Gallstone problem

[dav]

Hi all,

This post contains a lot of background information and i understand that will be unappealing for some, cliffnotes at the bottom for those that don't want to read all.

Since this is my first post here i thought I'd explain a little about myself. My name is David, I'm 21 years old and live in Scotland. I've been lurking this forum for a few weeks gathering info about paleo dieting. I'd like to say that i didn't change my diet originally for any other reason than to get healthier. I don't seem to have problems with foods that other people have and I'm not recovering from any illness.

Around Sept 8th last year i decided to lose weight (i weighed 330lbs) and thought switching to a vegan diet would be a good idea since most junk foods contained meat/dairy. I had 1L green smoothies daily and cooked stirfries/snacks. I took a b12 supplement with flax oil for 3 months then switched to a raw vegan diet. I also started taking MSM to help my skin.

On the 100% raw vegan diet i started detoxing for a day or so after switching to 100% raw and felt really good eating only salads/dehydrated foods/smoothies. I continued to take b12/flax supplements daily. Soon after i came across the paleo diet but still followed the raw vegan diet for a month. Since Sept 8th Ive lost ~65lbs.


Now, onto the health problem! The problem started early in January when i started receiving infrequent pains in the center of my chest that felt like indigestion. They lasted around 8 hours and i felt like i wanted to puke but couldn't. I always had the problem after laying down to sleep and got almost no sleep those nights. These attacks were 2-3 days apart and i couldn't figure out what it was that was causing the problem. After the third attack i kept a food log and ate ~280g of raw meat to see how it affected me. I slept fine for a few days and then i had the most painful attack ever that kept me up all night & vomiting 3 times. After 8 hours of ceaseless intense chest pain i decided i had to go see a doctor. To cut a long story short, i kept getting this chest pain for 24 hours and was hospitalised for 2.5 days during which time they told me i had gallstones.

The doctors asked me questions about my raw diet and didn't seem to know much about raw food. They tried to blame the raw meat but i had 3 attacks prior to the 4th and had 2 excellent nights sleep prior to the 4th (most severe w/ vomiting) attack which made me think it was totally unrelated.

Its my impression that most people who get gallstones follow a high fat diet and the advice the doctors gave me was to follow a low fat diet despite the fact i told them i was already following an extremely low fat diet. After some research i found that losing weight rapidly can lead to gallstones:

Rapid weight loss. As the body metabolizes fat during prolonged fasting and rapid weight loss—such as “crash diets”—the liver secretes extra cholesterol into bile, which can cause gallstones. In addition, the gallbladder does not empty properly.
http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/gallstones/

I looked at some gallbladder cleansing methods and started one immediately which was eating 100% apples / radishes for 5 days. I followed that for 2 days then felt terrible due to the sugar highs/lows, decided to switch back to my normal diet. Another gallbladder cleanse i found involved epsom salts/olive oil/lemon but Ive been unable to get some Epsom salts till tomorrow. I read something about raw meat being harder on the liver on this forum and although I was unable to find a reliable source on that (link was dead) I implemented some smoked fish and cooked grass fed beef b/c I'm trying to help my liver/gallbladder recover at this point.

Now, i plan to do the gallbladder cleanse tomorrow and was curious if theres anything else you would suggest i should do? I'm curious if any paleo dieters have had gallbladder problems wrt weight loss? Also, maybe the paleo diet will be more beneficial to aiding in gallstones as its a little higher in fat but not excessively? Fwiw, ive not had any problems since being released from the hospital 5 days ago.

My daily meals used to consist of 1-2 huge salads with dehydrated food.
Now I'm mostly having 500g of grass-fed meat by itself and a salad.

Thanks for those that read all of it. I eagerly await any responses!

David.


Cliffnotes:
- Eating paleo. Cooked meat for the moment (easier on liver?) with raw everything else.
- Have gallstones
- Transitioned from cooked vegan -> raw vegan -> raw/cooked paleo lately.
- Lost ~65 lbs since Sept 8th when i started dieting.
Questions:
- Doing gallbladder cleanse tomorrow and was wondering if theres anything else you would suggest i should do?
- Curious if paleo dieters have had gallbladder problems wrt weight loss?
- Also, do you think the paleo diet would be beneficial to both weight loss while not being excessive to the point of worsening the gallstone problem?

[djr_81]

Thanks for those that read all of it. I eagerly await any responses!

I read it all David. I'm sure most of the others will as well. People around here seem more inclined than other forums I've frequented on the internet; maybe since we're all in various stages of health recovery or bettering ourselves through the help of others.

FWIW I find I have a much easier time on raw meats than cooked. It's less food ingested than cooked to satiate my hunger which means my body has less of a burden on it. I also find 2 larger meals a day help me feel best (once a day is too long a span for me personally) but this might be too stressful for your body at the moment.
I did have liver pains in the past as a result of my food allergies. I don't experience pains at any point now but it may be due to my diet being purely grassfed meat & fat with no other variables.

I'm sure I'll post more later but it's the end of my workday and I'm out of here. I just wanted to let you know you really shouldn't be concerned about eating raw, IMO.

[goodsamaritan]

Hi. I'm a veteran of 20+ liver flushes.
Used different variants
- Hulda Clark
- 2 day apple juice fast
- Andreas Moritz
- Dr Sutter coke flush
- egg yolk liver flush (most paleo)
 
Go ahead and do them all.

For big stones like what you got, those apples and radishes will have helped you soften them up.  Your hulda clark style liver flush with epsom salts could free up the first batch.

If you feel you need a second flush immediately, do it after another week.

then every 2 weeks liver flushes.

Unless you choose later on to do egg yolk liver flushing which can be done 4 straight days in a week every week.

Take pics of your stones as a remembrance of how idiotic low fat diets are.

Replenish your liver nutrition by trying aajonus green juices, wheat grass or bieler's soup, raw red meat.

Don't go into high fat diet yet, your liver and gallbladder may not be ready for it yet.  the liver flushes are already high fat.  Slowly increase your fat intake.  If you're not liver flushing, 2 raw eggs in the morning are cleansing.

When you feel your liver is online, you can gorge on lots of raw animal fat as in a high fat diet.

Raw fat is key.  Avoid cooked fat / cooked food like the plague as you want to empty yourself of stones.  Nobody wants to liver flush forever.  Like those clueless ones at curezone who have done 50+ liver flushes.  Maybe you will be empty of stones at 10?

See
http://www.curemanual.com/detox-protocols/liver-flush/edwin-2day-apple-juice-fast-liver-flush
http://www.curemanual.com/detox-protocols/liver-flush/hulda-clark-s-liver-flush-method
http://www.curemanual.com/blog/2008/10/liver-flushing-using-egg-yolks-lime-juice-and-oil-by-tsetsi/
http://www.curemanual.com/blog/2008/10/dr-sutters-olive-oil-coke-lemon-liver-flush/

What other detox protocols have you done?  Colon cleanse and chiropractics should ideally come first.  See the order of detox here:

http://www.curemanual.com/detox-protocols

[dav]

Thank you DJR & goodsamaritan.

@DJR, i know what you mean. I feel very low on energy for hours after consuming cooked food.

@goodsamaritan, thats very interesting. I read about colon cleansing coming first but does it take a month or longer to properly cleanse the colon? Should i do that first and not even think about my gallstones till a month (or more?) of colon cleansing has occured? I dont ask because im impatient and unwilling to do it, i just view the gallstones as an immediate priority.

Also, is there a specific product you would recommend for colon cleansing or do they all do a pretty good job?

I havent done any kind of cleansing before and hadn't considered it before this problem occured. I guess we all need to start sometime?

Thanks for the advice on this, i highly appreciate it.

David.

[goodsamaritan]

If you are doing your liver flush tomorrow, go ahead and do it.  Just do the colon cleanse later.  Epsom salts should allow you to poop it out instead of recirculating in your intestines and you may feel like dying if the stones are poisonous enough.

Any of the herbal colon cleansers should do a good job.  I like LBB from http://www.barefootherbalistmh.com because it re-trains your colon muscles so it gets toned to tip top shape.  It worked as barefoot said it would on me.  Now I am free of any need for colon cleansers.

The ideal is to be free of all those aids and you came to the right forum and the right diet.

[dav]

If you are doing your liver flush tomorrow, go ahead and do it.  Just do the colon cleanse later.  Epsom salts should allow you to poop it out instead of recirculating in your intestines and you may feel like dying if the stones are poisonous enough.

Any of the herbal colon cleansers should do a good job.  I like LBB from http://www.barefootherbalistmh.com because it re-trains your colon muscles so it gets toned to tip top shape.  It worked as barefoot said it would on me.  Now I am free of any need for colon cleansers.

The ideal is to be free of all those aids and you came to the right forum and the right diet.

Theres been a delay in the epsom salts i ordered so i decided to do a colon cleanse first, just thought i'd keep u updated

Thanks

[dav]

If you are doing your liver flush tomorrow, go ahead and do it.  Just do the colon cleanse later.  Epsom salts should allow you to poop it out instead of recirculating in your intestines and you may feel like dying if the stones are poisonous enough.

Any of the herbal colon cleansers should do a good job.  I like LBB from http://www.barefootherbalistmh.com because it re-trains your colon muscles so it gets toned to tip top shape.  It worked as barefoot said it would on me.  Now I am free of any need for colon cleansers.

The ideal is to be free of all those aids and you came to the right forum and the right diet.

So the epsom salts arrived and i had another attack after just under 2 weeks with no attack. I delayed in using them as i wanted to do a colon cleanse first, tried a herbal colon cleanser that did very little.. just some loose stools 2 times and that was it.

I had a new (5th) attack 3 days ago and i took some epsom salts / olive oil. For the first 1 1/2 days i had gallbladder pain but i took 1tbsp epsom salts and a small amount of olive oil and noticed some stones. They were covered with a bit of feces but i broke them apart and they seemed rather black and floated. I didnt pass much else. I did a proper cleanse and followed hulda clarks advice - that evening and since then my gallbladder hasnt hurt really but ive got a rather sore lower-right abdominal pain.. gallstones in intestines? Any suggestions about what i should do from here? I had a medium-sized smoothie to hopefully get things moving but nothing really happened and its still fairly painful.

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Thanks,

David

[goodsamaritan]

Lower right abdomen still sounds like the liver.  Expect to do many more liver flushes.

If you continue eating apples or drinking 1 liter of apple juice a day, it should work at letting your liver flow.

You can try bieler's soup once or twice a day to help restore nutrients in your liver.  Wheatgrass juice if you like it and it works for you.

You can do a daily egg yolk liver flush to give nutrition and to keep on daily liver flushing.  This is first thing in the morning 3 egg yolks + 1/2 cup of freshly squeezed lemon + 1 tablespoon of peanut oil / virgin coconut oil / raw butter / extra virgin olive oil

where / = or

Do a warm water enema after 2 hours.

If you know how to do coffee enemas, go do them.

If you have a naturopath / chiropractor go see them, they can ease your mind and give you confidence.  You are in the hard stage right now and all the while trying to learn all this at once.

There is a liver flush support forum in curezone.com you might also like to check out.

[dav]

Lower right abdomen still sounds like the liver.  Expect to do many more liver flushes.

If you continue eating apples or drinking 1 liter of apple juice a day, it should work at letting your liver flow.

You can try bieler's soup once or twice a day to help restore nutrients in your liver.  Wheatgrass juice if you like it and it works for you.

You can do a daily egg yolk liver flush to give nutrition and to keep on daily liver flushing.  This is first thing in the morning 3 egg yolks + 1/2 cup of freshly squeezed lemon + 1 tablespoon of peanut oil / virgin coconut oil / raw butter / extra virgin olive oil

where / = or

Do a warm water enema after 2 hours.

If you know how to do coffee enemas, go do them.

If you have a naturopath / chiropractor go see them, they can ease your mind and give you confidence.  You are in the hard stage right now and all the while trying to learn all this at once.

There is a liver flush support forum in curezone.com you might also like to check out.

Thanks for the reply, you're a big help

I continued with the apple juice and contacted a naturopath near me. I'll have to wait till Monday to hear from them though.

I've also made some bielers soup and had a bowl of it already. Eating another after i write this.

The lower-right abdominal pain has gone away but my gallbladder area is still sore. Its not like im having an attack, its just quite sore. Im considering taking some more epsom salts to see if that would help any trapped stones pass. Would you recommend that?

Hopefully i can see the naturopath tomorrow and they'll be able to help me some more. Will keep you updated.

[Fermenter Zym]

Thanks for the reply, you're a big help

I continued with the apple juice and contacted a naturopath near me. I'll have to wait till Monday to hear from them though.

I've also made some bielers soup and had a bowl of it already. Eating another after i write this.

The lower-right abdominal pain has gone away but my gallbladder area is still sore. Its not like im having an attack, its just quite sore. Im considering taking some more epsom salts to see if that would help any trapped stones pass. Would you recommend that?

Hopefully i can see the naturopath tomorrow and they'll be able to help me some more. Will keep you updated.

Did you try the liver flush, dav? I'm considering doing one myself.

[Dorothy]

The liver is located in the upper right abdomen in case some don't know.

Hey GS - is just eating raw egg yolks with just a little lemon and oil in the morning a gentle liver cleanse? I highly doubt I need to do a flush but I eat the main ingredients to the egg yolk flush most mornings and I was wondering if and why that would be considered a liver cleanse.

[Dorothy]

dav - here's a little primer on gall stones. I can't believe your doctors don't explain this - but they don't. Gallstones are made of cholesterol but that cholesterol is a really good thing. The bile is responsible for circulating and picking up toxins which are then flushed out the intestines. It's not the fat itself that is the problem - it's the toxins. When the bile gets so thick that it can't be cleansed it starts to congeal into sludge and then into stones. Fiber is what usually does the cleansing of the bile. That is why people that don't eat enough fiber will get gallstones. But......... here's the real big but.......... when you eat a raw paleo diet you don't have the TOXINS which are what get the bile all congested so it doesn't matter that you don't eat the same amount of fiber as you would when eating a different diet.

I responded on another thread how I got rid of my mother's gallstone simply with peppermint (it dissolves the cholesterol and gently stimulates bile production). It was actually pretty fast. He pain went away almost immediately and she had a scan a couple months later and the stones were gone.

Best of luck to you with your cleansing.

[joej627]

Here is what you do.

-get some chanca piedra herbal tincture and take morning and night for at least a week
-eat lots of apples, beats, dandelion, radishes, egg yolk, high raw foods
-go easy on the fat the last few days before the flush
-light eating day before flush, maybe do a coffee enema
-day of flush 1 tbsp ACV/half a lemon in a little water 3 times before 2 pm
-day of flush eat light not past 2pm
-while doing flush use a rag with warm apple cider vinegar.  this encourages more stones to pass

Watch the stones come out =)

[Dorothy]

I know that I'm radical in this idea in the world of eating radical diets - but I always go for whatever is the least stress on the body while still getting the same results. That's why I would choose plain old peppermint. I mean - it's not at all dramatic. No stones to watch pop out of you because they simply dissolve and leave naturally. No pain. No elaborate procedures. It's really too simple and enjoyable while still being highly effective - but that's why people don't do it and do the dramatic and sometimes traumatic procedures instead. I read about peppermint, tried it and it worked beautifully. If you must have your stones out because they are insisting on removing gall bladder asap - sure - get them out while you watch, but otherwise, I would try a change of diet with the peppermint first myself - but I'm boring.

[goodsamaritan]

I know that I'm radical in this idea in the world of eating radical diets - but I always go for whatever is the least stress on the body while still getting the same results. That's why I would choose plain old peppermint. I mean - it's not at all dramatic. No stones to watch pop out of you because they simply dissolve and leave naturally. No pain. No elaborate procedures. It's really too simple and enjoyable while still being highly effective - but that's why people don't do it and do the dramatic and sometimes traumatic procedures instead. I read about peppermint, tried it and it worked beautifully. If you must have your stones out because they are insisting on removing gall bladder asap - sure - get them out while you watch, but otherwise, I would try a change of diet with the peppermint first myself - but I'm boring.

How do you use peppermint for gallstones?

[Dorothy]

Just put peppermint oil: organic food grade, steam distilled (oil is the most powerful) and/or organic peppermint tincture (next in strength) and/or peppermint tea (simple infusion) in water and drink as a refreshing tea. I like it iced in summer, warmed in winter. Peppermint (mentha piperita) is a mild digestive that can be used after eating to help digestion as it gently stimulate bile production and the entire digestive process as well as dissolving the cholesterol that creates gall stones. With active stones I would use a mixture of the oil with the tincture.  For maintenance and prevention any form can be used even just adding some peppermint leaves to your salad - which is very nice too btw or you can put some peppermint leaves in water in a glass jar and let it in the sun or you can put some peppermint leaves in your smoothies. Just about any way you can use a gentle and tasty herb in leaf form.

Every herb is going to effect each person a little differently so the best way to determine appropriateness as a treatment or general food source, form to take it in, dosage and frequency is with muscle testing.

Peppermint won't give you the stones to show your doctor to prove that they are out or be dramatic or super fast. You won't even know anything is happening. The stones and sludge just gradually dissolve and digestion is improved. Peppermint is the kind of herb that is usually, for most people, so gentle that it can be eaten every day. If it is right for you, it will most likely taste really good to you and the treatment will be a pleasure.

If you have a severe problem where the doctors are wanting to cut out your gall bladder and you need to know right away that something is working then your methods GS would be quite appropriate, but if you have time, cannot withstand the difficult cleanses or if you just want to give your bile a helping hand - then I think peppermint is a very nice plant friend to get to know.

[goodsamaritan]

Thanks for taking the time to type it out!  The more tools in our arsenal, the better!

[RawFoodist]

Just put peppermint oil: organic food grade, steam distilled (oil is the most powerful) and/or organic peppermint tincture (next in strength) and/or peppermint tea (simple infusion) in water and drink as a refreshing tea. I like it iced in summer, warmed in winter. Peppermint (mentha piperita) is a mild digestive that can be used after eating to help digestion as it gently stimulate bile production and the entire digestive process as well as dissolving the cholesterol that creates gall stones. With active stones I would use a mixture of the oil with the tincture.  For maintenance and prevention any form can be used even just adding some peppermint leaves to your salad - which is very nice too btw or you can put some peppermint leaves in water in a glass jar and let it in the sun or you can put some peppermint leaves in your smoothies. Just about any way you can use a gentle and tasty herb in leaf form.

Every herb is going to effect each person a little differently so the best way to determine appropriateness as a treatment or general food source, form to take it in, dosage and frequency is with muscle testing.

Peppermint won't give you the stones to show your doctor to prove that they are out or be dramatic or super fast. You won't even know anything is happening. The stones and sludge just gradually dissolve and digestion is improved. Peppermint is the kind of herb that is usually, for most people, so gentle that it can be eaten every day. If it is right for you, it will most likely taste really good to you and the treatment will be a pleasure.

If you have a severe problem where the doctors are wanting to cut out your gall bladder and you need to know right away that something is working then your methods GS would be quite appropriate, but if you have time, cannot withstand the difficult cleanses or if you just want to give your bile a helping hand - then I think peppermint is a very nice plant friend to get to know.

What  brand of peppermint oil do you use and how much per day in how much water per dose, how many times per day? When to drink this in relation to meals(i.. during meals, after meals, before meals?