When people think of spring cleaning, rarely does “cleaning” oneself from the inside out come to mind. Since I embarked on de-cluttering my physical space last week using feng shui, the natural evolution was obvious. It was time to spring clean my bowels.

According to natural health practitioners, online forums and people who like to discuss poo, a colon cleanse rids one’s intestines of toxins that have festered over the course of a lifetime. Headaches, fatigue and perhaps even chronic health conditions can result from this toxic buildup. A colon cleanse program in which you ingest overpriced fibre (not the same as colon hydrotherapy), excretes the bad shit, giving you revitalized health.

I was intrigued. I did my due diligence — via an extensive Google search — for a product to scrub my insides. Google yielded Dr. Natura’s Colonix, a colon cleanse that made modest claims of changing my life. It promised more energy, luminous skin and even softer hair. Best of all, it didn’t require altering my diet — the lazy man’s equivalent of hitting the natural health jackpot.

Dr. Natura’s website featured thousands of third-party verified testimonials from what seemed like former-skeptics-turned-fanatical-salespeople. The crazed fans posted detailed and extensive diaries about their bowel movements (BMs), alongside their names, photos and personal e-mail addresses.

But what really got me was the photo gallery… of poop. Seriously. What the hell would possess so many people to take their putrid, alienesque BMs, out of the toilet (for display purposes) using food utensils, and snap photos of them to post online? Could I get so enamoured as to reach that state of insanity? I had to find out.

Not one to enjoy misery alone, I tried to enlist some cohorts to sacrifice their bodies, too. My plan was to make before-and-after comparisons and literally conduct “exit” interviews. Imagine for a second, the sheer journalistic integrity required to ask a question like: What changes did you notice in volume, frequency, consistency and stench? I was able to convince my boyfriend Jason to join my shiteous experiment.

To make sure I wouldn’t seriously harm myself, I sought answers from my friend Kyley, a soon-to-be naturopathic doctor.

“From what I can tell, the main actions of the [Colonix] herbs are fibre and mucilage, meaning it makes things kind of mucous-y,” she explained. Because the ingredient quantities aren’t listed, she smartly recommended I speak to a naturopathic doctor, warning that “gut cleansing can wipe out normal flora (healthy intestinal bacteria),” possibly increasing my chances of problems afterwards.

In full mob-on-a-mission mode, I disregarded Kyley’s sound medical opinion. I had read the miracle testimonials. More importantly, I’d already pitched the story to my editor who saw the potential in a piece of crap…. er, um, about crap. Hence the need for the following disclaimer: don’t do what I did.

Colonix arrived in the mail 10 days later and, as promised, was idiot-proof. In the morning, choke down some pills, followed by a fibre powder preferably mixed into a smoothie to disguise its sludgy texture. At night, drink a soothing herbal tea called Kleri-tea. Add two litres of water a day, and after one to two months, presto change-o!

Absolutely nothing happened the first day of the cleanse. “So, how are you?” friends asked with concern as I wondered why they suddenly cared. Then I remembered that their morbid fascination had everything to do with my toilet traumas and nothing to do with me.

Day three I hit the motherlode, or rather, it hit me. It started with stomach cramps and then before I knew it, I, to be scientific, “passed a BM.” The BM itself happened very quickly, especially considering the volume. To limit the disgust factor, I’ll spare the details.

Jason, who had bowel issues from international travels, saw a more ideal consistency in his new BMs. He not only saved time on the porcelain throne, but by having cleaner poops, he saved the environment, too — one square of toilet paper at a time.

The initial results were promising, but disappeared after two weeks when the whole thing simply became massively uncomfortable. There were the inappropriate “contractions” that occurred mid-downward dog (yoga class: bad idea), as well as throughout an eight-hour road trip (ditto). And warning others of our plight, while providing real-life potty humour, meant exposing formerly private bodily functions. Thankfully, my full disclosure never translated to the desire to photograph my BMs for the World Wide Web.

With no alterations to my diet, the whole experience was akin to getting one’s car washed while the roads are still muddy; that’s to say, pretty pointless. In the end, I put my ass on the line and had nothing but shit to show for it.

It took me $70 and a month of toilet gazing to figure out what most know already: healthy bowels don’t come from a doctor named Natura or box of herbs called Colonix. The best advice is one that mothers — the ones you should listen to before conducting a pseudo-scientific experiment using a possibly sketchy product you ordered online — would universally agree on: just eat your goddamn veggies.