German New Medicine and Infant Colic: A Healing-Phase Reading

In short: German New Medicine understands infant colic as a healing-phase event of the intestinal smooth muscles. The cramping, gas, and that hard-to-console crying appear after a small "indigestible morsel" conflict resolves, not while it's still active. The intestine swings into a wave of strong, clonic contractions to move something the baby couldn't process, and that wave is the colic itself.

If you've ever held a screaming baby at 6 p.m., knees drawn up and belly tight, completely inconsolable after a mostly fine afternoon, you've noticed the thing that makes colic so maddening for parents and so baffling for medicine. It runs on a clock. The fussing clusters in the evening, builds, peaks, and then, after a stretch of crying that feels endless, the baby passes gas or stool and finally settles. Conventional medicine calls colic "crying for no identifiable reason" and largely shrugs at the cause. German New Medicine offers a different reading. The colic isn't random, and it isn't the problem. It's the visible part of a healing process the baby's gut is running on a daily rhythm. In this guide we'll walk through how GNM maps colic to the intestinal muscles, what the five biological laws reveal about that evening pattern, and why the cramping might be a sign of resolution rather than something gone wrong.

Why Does GNM Connect Colic to the "Indigestible Morsel"?

In German New Medicine, every organ relates to a biological conflict tied to that organ's job. The organs of the digestive tract handle morsels: catching, swallowing, digesting, moving them along, getting rid of them. So the conflicts linked to the gut are all variations on a "morsel conflict": not being able to take in, break down, pass, or eliminate a chunk.

Colic specifically involves the muscles of the intestine. This is the smooth muscle in the intestinal wall that produces peristalsis, the rhythmic squeeze-and-release that walks food through the digestive canal. According to the framework established by Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer, these intestinal smooth muscles originate from the endoderm, the body's oldest tissue layer, and they're controlled from the midbrain. The biological conflict assigned to them is precise: not being able to pass an indigestible morsel. Something needs to move through, and it isn't moving.

For an adult, that "morsel" is often figurative, like a court case that won't move forward or a situation you can't get past. For a baby, it tends to be far more literal. An infant's whole world is intake. The morsel that won't pass can be a feed that came too fast or too full, a swallow of air, a gulp of milk that landed in a body too overwhelmed to keep things moving. The baby met something it couldn't quite process, and the gut registered it as a chunk that needs to get through and isn't.

This reframes the whole question. Colic isn't a sign your baby's digestion is broken or that you're feeding them wrong. In the GNM lens, it's a normal program responding to a normal infant experience: meeting more than the body could move in the moment. That idea sits at the heart of what German New Medicine actually teaches, that symptoms we label as disorders are often the body running an old, sensible program.

What Happens During the Conflict-Active Phase?

GNM describes every biological program as running in two phases, a pattern set out in the Second Biological Law: a conflict-active phase while the issue is unresolved, then a healing phase once it resolves. Colic makes more sense once you separate the two.

During the conflict-active phase of the intestinal muscles, the local muscle tone increases. GNM calls this hypertonus, a sustained, tight contraction right where the stuck morsel sits, to force the chunk forward with more power. While that one segment bears down, peristalsis in the rest of the intestine slows. The result is the picture parents often describe in the hours before the evening meltdown. A baby who seems backed up. A belly that looks bloated and feels firm. Fewer or harder stools. A general sense of being tense rather than acutely crampy.

It helps to know that constipation and a tight, distended belly can show up during almost any conflict-active phase. When the body is in the stress-mode GNM calls sympathicotonia, digestion broadly slows down as part of the stress response itself. So the hard, bloated, blocked-up phase is the quiet part of the story. To an outside eye the baby seems uncomfortable but not in crisis. Tension is building around something the gut is trying to push through, but it hasn't released yet.

If you're trying to make sense of your own baby's pattern, the timing, the feeds, what precedes the hard belly, that's exactly the kind of thread ChatGNM can help you follow, walking you through the sequence rather than leaving you guessing.

Why Does Colic Appear During the Healing Phase?

Here's the part that flips the usual story. In German New Medicine, the colic itself, the cramping and gas and drawn-up legs and crying, belongs to the healing phase, after the small conflict resolves.

When the "stuck morsel" issue lets go, the body shifts out of stress-mode and into the rest-and-repair state GNM calls vagotonia. For the intestinal muscles, that shift is dramatic. The local hypertonus of the active phase gives way to clonic hyperperistalsis of the entire intestine: strong, repeated, wave-like contractions running the whole length of the gut. That full-intestine cramping wave is, in GNM's framework, the very definition of intestinal colic. The intestine is no longer squeezing one spot. It's pumping hard, top to bottom, to clear what was stuck.

This is why the colic feels so intense and so total. It isn't a malfunction or a "tummy ache" of unknown origin. It's the resolution, the gut emptying itself out with force, and the cramps come in waves because peristalsis comes in waves. There's a peak to it, too. GNM describes a turning point in healing called the Epileptoid Crisis, a brief, sharp return to stress-phase intensity midway through the repair. For the intestinal muscles, it shows up as strongly increased local cramps and flatulence: the most acute stretch of the episode, often right before the gas finally moves and the baby starts to come down.

So the sequence many parents witness night after night maps cleanly onto the two-phase pattern. The tense, bloated afternoon is conflict-active. The wave of full-gut cramping and the hardest crying, peaking with strong spasms and gas, is the healing phase and its crisis. Then the gas or stool passes and the baby settles. They aren't getting sicker as the evening goes on. In the GNM reading, they're moving through a healing wave toward its resolution.

How Does the Gut Lining Fit In and Where Does Diarrhea Come From?

The intestinal muscles aren't the only part of the gut that runs a morsel program. The intestinal lining, the mucosa of the small intestine and colon, has its own closely related conflict: not being able to absorb or digest a morsel. It's the difference between passing a chunk, which is the muscle's job, and breaking it down, which is the lining's job. During the lining's conflict-active phase there are essentially no outward symptoms. The visible part again comes in healing: diarrhea, sometimes vomiting if the upper small intestine was involved, and night sweats. In GNM terms, the diarrhea is the morsel being eliminated now that the conflict has let go.

This matters for colic because the two programs often run side by side. The GNM material makes the point plainly: when abdominal cramps (the muscle's contribution) are followed by diarrhea (the lining's contribution), it signals that the muscle and mucosa programs are healing at the same time, the body both passing and clearing the indigestible morsel at once. That's why a colicky episode so often ends with a loose, explosive stool, and why the baby seems so much better right afterward. One honest caveat: disagreeable food or plain anxiety can cause diarrhea on their own, so GNM doesn't claim every loose stool is a healing event. The framework is a lens for the cases where the timing fits.

Why Does Colic Cluster in the Evening?

The evening clock is colic's signature, and it's where the two-phase model gets genuinely interesting.

GNM ties the phases to the body's daily autonomic rhythm. Roughly from early morning to evening, the body tends to run in the active, sympathicotonic state, the daytime "up" mode. Toward evening and into sleep, it swings into vagotonia, the rest-and-repair state. Healing-phase events, including the Epileptoid Crisis, characteristically surface during those restful, vagotonic stretches: in the evening, at night, in the early-morning hours.

Lay colic over that rhythm and the pattern almost draws itself. Across the day, the baby takes in feeds, swallows air, and meets the small "morsels" it can't quite move. Tension accumulates in that quiet, conflict-active way, the firming belly and the slowed gut. Then, as the day winds down and the body tips into its evening repair mode, the gut releases: the cramping wave fires, the colic peaks, the gas and stool finally pass. The "witching hour" isn't mysterious in this reading. It's the daily turn from holding to releasing, played out in the gut.

This daily oscillation also explains why colic tends to be a phase of early infancy rather than a permanent state. A young baby is doing an enormous amount of taking-in, with a digestive system still finding its rhythm. Small indigestible-morsel conflicts accumulate and resolve, day after day. Then, over the early months, the intake gets smoother and the dramatic evening releases fade. Most colic resolves on its own timeline, and GNM's model fits that: as feeding steadies, there's simply less to release.

Is This the Baby's Own Program, or the Mother's?

This is a fair question, and the answer in GNM is clear: the colic is the baby's own biological program, running in the baby's own gut.

It's tempting, especially for an exhausted parent, to assume a stressed mother somehow transmits her tension into the infant and that's the colic. GNM doesn't frame it that way. A baby runs its own biological programs, triggered by its own experience of the world. What is true is that an infant's world is overwhelmingly the feeding relationship. The "indigestible morsel" the baby meets usually lives right there: in the feed itself, its pace and volume, the air swallowed, the tension or ease around feeding time. So while the program is fully the baby's, it's often woven into the back-and-forth of feeding with the caregiver.

That distinction is practical. The useful question isn't "what's wrong with me as a parent" but "what is my baby meeting at feeds that's hard to move through?" A feed that comes too fast from an oversupply or a strong let-down. A bottle that flows quicker than the baby can pace. A rushed feed where the baby gulps and swallows air. A latch that takes in more air than milk. These are real, adjustable things that can leave a baby with a morsel that won't pass. For the wider picture of how GNM reads infant symptoms as the child's own programs, our guide to GNM for babies and children lays out the full framework.

Persistent, severe, or worsening crying, or any concern about feeding, weight gain, or your baby's general well-being, should always be evaluated by a pediatrician. GNM is best held here as a lens for understanding the why and the when of colic, never as a reason to skip a medical check.

How Does Colic Relate to Reflux and Teething?

Colic doesn't sit in isolation. It's part of a cluster of early digestive symptoms that GNM reads through the same morsel framework.

Infant reflux involves the upper end of the same alimentary canal, the territory of swallowing and keeping a morsel down rather than moving it along the gut. The conflicts differ, but the through-line is the same: a baby's intake-dominated world meeting morsels it struggles to manage. Our guide to GNM and infant reflux walks through how that upper-tract pattern shares logic with colic.

Teething is a useful contrast for a different reason. It's where GNM gets less tidy, and honesty matters. There's no neat "teething illness" program the way there's a clear intestinal-muscle program for colic. The fussiness, drool, and disrupted sleep around teething don't map to a single clean conflict, and the GNM and teething guide says so plainly rather than inventing a mechanism. Where colic has a precise organ, conflict, and phase logic, teething is murkier, and good GNM education names the difference.

What Might Your Baby's Colic Be Telling You?

With GNM's two-phase pattern in mind, the next step is watching your own baby's rhythm with fresh eyes.

When in the day does the crying cluster? If it reliably builds toward evening or night, you may be watching the daily turn from the tense, active phase into the evening repair phase. The clock itself is a clue that this is a release, not a random storm.

What does the belly do before the crying starts? A firm, bloated, backed-up belly in the hours beforehand fits the conflict-active phase: tension building around something that isn't moving. Notice whether the hard belly comes first and the cramping comes after.

What happens at the very end of an episode? If the crying peaks and then the baby passes gas or a loose stool and settles, that's the sequence GNM would call the healing wave reaching its resolution, the morsel finally passing and clearing.

What are feeds like? Look at pace, volume, air, and the mood around feeding. A fast let-down, a quick-flowing bottle, a frantic or air-swallowing latch. These are the real, adjustable things that can leave a baby with a morsel that won't pass.

These are exactly the kinds of questions ChatGNM can walk you through, tailored to your baby's specific timing, feeds, and the sequence you're seeing night to night, so the pattern starts to make sense instead of just wearing you down.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does German New Medicine consider colic a disease?

No. GNM does not view colic as a disease or a digestive disorder. It understands colic as a healing-phase event of the intestinal smooth muscles, the cramping wave of clonic hyperperistalsis that follows a small "indigestible morsel" conflict resolving. The colic is the body moving and clearing something it couldn't pass, not a sign that something has gone wrong with the baby's gut.

Why does my baby's colic happen at the same time every evening?

GNM ties biological programs to the body's daily autonomic rhythm: an active, tense state through the day and a rest-and-repair state toward evening and night. Healing-phase events, including the intense Epileptoid Crisis, tend to surface during those evening and nighttime stretches. So tension accumulates quietly across the day as the baby takes in feeds and air, and the evening is when the gut releases it as a cramping wave. That daily turn is the predictable "witching hour."

Is colic caused by something the mother is doing wrong?

In GNM, colic is the baby's own biological program, not something transmitted from a stressed parent. That said, because a baby's world centers on feeding, the "indigestible morsel" usually lives in the feed itself: its pace, volume, swallowed air, or the tension around feeding time. So the productive focus isn't parental blame but adjustable factors at feeds, like a fast let-down, an over-flowing bottle, or an air-heavy latch.

Why does colic often end with gas or a stool?

GNM reads the end of a colic episode as the healing wave reaching its resolution. The intestinal muscles pump hard to pass what was stuck, often alongside the gut lining's own program clearing the morsel as a loose stool. When cramps are followed by diarrhea or gas, GNM sees the muscle and lining programs healing together, which is why the baby so often settles right after the gas or stool passes.

Does GNM say I should avoid treating my baby's colic?

No. GNM is an educational framework for understanding why and when colic occurs, not a directive about care. Decisions about feeding changes, soothing, or any medical concern should always be made with your pediatrician, and persistent, severe, or worsening crying, or any worry about feeding or weight, needs a medical evaluation. GNM simply offers a perspective on the timing and meaning of the symptom alongside that care.

Key Takeaways

• German New Medicine views infant colic as a healing-phase event of the intestinal smooth muscles, not a digestive disorder or a sign that something has gone wrong.
• The relevant conflict is "not being able to pass an indigestible morsel," which for a baby is often a feed, swallowed air, or intake the body couldn't move in the moment.
• In the conflict-active phase, local muscle tone tightens and the rest of the gut slows, producing a firm, bloated, backed-up belly: the quiet build before the crying.
• In the healing phase, the whole intestine swings into strong, wave-like clonic contractions. This full-gut cramping is the colic itself, peaking at the Epileptoid Crisis with intense cramps and gas. A loose stool that follows it signals the gut lining's program healing alongside the muscle's, the morsel being both passed and cleared.
• The evening clustering fits the body's daily rhythm: tension accumulates across the active daytime hours and releases during the evening and nighttime repair phase.
• Colic is the baby's own program, usually tied to the feeding relationship, so pace, volume, and swallowed air are the concrete things worth examining.
• GNM is an educational lens for the timing and meaning of colic and does not replace professional medical care.

Sources

• LearningGNM.com — Intestines and Rectum: the intestinal muscles, the indigestible morsel conflict, and intestinal colic
• LearningGNM.com — The Five Biological Laws and the two-phase pattern of Biological Special Programs
• Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer — Summary of the New Medicine (Amici di Dirk, original research documentation)