Supplemental Treatment For Intestinal Fungus, Yeast, Candida, And Parasite Infections By  Cleansing The Liver And Gall Bladder

Read the INTESTINAL CLEANSING PAGE first, before reading this page.

In the Internet alternative medicine counterculture, there is a popular liver and gall bladder flush based on an olive oil and grapefruit juice purge, but in a complex protocol that takes weeks and uses a number of supplements and special dietary requirements (lots of apple juice, for example). The "simple liver and gall bladder flush presented here" is a simplified version of this purge that originates in a chiropractic medical education book of long ago. Although our editors could not locate the source, we recreated the information from personal knowledge. It's too simple to get wrong. A very similar version to the following is at Mary’s Herbs.

THE SIMPLE FLUSH

At bedtime, on an empty stomach, mix and drink one-half cup or more of olive oil (about 4-6 oz.) with the same amount of grapefruit juice. Don't sip -- chug it down. Go right to bed and lay on your right side with your right knee tucked up as far as you can get it. The olive oil will flow up the common bile duct into the liver and the gall bladder and release gall stones that have been stuck there. The gall stones are mostly semi- hardened bile, dark green in color, of sizes from tiny to a half-inch in diameter or so -- sometimes called sludge. They can be squished, and will melt if left at room temperature. If your liver and gall bladder were congested with this sludge and had not been functioning properly, the olive oil will squirt out of you the next morning, undigested, and very likely will flush out any number of these gall stones. The next time you do this flush, your liver and gall bladder should be working quite a bit better, and the olive oil will be digested into a semisolid substance looking somewhat like dumplings. This occurrence demonstrates that the treatment was effective. Repeat the flush, perhaps once a week on a Friday or Saturday night (when you aren't planning to do anything the next morning), until no more green gunk comes out.

Buy Extra Virgin olive oil (Bertolini is a good brand for this) -- it doesn't taste bad by itself. Even though the olive oil tastes OK, it would be tough getting a half-cup down straight. So, you mix it with any kind of grapefruit juice, sweetened or not, as you prefer. The grapefruit juice probably also acts as a cutting agent to help release the stuck gall stones. Take both at room temperature -- they mix better and go down better. The oil and juice separate almost instantly, so you need to use a container that you can open in a second or so. You could even try holding a flat coaster on top of a water glass (but you probably want to try this with just water before you do it with oil and grapefruit juice). Put the two liquids in the container, shake violently, and drink it down immediately. The principle is for a torrent of liquid to wash out the liver and gall bladder so don't sip it, chug it. You might want to chase that with a couple of swallows of pure grapefruit juice to get rid of the aftertaste of the olive oil. That's it -- it's that simple and it works remarkably well.

Some sources on the Internet claim that also taking Epsom salts helps by relaxing the smooth muscles of the bile duct and thus allowing even large-sized gall stones to pass easily.

CONTRARY ARGUMENTS

Some sources on the Internet suggest that these gall stones aren't really gall stones at all, but are artifacts created by drinking the olive oil. "There is considerable controversy about whether this protocol (lemon & olive oil) results in anything other than nausea and the passing of saponified artifacts created by drinking olive oil. To explain: olive oil or any oil in combination with bile salts & by a process known as saponification, can produce soft spheres which contain bile salts & fatty acids. These are not gallstones; they are saponified artifacts." The argument against this position is that, if there were truth to the saponification theory, every time you did the flush you'd get the same results with the discharge the next morning of these green saponified artifacts. The experience of people who have done this flush is quite the contrary -- the first few times produce gall stones, and when they are gone, they are gone. Thus, the green sludge is not being chemically created each time you do the flush.

CAUTION AND DISCLAIMER

A note of caution as expressed by a Naturopathic physician on one discussion forum in case you have hard stones: "the process of passing the stones is very painful and can precipitate a surgical emergency. I would not recommend that you try this without the guidance of a licensed Naturopathic doctor. If the stones you have are too large to slide through the common bile duct, I would actively discourage any effort at a liver cleanse or gall bladder flush." Maybe we all should get x-rayed and CT scanned before we do anything -- use your own judgment. But be aware that medical doctors are remarkably unfamiliar with the gall bladder flush, and if they suspect gall bladder problems they will almost invariably recommend surgical removal. That's what they were trained to do, and they get $5,000 for it.

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

The following message is quoted from a web forum discussing medical issues. This particular topic thread is among pregnant women having gall bladder problems.

Re: gallbladder
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Radonna,

If you're going to wait until after the baby is born to have your gallbladder removed, let me give you a little trick that might help you cope. It's a natural gallbladder "flush" and really the best time to do it is when you're NOT having an attack, but I have been known to do it in the middle of an attack just to get some relief.

Okay just to warn you, it sounds really gross and it IS pretty gross but I swear it WORKS like a charm and is completely natural.

You mix equal amounts of extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice (I always squeezed my own) and guzzle it down. I usually used 6 ounces of each for the best results. You have to stir and stir and stir to get it to start to mix together and then the easiest thing to do is just hold your nose and chug it. If you did a search on "gall bladder flush" you'd probably find other variations of it, a lot of them will say to lie down on your right side and "sip" the concoction over the course of an hour. TRUST ME, you can't SIP this stuff. Guzzling it is the best.

What happens is, the olive oil automatically makes your gall bladder start to contract, which will make the stone that is trapped (what is causing the pain) move out of the duct. I can't remember what the lemon juice is for, except to make the olive oil more palatable. Within a few hours and probably the next day too, you will pass the stones in your BM. It's the weirdest thing in the world! Sorry if this is TMI, but I only wish someone had told me about this YEARS earlier so I could have had some relief. You will definitely know that you have passed the stones because they are bright GREEN. The first time I did the flush, I passed literally hundreds of stones. My body just produced them like crazy.

Which is another thing I wanted to tell you. Although eating low fat can HELP, it's NOT what you eat that causes stones or not. It's YOUR body. The stones are made of a certain kind of cholesterol that your body makes, NOT the kind of cholesterol that is in your blood that comes from the foods you eat. People either produce stones or they don't, some at a much faster rate than others. When my surgeon finished my surgery, he told me it was full of thousands of stones .... when I had had the ultrasound a couple of weeks earlier the U/S technician said he'd never seen so many stones. I actually did a flush between the ultrasound and my surgery to kind of "clear out" some of the stones and make it a little easier to remove, but the doc said there were so many that they were spilling out every time he'd try to pull it out and he'd have to go back and get the ones that had come out.

I really didn't mean to go on this long, but I figured if I could help, I would. My doctor was fine with me doing the flushes. The first time I went to see him, we talked for over an hour and he told me, "You're the first patient I've ever had that has studied up on gall bladders more than I have!" He had never heard of the flushes before and actually started recommending them to patients after me since it is all natural.

As far as doing one while pregnant, I don't see any reason why you couldn't, olive oil and lemon juice have nothing in them that would harm the baby. Of course the best bet is to ask your doctor about doing it. But I will warn you, you'll probably get a funny look!

I hope I could help! That pain is just the WORST and I hate to hear about anyone having to live with it!

Meredith

edd 4-4-03