Goop Pushing 'Fake Medicine' With $135 Coffee Enema: Doc

Some say the Implant O'Rama is a toxin cleanser; others, a 'stupid and dangerous idea'
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 8, 2018 8:17 AM CST
Paltrow's Goop Wants You to Buy a $135 Coffee Enema
In this Jan. 26, 2016, file photo, Gwyneth Paltrow poses for photographers in Paris.   (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)

Each January, Goop "[gets] back to business," meaning it's "detox month" at Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand. But 2018's version is promoting a concept Ars Technica calls a "stupid and dangerous idea." As part of the site's "Beauty & Wellness Detox Guide", Goop encourages readers to buy a $135 contraption known as the Implant O'Rama, a glass container with tubes offering a "clean way to do coffee enemas." The product fits with Goop's enthusiasm for enemas and colonics (it explains the difference), which it notes are "helpful" for gut health "in the right context and under expert hands"; Forbes explains their purpose is to flush out toxins and undigested foods. But Ars Technica points out that colon cleansing is not only unnecessary for most healthy humans—it can also be dangerous, with documented cases of rectal perforation, infections, and even death in a couple of patients.

Live Science cuts right to the chase, warning "don't do it" and citing a 2011 article in the Journal of Family Practice discussing the "dangers of colon cleansing." A similar 1997 write-up in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology calls colonic irrigation "a triumph of ignorance over science." Goop has come under fire before for pushing controversial products, and the Inquisitr notes one frequent critic, Dr. Jen Gunter, is now blasting the Implant O'Rama. On her blog, Gunter calls January "Gwyneth Paltrow's go-to month for promoting dangerous things that should not go in or near an orifice" and the enema product a "f---ed up way to make money." "There is no data to suggest that a 'colonic helps with the elimination of the waste that is transiting the colon on its way out,'" Gunter notes. "That is what bowel movements do. There are no toxins to be cleansed ... That is fake medicine." (More Gwyneth Paltrow stories.)

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