Mucoid Plaque: Wellness influencers want you to polymerize your poop!

Buy these supplements to form a rubbery, gelatinous cast of your bowels... because "toxins"

In 1987, alternative medicine advocate Rich Anderson published a book titled Cleanse & Purify Thyself. It was the typical self-loathing trope of the wellness influencer: “We eat toxic foods and poison ourselves.”

He claimed to have spent several months living off the land in the Sierra Nevada mountains, accompanied by a spiritual practitioner who had (for reasons not explained) appropriated a Native American sounding name, “White Medicine Crow.”

Apropos, as Anderson inexplicably wrote as “Dr. Richard Anderson” despite having no accredited advanced degree of any kind, in any field.

During this alleged journey of spiritual awakening, Anderson and “Crow” stated that by living off the land, with its bounties untainted by American corporate hate energy, they purged their bodies of “hardened mucoid fecal substance” — some 40 feet of it in all, he said — and the myth of mucoid plaque was born.

Fast forward to today, some four decades later, and you’ll find wellness influencers on social media are hawking supplement products they claim will help your body rid itself of mucoid plaque. What is it, and how will their supplements help? (And why isn’t this being done in hospitals???)

Wooists love to post these shocking photos of the rubbery polymerized poop they shat out a few minutes before — because we all really want to see that.

Mucoid plaque, according to the general claim, is a buildup of “toxins” in the lining of your intestines, caused by the consumption of a poisonous American diet of ultraprocessed foods. Here’s the definition I got from one website:

Mucoid plaque is a thick, rubbery substance that forms in the intestines due to the body’s response to processed foods, chemicals, and other toxins. This plaque can build up over time, becoming a barrier to nutrient absorption and a breeding ground for harmful bacteria.

Oh! Shit! Sounds like that’s something we’d better get out of there ASAP. From a wellness website selling the “Complete Fiber Cleanse”:

I am an advocate of cleaning the gut gently to remove toxins, unwanted bacteria and parasites as well as any waste matter that is still sitting in the bowel area. To do this effectively, I prefer using a soluble and insoluble fibre supplement such as Complete Fiber Cleanse and to take two teaspoons in the morning and evening preferably mixed into juice or water.

Apparently, all one need do is buy this miracle supplement to clean that crap out of there:

Complete Fiber Cleanse contains psyllium, fructo-oligosaccharides and other soluble and insoluble fibres to help healthy bowel function. Psyllium husk fibre is a jagged fibre rather like the teeth on a saw which scrapes the gut of any plaque that has adhered to the walls. Green foods such as spirulina work to reduce inflammation and provide nutrients in a food state whilst a probiotic blend delivers beneficial bacteria to replenish those lost through the removal of mucoid plaque.

It’s interesting that they mention psyllium as an ingredient. Not interesting insofar as their claim goes that it “scrapes the gut of plaque” but interesting in that psyllium husk contains approximately 75% arabinoxylan, a highly branched polysaccharide. When mixed with water, psyllium undergoes dramatic gel formation through several mechanisms, including water absorption. The arabinoxylan's branched structure, where β-1,4-linked D-xylopyranose chains are substituted with arabinofuranose side chains, participate in extensive hydrogen bonding, creating the material's exceptional water-holding capacity.

In other words: “Eat psyllium, and it will form a polymeric gel in your gut.”

NOT “eat psyllium, and it will scrape the gel OUT of your gut”.

In short: psyllium-containing supplements for helping you excrete mucoid plaque are actually the cause of what they claim to exorcise from your body.

Another popular ingredient in these supplements is bentonite — which is basically kitty litter. It’s also the main ingredient in face mask compounds. But when taken internally (totally not recommended), it can increase its volume by up to 8× when hydrated.

The Holy Grail really comes when you combine psyllium and bentonite. When bentonite clay and psyllium husk are combined in the intestinal environment, they create a composite hydrogel with unique properties:

• Enhanced Gel Strength: Studies show that bentonite-psyllium mixtures exhibit superior rheological properties compared to either component alone

• Cross-linking Effects: The clay particles become embedded within the psyllium gel matrix, with the anionic polysaccharides adsorbing onto clay surfaces

• When bentonite clay and psyllium husk are combined in the intestinal environment, they create a composite hydrogel with unique properties:

  1. Enhanced Gel Strength: Studies show that bentonite-psyllium mixtures exhibit superior rheological properties compared to either component alone

  2. Cross-linking Effects: The clay particles become embedded within the psyllium gel matrix, with the anionic polysaccharides adsorbing onto clay surfaces

  3. pH-Responsive Behavior: The gel structure changes as it moves through different pH environments in the digestive tract, with increased swelling in alkaline conditions (pH 6.8-7.4) compared to acidic stomach conditions The gel structure changes as it moves through different pH environments in the digestive tract, with increased swelling in alkaline conditions (pH 6.8-7.4) compared to acidic stomach conditions.

  4. Complementary Properties: Clay provides structure and absorption while psyllium provides gel-forming capacity

  5. Intestinal Compatibility: Both compounds are considered food-safe and pass through the digestive system

  6. Visual Impact: The combination creates dark, substantial-looking casts that appear pathological to untrained observers. Marketing at work!

If the prospect of shitting out a rubberized cast of your intestines is appealing to you, then by all means, buy these products and go crazy. Launch an art show. Whatever.

Otherwise, if you have any modicum of science literacy, feel free to refrain from these products (one of them, “Gut Support” from Ion: Intelligence of Nature is $80/bottle). Since no such thing as “mucoid plaque” exists — according not only to theory but to all the countless pathologists who have never seen such a thing in countless autopsies — it seems rather pointless to put the required ingredients into your body just to simulate it… for an Instagram photo that I guarantee you very few people want to see.