 Papermint was not officially described by a white guy until 1696, but we've probably been using it for at least a few thousand years. After dinner mints are used to reduce the gastric-colloct reflex, the urge to defecate following a meal. The stretching of nerves in the stomach triggers spasms in the colon, which makes sense—our bodies making way for more food coming down the pike. What peppermint does is relax the muscles of the colon. If you take circular strips of human colons removed during surgery and just lay them on a table, they spontaneously contract on their own about three times a minute. Isn't that kind of creepy? But then, if you drip more and more menthol from peppermint on them, the contractions still happen, but they're not as strong. Well, if peppermint can relax the colon and reduce spasms, try to be useful during a colonoscopy, as first suggested over 30 years ago. See, colon spasm can hinder the progress of the scope and cause patient discomfort. So they tried spraying some peppermint oil up the tip, and in every case, the spasm was relieved within 30 seconds. 30 seconds is a long time, though, when you have this snaking inside of you. So the next innovation would be to just use a hand pump to flood the whole colon with a peppermint oil solution before the colonoscopy, a simple, safe, and convenient alternative to injecting an anti-spasm drug, which can have an array of side effects, whereas instilling some peppermint solution died blue in this picture here, and within 20 seconds the spasmin colon opened right up. Similar results were obtained with upper endoscopy, working better, quicker, and safer than the drug. And also when mixed into barium enemas. But wouldn't it be easier just to swallow some peppermint oil instead of squaring it up the rectum? Pre-medication with peppermint oil in colonoscopy. Just popping a few peppermint oil capsules four hours before the procedure, sped up the entire process, and increased both doctor and patient satisfaction. Because reducing colon spasm reduces pain and discomfort, and makes the scope easier to insert and withdraw. Pain and discomfort are not the only barriers to signing people up for colonoscopies, though. I mean, even if peppermint oil makes it go seamless, there's still the dreaded bowel prep, where you have to drink quarts of a powerful liquid laxative before the procedure to completely clean you out. And aside from the pain, there's often a fear of complications and feelings of embarrassment and vulnerability. Serious complications occur in about one in every 350 colonoscopies, including perforations and bleeding to death. Perforations occur when the tip of the scope punches through the wall of the colon, or because they inflate the colon too much, they have to pump air in so they can look around, or when they're trying to cauterize some bleeding caused by like a biopsy, which in extremely rare circumstances can ignite some residual gas and cause the colon to explode on the table. Death from colonoscopy is rare, occurring only in about one in every 1,000 procedures, but with about 15 million colonoscopies performed annually in the United States, colonoscopies kill thousands of Americans every year, raising the question, do the benefits outweigh the risks? I'll cover that next.