www.curezone.com has several recipes for liver/gall bladder cleanses to flush out stones. Now I know that curezone’s Dr. Hulda Clark has a bad rep for promoting
quakery but these sound pretty reasonable.
Does anyone have any experienece trying these?
What risks exist, assuming that one does not avoid more conventional
medical treatment?
Just looks like more quackery to me; from your second link:
Is just bullshit. ‘Zapping’ is a practice where you give yourself electric shocks from a special machine and it is widely touted as a cure-all. The Victorians had a bit of an excuse for believing this twaddle; we do not.
When I had gall bladder trouble a few months ago, my Dr. did not endorse these kinds of things. Said they wouldn’t help and some of them might upset my stomach.
The bile and hepatic ducts are very small. The “stones” pictures in the links could not have passed through the small diameter duct. The common bile duct is the largest, and is between 3 and 5 mm. (This is according to Gray’s Anatomy, the book, not the soap opera.) The other ducts are even smaller.
The bile ducts also have one way valves to prevent reflux of bowel contents, so anything taken by mouth would never enter the biliary system.
The recipes for gallbladder cleaning would do nothing but cause serious diarrhea, and possible dehydration.
My friend who is looking into this wants to hear from anyone with direct experience with this. She’s telling me over the phone:
"It really upsets me that people with no experience in these matters and no research done post as though they are speaking the true word of God.
We gave a very wonderful site full of testimonials from thousands of people of who have done
these cleanses. The forums do not contain one person who had not had
results from these cleanses.
"I have done the magnesium sulfate cleanse over ten times and of course it
gives you diarrhea because you have to use large quantities of a laxitive.
The magnesium acts as a dialator for the biliary ducts which allow the stones to pass. Doctors frequently don’t approve of this technique either because they haven’t experienced the efficacy themselves or because they get thousands of
dollars from removing the gall bladders- a useless procedure since these stones are actually formed in the liver as they come out coated with bile. Since most of these ‘stones’ never calcify, they don’t show up on x-ray but if one cares to examine a specimin recently passed, you will find it to be made up of cholesterol, a hard waxy substance which can only be formed in the liver, not the gall bladder.
Since doctors are trained to treat only with pharmaseuticals and/or surgery,
these natural techniques are outside the scope of most doctors’ training and experience. This cleanse has been used for centuries with amazing results.
"Every time I have done this cleanse, I have had incredible results removing hundreds to thousands of stones. After about the seventh cleanse, I’ve found my allergies to have drastically lessened or become completely eliminated. My
neck and back pain was almost completely eliminated. And I could digest my food better. The drawback to magnesium sulfate is that it causes dehydration and takes an incredible amount of willpower to swallow down, which is why I was looking at the magnesium citrate-Coke cleanse.
“If this topic interests you enough to post a response- please post an educated and/or experienced one. Thank you.”
All opinions in quotes are definitely not my own. I.m skeptical of a lot of curezone stuff but not automatically dismissive.
When I had gallstones I suffered terribly from biliary colic, triggered by the smallest trace of fat in food. I imagine the recipes containing copious quantities of olive oil would trigger severe bouts, at least they would have done in me.
In one instance I cooked some pasta and chicken breast with one teaspoon of olive oil, it was so painful that I vomited and passed out about 5 minutes after eating the first mouthful, my brother had to call an ambulance.
She had some added comments so I combined it all-
"It really upsets me that people with no experience in these matters and no research done post as though they are speaking the true word of God. We gave a very wonderful site full of testimonials from thousands of people of who have done these cleanses. The forums do not contain one person who had not had results from these cleanses.
"I have done the magnesium sulfate cleanse over ten times and of course it gives you diarrhea because you have to use large quantities of a laxitive. The magnesium acts as a dialator for the biliary ducts which allow the stones to pass. Doctors frequently don’t approve of this technique either because they haven’t experienced the efficacy themselves or because they get thousands of dollars from removing the gall bladders- a useless procedure since these stones are actually formed in the liver as they come out coated with bile. Since most of these ‘stones’ never calcify, they don’t show up on x-ray but if one cares to examine a specimin recently passed, you will find it to be made up of cholesterol, a hard waxy substance which can only be formed in the liver, not the gall bladder. The gall bladder merely asks as a repository for excess stones. Since doctors are trained to treat only with pharmaseuticals and/or surgery, these natural techniques are outside the scope of most doctors’ training and experience. This cleanse has been used for centuries with amazing results.
"Every time I have done this cleanse, I have had incredible results removing hundreds to thousands of stones. After about the seventh cleanse, I’ve found my allergies to have drastically lessened or become completely eliminated. My neck and back pain was almost completely eliminated. And I could digest my food better. The drawback to magnesium sulfate is that it causes dehydration and takes an incredible amount of willpower to swallow down, which is why I was looking at the magnesium citrate-Coke cleanse.
“If this topic interests you enough to post a response- please post an educated and/or experienced one. It’s understandable that people might be skeptical when hearing about an effective procedure outside the mainstream. If you are one of these people who tend to reject things based on their own skepticism, I invite you to do the research, read the forums and conduct an educated experiment to see for yourself whether or not this works. If you do these things and still have a negative response, then I will honor your response as you have proven to be of a rational, intelligent and scientific mind which I greatly respect.
Thank you for your time and interest.”
Yes, I know this sounds like witnessing 
IANAD but…
Clinical trials are really all that matter when it comes to evaluating novel medical procedures, treatments or drugs, not least because one cannot quantify their effectiveness and safety without them.
The common cry of quacks everywhere.
The gallbladder stores bile, so it’s not suprising that the stones are coated in bile when extracted.
They do show up on ultrasound though.
That’s only one type. 20% of stones are made up of bilirubin and calcium.
Pure cholesterol stones tend to be crystalline, and can be suprisingly jewel-like. Most stones are predominantly cholesterol with bilirubin and calcium salts mixed in.
The gallbladder stores bile. Stones form there, but not through design.
Quack’s defence, again.
So amazing that doctors and scientists have had to develop drugs and surgical procedures to treat them.
Anecdote.
Probably the placebo effect at work.
More quackspeak, I’m afraid.
Szlater, you’re doing no justice to the scientific community by waving off claims by other (not-so-scientific) people with the term “Quackspeak”. If the claims are false then explain why. Or provide a site.
No.
The burden of proof is on those making the claims. The clinical trial is the gold standard of proof in these matters. They should do one.
They can collect anecdotes until they’re blue in the face: there are tens of thousands of anecdotes of folks being kidnapped by UFO’s, predicting the future, talking to ghosts, and all manner of other things, all of which are firmly believed BY THE PRACTITIONERS to be accurate, and all are bunk.
Those promoting these claims know what they have to do. Same as any other treatment: clinical trial for effectiveness. They’re not doing it, therefore they have no scientific way to know it works, especially since they won’t have been tracking the failures or using controls. If they want to continue refusing to do real studies, that’s their choice. But it is quackery until they show it’s not. They’re not being singled out, the same rules have applied to everyone since the scientific method was born.
The rest of us don’t have time to challenge every one of these claims, especially when every negative result is met with “buts” and claims of inaccurate testing. We’d get else done, ever. The burden of proof is on them.
Most claims of ‘body cleansing’ of any kind turn out to be placebos or even harmful. That includes things like colon cleansing. I would assume that the people on that website make money off selling their cleansing products, so any claims that Dr.s are out only for the money can be directly applied to them as well.
If you think about it, the human body is designed to clean itself very well. Ingesting / inserting foreign substances can easily upset your body’s balance and make things worse. Observe the warnings about douching and colon cleansing, they flush out good bacteria and things your body needs to function properly.
My gall bladder was removed due to cholesterol build-up. It is not a pointless or unnecessary procedure, the intense pain I had every day no matter what I ate only ended when it was removed. My Dr. told me that even if I had stones and they dislodged on their own (it happens sometimes) that problems are likely to recur. I would ask people who have relief after performing a ‘cleansing’ how long they were symptom free. My guess is they soon had problems again and had to again buy cleansing products and go through unpleasant diarreah for possible short term relief. Rinse, repeat. Ensuring that those people selling the cleansing products get return business when a simple surgery may be all they need.
Any business selling medical solutions that dismisses medical specialists and proven, studied techniques outright has the burden of proof on them. Anecdotes are not scientific proof. It is one thing if using the product has no potential harm but that is not the case here. They are out for a buck and have no real concern for their clients - ask if the cleansing does not work if they get their money back, or if they are then advised to seek a Dr.'s advice.
I agree. When I asked for a reason as to why the claims are false I meant the obvious reasons. I wasn’t asking for Szlater to explain in detail why each claim doesn’t work. If someone has reason to believe that something is “Quackspeak” I would Like to know that reason, that is all.
Here’s advice from the Mayo Clinic
It basically says that cleansing does not work:
“However, there is no reliable evidence that a gallbladder cleanse is useful in preventing or treating gallstones or any other disease.”
and that “Also, people who try gallbladder cleansing may see what looks like gallstones in their stool the next day. But what they are really seeing is globs of oil, juice and other materials — not the remnants of gallstones.”
And it can do harm: “Gallbladder cleansing is not without risk. Some people have nausea, vomiting and diarrhea during the flushing or cleansing period. Individual components of the herbal mixtures used in a gallbladder cleanse may present their own health hazards.”
“Liver cleanses” of this sort do not do what they are claiming to do: that is, they are not flushing out ‘hundreds to thousands’ of stones from the gallbladder or biliary tree.
Of course, since IAAD, and a surgeon to boot, my experience will be discounted. Let’s get some preliminaries out of the way:
I have removed diseased gallbladders, both laparoscopically and via open technique. I am, however, not a hepatobiliary surgery specialist.
I have visually inspected and palpated healthy gallbladders and livers in patients who were having other procedures done.
I have consulted with gastroenterologists who perform ERCP and other endoscopic bile duct manipulations, and have assisted in said procedures. I have performed intraoperative cholangiograms - X-rays in which dye is injected into the biliary tree to confirm that there are not retained stones.
I have not personally taken any ‘liver cleanse’. I have prescribed bowel preps for patients scheduled to undergo GI tract surgery; I am familiar with the effect of said bowel-emptying regimens.
I have treated, and operated on, patients who have performed ‘liver cleanses’ on themselves. Obviously, there could theoretically be 100 persons cured of gallstones by ‘liver cleanses’ and therefore never seen by a physician for every 1 person whose gallbladder is removed after the cleanse fails. I cannot comment on patients who I do not see. I also cannot say whether a random person on the Internet who had abdominal pain that went away after a ‘cleanse’ ever even had gallstones to begin with.
I cannot comment on the chemical makeup of a greenish lump sitting in a collander in someone’s toilet. I have not performed analysis on the stool of someone who performed a ‘cleanse’.
I hope that the above will help forestall some objections. So, why do I believe this ‘liver cleanse’ stuff to be ineffective?
The bile duct is too small to pass objects of this size without significant pain, if at all. No amount of magnesium will relax the bile duct enough to allow such macroscopic objects as are seen in the photos on those sites to pass. Physicians use a potent agent, glucagon, during ERCP and surgery to induce relaxation of the sphincter of Oddi at the far end of the common bile duct. Even with glucagon and active mechanical flushing, stones in the common bile duct greater than 2-4 mm will usually require active measures such as wire baskets or incision into the duct to remove them. If magnesium worked to make the duct relax so much, GI docs would be using it left and right to make ERCP easier. If you want to argue for a conspiracy amonst MD’s to keep effective drugs away from the people, you will have to explain why some subgroup of MD’s (say, gastroenterologists) are not using the drug to take business and $$ away from another group (say, general surgeons).
The gallbladder holds bile. Bile is a complex liquid made up of cholesterol, water, bile salts, and a number of other compounds. Its makeup varies from person to person, and will vary in an individual depending on diet or overall health. Stones form in the gallbladder because the gallbladder wall slowly absorbs water from the bile until the other components come out of solution. Relatively few stones are formed in the intrahepatic bile ducts, but this can happen - usually it is the case that there is some obstruction in the duct that causes the bile to back up above the blockage. All stones will be covered in bile because they are crystallized from it. Having said that, a typical gallstone may be faceted from grinding against its neighbors, but, depending on their makeup, most are waxy-brittle rather than rocklike (some bilirubin stones are hard). They can be solitary or multiple, smooth or rough, light or dark in color, sinkers or floaters. Stones take a considerable amount of time to form, like pearls.
It seems reasonable to me that the material that people are pooping out after a ‘liver cleanse’ is an emulsion of the oil, salts, and acid taken by mouth, mixed with some (normally released in response to the oil) bile. pancreatic secretions, and mucus. This mixture would be digested and absorbed like other dietary oils and juices but for the whomping case of diarrhea induced by the magnesium sulfate.
When performing a colonoscopy, I prescribe a regimen to clean out the colon; to ‘prep’ it. A poor prep results in a colon full of greenish brown poop. A good prep results in a whistle-clean pinkwalled colon. A fair prep results in pale-tan-green mucusy goobers stuck to the bowel wall. The fact that the ‘cleanse’ can be repeated over and over and over, producing hundreds of ‘stones’ per c;eanse, leads me to believe that the ‘stones’ are the semidigested remnants of the ‘cleanse’ ingredients.
The instructions given in some of those links are, IMO, crazy.
Can they give any justification for these? If I told you that your medicine would only work if you were standing on your head, would you not challenge me?
Now, what actual adverse effects could occur from the ‘cleanse’? Well, dehydration would be the main one due to the nausea/diarrhea. In a person with real and symptomatic gallstones, the ingested oil could cause abdominal pain due to spasm of the gallbladder. Someone may delay definitive surgical management of symptomatic gallstones, leading to a more difficult and risky operation.
I’d like to thank brossa & Szlater for their well thought-out, lucid posts.
I guess, tried to turn the tide of ignorance with a teaspoon.
Szlater, I meant that serious diarrhea, and possible dehydration would be the outcome for anyone. Indeed, you’re right, in the presence of real gall stones, the symptoms could be much worse. I didn’t intend to imply that those would be the only possible symptoms. I certianly should have added that the fat in the “treatment” could easily cause biliary colic. I apologize.
FriarTed, While I’m sure your friend believes what she says, someone who disagrees with the “treatment” and gives valid reasons why it isn’t reasonable, does not translate into “no experience or research.”
Testimonials mean little or nothing in the scientific method.
They are opinions. The only things that matters are provable, reproducible facts.
If ONE person could tell us they had taken their “stones” to a legitimate medical lab, had them analyzed and found they were, indeed, gall stones, we would be more inclined to seek further information.
Research on gall stones, how they are formed, how to treat their symptoms and how to remove them, has been on-going for decades.
The methods in question have been looked into by the medical community and rejected years, if not decades ago.
If ONE person could tell us they had taken their “stones” to a legitimate medical lab, had them analyzed and found they were, indeed, gall stones, we would be more inclined to seek further information.
I’m not recomending this,its for educational perpose only etc link
My friend wanted to respond, so here goes (hopefully for the last time-)
"My friend FriarTed tells me that people have made so many what-seem-to-me-narrow-minded comments because they are of a more scientific mind. How can this be when the scientific method states that you must test a hypothesis in order to prove or disprove it? Perhaps it is easier for some to casually dismiss something out of ignorance than it is for them to educate themselves and to hone their intellect. What a terrible disappointment.
My purpose in starting this discussion was simply to connect with people who have shared in this experience,
not to declare open war on something that has proven true and effective for hundreds of thousands of people.
It has been said that I must prove my theory to be true. That is only so in a classic debate which this was never intended to be. I have no intention of proving this practice to people who are unwilling to do research on their own.
Those who claim there is no medical peer-review that support this have obviously not been making much use of said materials. Many doctors are aware of this procedure and also prescribe it for their patients very successfully.
In fact, I was first made aware of this through a very respected internist many years ago. If I wanted to I could flood this site with thousands of statements of people who have put this into practice with amazing results, but what would the point be? People would still claim that since it isn’t upheld in a peer-reviewed journal (as far as they know), it has no validity.
It seems like thousands of experienced individuals don’t measure up to one trained “medical” expert, In either case, these studies do exist in the journals so the point is moot.
I never wanted to create a debate or tell people to try this for themselves, but to seek out individuals who had
tried this, so why individuals have to attack something they know next to nothing about, I really can’t say, but I feel sorry for people who are so rigidly constrained by the few small straws that they can grasp that they miss out seeing the entire field of gold before them."
Ted, my longtime friend, your other friend doesn’t have gallstones if those are her objections. If she did the “cleansing” procedure would make her so damned sick she’d go after the practioner with a rusty razor covered with flesh-eating bacteria. Honest to God, if you have gallstones the last damn thing you want to do is ANYTHING that might cause your gallbladder to release bile and “cleanse” it because stones so easily block the duct. Mine were the calcified and size of grapes.
I’ve heard (no cite because I lost it but i have the experiences of me and some others to supprt it) gall bladder surgery is said to be the one that nobody who survives it regrets having done.
Please read The Bizarre Claims of Hulda Clark by Stephen Barrett, M.D.
Or perhaps we are sufficiently educated to realize that was is being made here is an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Also, since there is adequate proof that gall bladder surgery is efficacious for the problem the burden of proof is on “cleansers” to prove they are equal or superior to a surgery that permanently takes care of the problem.
In other words, don’t talk to me unless you agree with me.
I am Keeper of the Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals where I work, so it’s fair to say I “make use of such materials” on a regular basis. I have never seen any study that supported the use of such cleansers in treating gall bladder disease.
Doctors vary considerably in competency. Are the doctors doing this experts in their field, or sort of on the fringe? Because no way are “cleansers” standard treatment for anything except, as noted in a previous post, when the colon needs cleaning out for examination and/or surgical purposes.
Well, I would raise two points here:
It has no PROVEN validity. Would you buy a car without some assurance that it is in working order and will function as intended? No? Then why would you buy a medical treatment that is unproven?
In many cases that is in fact true. That’s why we do not allow non-doctor individuals to practice medicine, write prescriptions, or perform their own appendectomies.
Then provide cites so we may independently confirm that these studies and scientific trials exist.
My “backpedal” detector just went off. Hang on a sec, I need to turn that alarm down…BRB…
Huh. Well, let’s see, we’ve had folks who have had gall bladder disease and gallstones check in to discuss their personal experiences. I’d say they know something abou the whole matter. Picunurse is a trained medical professional (nurse). Brossa is a doctor and surgeon. Velma provided information from the Mayo Clinic specifically regarding such “cleansing”. It’s pretty lame (actually in the Pit I would have used much stronger language) to claim that these people know “next to nothing” about the subject.
I feel sorry that some people are so taken in by quackery they can’t think logically and no longer engage their ability to reason on a subject.