My doctor told me I have Cirrhosis of the liver, which was confirmed by a biopsy as well as a CT scan.
His exact words were “You have the liver of a 90 year old man”, I am 45.
I’ve been browsing the web trying to learn about this awful disease and I came upon this ‘system’ which is supposed to reverse the condition.
It is called The Ezra Protocol.
As I started reading about it, it became apparent their website was like one of those late-night infomercials where they really try to hard sell you.
My specials told me this disease was not reversible so I thought some of you good people might have an idea if this is a scam before I spend $47 to buy the system.
I searched google for reviews, but every review so far takes me back to their site to buy the system, which leads me to believe these people really understand how website optimization work with regards to search engines.
“The Ezra protocol is backed with over 50.000 hours of nutritional expertise.”
Jeeze, with over fifty hours of expertise, it’s a Miracle!
Or not… :dubious:
To be fair, they may well be following one of those European conventions for using dots and commas in numbers which are reversed from the American convention.
I was all set to have bariatric weight-los surgery, and when they opened me up to begin the procedure, the surgeon noticed my spleed was grossly enlarged and saw that my liver was %^&, so he took a biposy and closed me up without doing the operation, said it was too dangerious to continue.
European punctuation. Jacob Ezra is supposedly in Reims, France, but–as Gus said–Google can’t find any evidence of him other than in reference to that website or its author.
A quick skim sets off a lot of quack flags for me:
If you google “Ezra Protocol,” ten pages in and possibly more, there isn’t a SINGLE site that isn’t parroting the wonders of the Ezra Protocol. No scientific reviews, no debate. And the domain names coming up are incredibly diverse and many have absolutely nothing to do with liver disease or even health in general: nanetteleporeperfume.info, www.newhomesecuritytips.com, homedecorationstips.com, gospelmusicgroup.blogspot.com. This is an infodump intended to bury any criticism of their product. Even a couple of sites with “Ezra Protocol - Scam?” type names are simply the same text and graphs as all the others. They’ve made it virtually impossible to google their book and find any information about it except what they want you to see.
The site promises that one special, all natural cheap ingredient (which you have to pay for the book to find out - my money is on cider vinegar) will bring many magical results - cure your dying liver! Lose weight! Clear up rashes! Clean your clogged arteries! And the ever-vague Feel healthier!
The site claims doctors have been ruined for revealing this information (because “THEY” don’t want anybody to know, so that “THEY” can keep selling you drugs that don’t work. Because every single doctor out there is an evil person who would rather see their patients die a horrible lingering death rather than cure them and get paid less.) All you have to do is pay THESE people for the information (what, did you think they’d tell you for free? Fuck no, they want to sell you their book that doesn’t work.)
Read this article on the first known lead on a real cure for cirrhosis. There is information on the study which touches on the causes and mechanisms of the liver damage that occurs, and WHY this protein has potential to actually reverse the damage. Compare that article to the “explanations” on the liver bible page, with its vague touting of “unclogging sluggish cells” and “reversing processes of toxic buildup.”
I do wish you luck Gus, I just wish people like this had better morals.
This is exactly what I was going to point out. At least the website didn’t purport to give you the “FACTS YOUR DOCTOR DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW!!!” … but the implication is there.
There is* no *reason your doctor would have any interest in not making you better, or not providing you with a cure if one exists. I’m as cynical as the next guy, but I still believe that doctors are actually in the business of helping people. And curing your cirrhosis won’t make him lose his vacation house anyway.
I’m very sorry for your diagnosis, and I wish you nothing but the best. But, yeah, it’s a scam. Sorry.
I’m sorry to hear that you received this news. It must have been awful to go into the operation expecting a positive health outcome only to have this discovery. But maybe discovering it now rather than further down the road will allow you to do what you can to take care of your liver before any more damage occurs.
Unfortunately, this ‘Ezra protocol’ definitely has all the hallmarks of a scam: Promising an “easy cure” but for a price. If there really were an “easy” cure to cirrhosis, of course the news of that would spread like wildfire and nobody with cirrhosis would need a liver transplant anymore.
I am not a GI specialist, but I am a doctor, and I promise you that there is no conspiracy that forces physicians to tout conventional treatments instead of “EASY NATURAL CURES!!!111111”.
If there was a simple natural cure for some serious illness that really worked, of course I’d tell my patients about it. I want my patients to leave my office happy and healthy (even if you believe that docs only care about money, hey, having patients leave satisfied is good for business!)
Sadly, these kinds of “natural cures” are so often just cases of a sociopathic predatory con man who is intentionally taking advantage of sick people and their understandable wish for a cure. I think it’s despicable, kicking people when they’re already down.
In some cases, conventional doctors do recommend a low protein diet for people who have liver problems. If your specialists have not yet talked to you about diet issues, it certainly would be reasonable to ask them if they have recommendations about what diet to follow. Since they have all your information and bloodwork results, they really are the best people to advise you on this sort of thing.
You might want to try talking to the poster on here named Faithfool since her husband is currently dealing with liver disease as well.
All the best to you.
Whenever some ill-defined “they” don’t want you to know about some medical treatment, it’s almost always because whatever it is, is a scam.
Think about it. If there were an easy, inexpensive cure for a disease that worked for most people, insurance companies in the US would be all over it, like white on rice. You’d have a hard time getting them to approve anything else. It would be like generic drugs or over-the-counter drugs, which insurance companies certainly do try to get everyone to use. Just try getting a prescription drug for allergies sometime, and getting your insurance company to pay for it. They will push back on this, because they know that over-the-counter drugs that the insurance company does not have to pay for work well enough for most people’s allergies. They would love it if some inexpensive thing you can get in the grocery store worked to cure cirrhosis, because then they wouldn’t have to pay for other treatments for it.
You could live with the liver of a 90 year old man if that’s all that was in play. What supposed to have induced this disease since you don’t drink? Did you drink previously? Drug use can also cause it whether recreational or prescribed. Look for lifestyle changes that might stabilize this condition.
I couldn’t get all the way through the Ezra website without gagging on claims like “the blood of cirrhosis patients is as thick as yogurt” and the usual nonsense about needing to flush toxins out of your liver.
I did notice that the woman claiming she was cured of cirrhosis apparently never had it. She describes being told she was at risk of developing cirrhosis, went on to lose weight and then being in great health (no documentation I could see of what her liver looked like afterwards as compared to whatever the initial biopsy showed).
I look at a fair number of liver biopsies as a pathologist, and there are various degrees of fibrosis leading up to and including cirrhosis (defined as complete regenerative liver nodules surrounded by fibrous bands). True cirrhosis, which is not reversible currently, has numerous causes, including alcohol, other toxins, inborn metabolic errors (like alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency) and in quite a few people the precursor disease is non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (fatty liver with inflammation, which may lead to cirrhosis).
Best wishes to Gus, and I agree that the cirrhosis scamsters are a low and sleazy bunch. I had never heard of this “protocol” before, but I suppose anytime there’s a chronic condition that medicine has no cure for*, quacks will spring up to offer false hope for a price.
*a possible exception being liver transplantation.
I am so sorry to hear about your diagnosis. My dad was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver in Jan 2011 and was given 2 years to live. He died on Jun 22, 2011. My dad saw a lot of specialist and all of them were in agreement that cirrhosis of the liver is not reversible. Liver transplant was the only option for him. He worked for over 3 months to get on the liver transplant list; made the list on June 19 but passed away 3 days later.
I wish you the best. My advice is to change your lifestyle immediately and seek proper treatment from reputable medical providers.
