George W. Cherry <GWCherryHatesGreenEggsAndSpam@alum.mit.edu> wrote or quoted:

If we assume it works as a sort of crypto-calorie restriction -
by stopping elements from the food from being absorbed at well -
then taking it far away from food might nullify any side effects -
but is likely to equally nullify any benefits.

I suspect this sort of explanation of its action is quite likely -
but I don't think we know for sure.

At some point there are elements ejected by the liver into the
intestines that are intended for excretion - and probably are
not a good idea to re-absorb - and bacterial flora can get
a bit out of hand sometimes - and absorbing their effluent
may not always be desirable.

*If* you could *selectively* block absorbsion at those points
then *that* might be a good idea - but I don't think charcoal
from the top is likely to pull this trick off.

Also, I worry about charcoal's purity and safety.  I don't usually
eat burned stuff - and even if it /is/ free of impurities, what
if I eat too much - and those highly-reactive carbon atoms stick
to *me* - and not to my food?

By contrast, clay seems less likely to make it out of my digestive tract.  
If it /does/ get stuck to bits of me, it seems more likely to
become unstuck again.

Safety information for carbon says:

``Harmful if ingested in quantity - IVN-MUS LD50 440 mg/kg''

- http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/CA/carbon.html

That might be a fair sized figure - but ten times bigger would be
a little bit more reassuring.

"Moosh:)" <spam@less.ever> wrote or quoted:

No - the gut.

The liver can move things from the blood stream into the gut -
via the bile duct - though.

jheiskan@welho.com  jwales@bomis.com  TKNOTT@qcl.org.uk
Once upon a time, our fellow markd@toad-net.com
  rambled on about "Re: Data Mining  (Re: Enterosorbent)."
Our champion De-Medicalizing in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...

No!  The book says many things.

Could be why I quoteed the BMJ hyperlink, above?

In his preface, Illich states that the biggest demand for this book of
his comes from the bulk orders of medical schools. "The book is being
read [by many medicos and scientists] as a demonstration of how you
can eat your cake and have it too."  :(

Illich was a multilingual prolific writer who focused on the major
institutions of the industrialized world. He applied a "model of
social assessment of technological progress" to one of these
institutions in each of his books in order to expose their current
state of counterproductivity. His most celebrated work is generally
considered to be _Deschooling Society_, a critical discourse on
education.

Looking at his mission, Illich considers "self-reliance, autonomy, and
dignity for all, particularly the weaker" to be the highest good.
Illich advocates that "individual freedom [is] realized in personal
independence." He laments industrialized societies where
ever-increasing production, consumption and profit are used to measure
the quality of human life.  In all of his books, Illich calls for
people to rediscover the lost art of living. His universal theme is
the "counterproductivity of overindustrialized civilization." To
Illich, in order for man to live creatively, man must reassert his
autonomy and take control of his environment. From his point of view,
society created the institutions in order to serve the society.  But,
according to Illich, these institutions have all become
counterproductive to their original intent because they now exist to
benefit themselves rather than the betterment of society.  Health care
is merely one of many institutions that Illich has written about.

Health, argues Illich, is the capacity to cope with the human reality
of death, pain, and sickness.  Technology can help, but modern
medicine has gone too far launching into a Godlike battle to eradicate
death, pain, and sickness. In doing so, it turns people into consumers
or objects, destroying their capacity for health.

The concept of medicalisation is attributed to Ivan Illich, who first
wrote on the subject in 1976. He proposed that modern medicine had
become detrimental to society, by amongst other things, 'launching ...
an inhuman attempt to defeat death, pain and sickness'. By doing so,
he argued, medicine had deprived individuals and societies of their
ability to cope with sickness and death.

According to Illich, "iatrogenesis cannot be understood unless it is
seen as the specifically medicial manifestation of /specific
counterproductivitiy/."  Illich sees three levels of iatrogenesis.
Clinical iatrogenesis is the injury done to patients by ineffective,
toxic, and unsafe treatments. Social iatrogenesis results from the
medicalisation of life.  Cultural iatrogenesis is the destruction of
traditional ways of dealing with and making sense of death, pain, and
sickness.

In short, my web site and weekly newsletter operationally implements
Illich's call for man to "reassert his autonomy and take control of
his environment."

The above is from a preliminary draft of a new web page on Ivan
Illich.
--
John Gohde,
  Feeling Great and Better than Ever!

Natural health is an eclectic self-care system of natural therapies
that builds and restores health by working with the natural
recuperative powers of the human body.
http://tutorials.naturalhealthperspective.com/definition.html