinks contain. Analyzing how they affect your daily calorie intake can help you make more informed decisions.
6. Find Motivation: Think about the health benefits of reducing sugary drinks – better physical condition, more energy, healthier skin, and heart protection. Set rewards for achieving goals to keep yourself motivated.
7. Support from Loved Ones: Share your goal with family or friends. Support from loved ones can be an additional motivation and inspiration for mutual habit changes. Try new healthy drink recipes together.
8. Education and Awareness: Expand your knowledge about the negative effects of sugary soft drinks. Reading articles, watching documentaries, or attending healthy eating workshops can help maintain motivation.
9. Experiment with Homemade Drinks: Use seasonal fruits, spices, and herbs to create your drinks. Homemade lemonades, compotes, or fruit cocktails are excellent substitutes for soft drinks.

The Impact on Global Health

Sugary soft drinks not only affect individual health but also have far-reaching implications for public health systems worldwide. The rise in obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases creates significant burdens on healthcare systems, increasing costs and straining resources. Governments and health organizations are actively promoting awareness campaigns to encourage healthier lifestyles, reduce sugar intake, and implement policies such as sugar taxes.

The Role of Food Industry Regulations

The food and beverage industry plays a critical role in shaping consumer behavior. Regulations such as limiting sugar content, mandatory labeling, and advertising restrictions for sugary products targeting children can help reduce consumption. Some countries have successfully introduced “soda taxes,” leading to a measurable decline in sales of sugary drinks. Encouraging the industry to innovate and create healthier alternatives can also contribute to improving public health.

The Future of Healthier Beverage Choices

The shift towards healthier beverage options is becoming a global trend. Consumers are increasingly choosing drinks labeled as “low sugar,” “no sugar,” or “natural.” Companies are responding by introducing functional beverages such as kombucha, probiotic drinks, and fortified waters. The key lies in providing affordable, accessible, and appealing alternatives that cater to diverse tastes while promoting health benefits.

Final Thoughts

Reducing sugary soft drink consumption is not just a personal health decision—it is a collective movement towards a healthier society. Small changes in daily habits, combined with awareness and support, can lead to significant improvements in overall health and well-being. By choosing better alternatives and advocating for systemic changes, we can protect not only our hearts but also future generations’ health.

Let this journey towards a healthier lifestyle begin with mindful choices today.

They are resistant to cardiovascular diseases, dementia, and diabetes. What an injustice, they don’t even get acne! And all of this despite the fact that many of them are overweight and consume a lot of processed food,” wonders Nicklas Brendborg, a Danish researcher who delved into the “phenomenon” of people with Laron Syndrome. In his book The Key to Immortality, he explains how this is possible.

They are of short stature. It’s Laron Syndrome.

In 1958, Israeli doctor Zvi Laron, along with his colleagues, began studying a particular group of patients. All of them were affected by short stature, but not in the way we usually think of. The patients with Laron Syndrome were undoubtedly short, measuring around 120 cm, but their body proportions were different from those typically associated with dwarfism. They did not have short limbs or large heads. They simply looked like ordinary people, just smaller.

Laron’s team spent eight years searching for the cause of the newly discovered syndrome before finally sharing their findings. It turned out that patients with what is now known as Laron Syndrome are short due to a genetic mutation related to the growth hormone. However, the defect does not involve the growth hormone itself, as the levels of the hormone in the blood of Laron’s patients were quite high. The issue lay with the growth hormone receptor, the receptor responsible for detecting the hormone by the cell and triggering its response.

This mechanism can be visualized through the following analogy. Imagine a cell as a castle ruled by a powerful but paranoid king. The ruler is hesitant to let outsiders into the castle, so if someone wants to speak with him, they must first shout their message to the guards stationed in the castle tower. In a normal situation, the guard would go to the ruler and deliver the message, and the king would issue the appropriate orders. However, if the guards are deaf, they won’t hear the message, no matter how loudly the visitors shout at the gates, and the king won’t receive the message or be able to respond to it.

Similarly, in patients with Laron Syndrome, the growth hormone signal never reaches the inside of their cells. The defect in the growth hormone receptor means that even if there are large amounts of growth hormone molecules circulating in the bloodstream, they do not trigger growth processes.

Almost 500 years after the first Spaniards landed on the shores of both Americas, a newly graduated doctor from Ecuador decided to solve a mystery from his childhood. Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, as he is called, remembered that during his adolescence, he encountered an unexpectedly high number of people affected by short stature. As a graduate in medicine, he was determined to find out what could have caused this. His curiosity led him back to his hometown, to the mountainous province of Loja.

There, he had to ride a horse to reach a place that he had chosen as the final destination of his expedition— a remote village hidden deep in the mountains. The effort was worth it, as he finally met people who looked like those he had remembered from his childhood.

The solution to the mystery was Laron Syndrome, which was present in all these people. Unbeknownst to them, they were distant relatives of the Israeli patients of Zvi Laron. It turned out that these Ecuadorians were descendants of Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity and later participated in the colonization of both Americas. In contrast, the Israeli patients of Laron descended from those Spanish Jews who chose differently and left Spain to preserve their religion. Although the twists of history had separated these two groups, Laron’s discovery reunited them. Today, we know that one of their common ancestors must have had a mutation in the growth hormone receptor.

However, it is not enough to inherit just one defective gene to be born with Laron Syndrome. A person with one mutated gene would still have a fully functional version of the gene from the other parent and would only be a few centimeters shorter than usual. However, if both parents pass on defective genes, there will be no functional growth hormone receptors at all. Only then will a person be born with Laron Syndrome.

For this reason, the condition is rare in Israel today. It is unlikely that both prospective parents are carriers of the mutation and pass it on to their offspring. However, in the remote villages of the Loja province, Laron Syndrome occurs much more frequently. The reason is the same as with the Amish in Berne, as mentioned earlier. Loja is an isolated region that was settled by a small group of people. Over time, its population began to grow due to marriages between its members.

They are resistant to diseases despite a poor diet.

Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, having found the perfect location to study Laron Syndrome, did not waste time and soon made another extraordinary discovery. It turned out that people with Laron Syndrome almost never develop cancer. During the entire study period on these small people, only one case of cancer was recorded. Since cancers are characterized by the excessive multiplication of cells, it seems logical that the lack of growth signals would have a protective effect.

But that’s not all. During the observation, it was found that people with Laron Syndrome also do not develop other age-related diseases. They are resistant to cardiovascular diseases, dementia, and diabetes. What an injustice — they don’t even get acne! All this despite the fact that many of them are overweight and consume a lot of processed food. It seems that the Laron mutation protects these people from diseases, despite their not-so-healthy eating habits.

People with Laron Syndrome live longer

In order to better understand Laron Syndrome, researchers bred mice with damaged growth hormone receptors. Just like their human counterparts, these mice are significantly smaller than average but have regular body proportions. And similarly to people with Laron Syndrome, Laron mice are bursting with health. It turned out that they live much longer than usual – various studies show they live 16–55% longer.

So, how does it work for humans? If smaller animals tend to live longer in the animal kingdom, should tall people be concerned? Well, Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died at the age of 122 years and 164 days, set the record for the longest lifespan, but longevity wasn’t her only unusual trait. The second one was her height—she was only 150 cm tall.

Right after Jeanne Calment on the list of longevity record holders are American Sarah Knauss, who was 140 cm tall, followed by Marie-Louise Meilleur (150 cm) and Emma Morano (152 cm). Granted, these women were born in times when people were generally shorter than we are today. However, if you look at the information about the longest-living members of our species, you’ll quickly realize that they wouldn’t make a good basketball team—even in their own times.

When we zoom down from the species level to populations, the link between height and lifespan remains noticeable. For example, remember how we discussed that people from Northern Europe generally die earlier than people from Southern Europe or East Asia, even though Northern European countries are wealthier? Well, Northern Europeans are also taller than Southern Europeans and East Asians, so that might explain it.

Another example could be the discovery debated by American sociologists, known as the “Latino Paradox.” This refers to the fact that Hispanic Americans tend to live longer than white Americans, even though the latter theoretically “should” live longer: they are wealthier, better educated, and have slightly lower obesity rates. But… Hispanic Americans tend to be shorter.

A third example could be the “Blue Zones.” We have Okinawa, where some of the shortest Japanese people live—and they are among the shortest people in developed countries. Then there’s Sardinia, where some of the shortest Europeans live. The average height of men in Sardinia is about 168 cm, which is several centimeters shorter than the Italian average and about 15 cm shorter than the tallest population in Europe. We know that the short stature of Sardinians has a genetic basis, and—here’s the kicker—partly due to the Laron mutation. Around 0.87% of Sardinians carry it, one of the highest frequencies in the world, though not as high as among the Ecuadorians from Loja.

But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that if you’re tall, your fate is to die young. And conversely, being shorter doesn’t guarantee you’ll live long. These are average data. Many short people die young, while many tall people live long and healthy lives. However, when you average it out, body size and lifespan are linked, and that means we can draw conclusions about aging processes that could benefit all of us.

Summary

The relationship between height and lifespan is complex but noticeable in various studies. Notably, some of the longest-living people in history, such as Jeanne Calment (122 years) and Sarah Knauss (119 years), were relatively short, with heights around 150 cm. This trend is also evident in certain populations; for example, people from Northern Europe, who are generally taller, tend to have shorter lifespans compared to those from Southern Europe or East Asia, who are shorter on average. Similarly, Hispanic Americans, despite being wealthier and healthier, tend to live longer than white Americans, likely due to their shorter stature. In “Blue Zones” like Okinawa and Sardinia, where people live longer, the population tends to be shorter, partly due to genetic factors, such as the Laron mutation. However, while shorter people may live longer on average, this is not a strict rule—many tall people live long and healthy lives. These observations suggest a link between body size and aging, providing insights into the aging process.