Now I’ve caught your attention, the alternative title is ‘The Liver Cleanse.’  Be warned though: I do get down and dirty!  Now you’ll have to read on to find out, won’t you?  Wasn’t meant to be my second blog but recent events have caught up with me… and it all started with Dukkah about 5 months ago… or so I thought!  (“Uh? Who’s he?” you may ask. “My latest fella?!”)

It actually began many years before that, with a furry tongue I’ve been cleaning every morning with a ‘Whooshy’… a ridged, rubber, paddle thingy… which does an excellent job by the way.  Thought nothing more of it.  I mean people are buying tongue cleaners ‘n’ scrapers ‘n’ brushes all the time… Even toothbrushes nowadays have nubs as well as bristles.  Then there are nail buffers.  Gotta buff yer nails.  Keep ’em smooth an’ polished.  Only a few months ago, one of my daughters commented on my ridged nails.  ‘Just old age catching up with me,’ I thought.

If anyone had asked how I rated my health, I would have said excellent.  Haven’t seen a quack in years, apart from those by the river.  Ha, ha!  Don’t believe in them anyway and many (most?) are in the pay of the pharmaceutical companies… Subject of a future blog, p’haps?  I have no health problems whatsoever; the common cold eludes me year after year; I don’t get any aches or pains… ever; I have a clear, healthy complexion; I eat well, have a hearty appetite, sleep well, poop well… and put this down largely to a virtually vegan lifestyle (been veggie for over 31 years).  I’ve never smoked and drink little, apart from plenty of water and… that bottle of Morgan Spiced given to me at Christmas… “Thanks Kay”… which unfortunately hit the recycling bin months ago.  I also eat plenty of garlic!  No, it doesn’t make you smell!  Of course I eat junk… occasionally… the odd fried breakfast with veggie sausages, fake bacon (comes complete with strip of fat!), fried bread etc; enjoy chips now and then, and yes, eat cake and crisps but this is far outweighed by my consumption of nuts and seeds and oils and tahini and hummus and avocados and… you get the picture.  And so the decades have rolled by.

BUT all is not what it seems.  I have the furry tongue, remember, and those ridged nails… clues, in fact to an underlying digestive disorder.  Left unchecked I could add considerably to this… osteoporesis, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease (yes, you heard right), back pain, diabetes, allergies, even cancer(!), not forgetting the more obvious diseases of the gut such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and tumours.

This short list, however, is just the tip of the proverbial and stems from a liver that’s trying it’s damnedest to do its job but is unable to.

As a qualified nurse I should certainly have been wary of the furry tongue but hey, there was nowt else wrong with me, so why worry!  I didn’t realise any of the above till I got THE BOOK.  I didn’t realise that the liver is the second most important organ of the body (the brain is No 1) and does ‘mind-blowingly’ more than sort out a heavy night’s drinking.  Its functions are so numerous that to list them here, would bore you rigid, if I haven’t done so already… and if it’s congested, it ain’t able to do its job.  So back to Dukkah!  THE BOOK can wait… so too the congested liver!

It’s actually dukkah with a small ‘d’ but just fancied teasing you guys (and gals).  No boyf at present… but I don’t give up easily!  In April this year, I bought some dukkah from the market and to save you all Googling, it’s a foodstuff from Egypt: a blend of spices, nuts (such as almonds, pistachios and hazelnuts) and seeds (such as cumin, sesame, coriander and fennel)… all ground to a coarse powder.  You take a chunk of decent bread (not the ‘this is about as far away from bread as you can get’ stuff sold in supermarkets), dip it in good

Olga faking it!

quality olive oil and then the dukkah.  Healthy and high in fat… the sort we’re supposed to eat.  Are any of you getting a picture yet?  So… Mmmm… happily eating loads of this dukkah dip, when suddenly, I’m doubled up with the most severe pain right across my chest… where the lowest bit of your bra goes.  You guys’ll have to think back to any drag days!  Anyway, I don’t ‘do pain’ remember.  This was really odd, as my youngest son who was with me at the time, was also eating the same… though not as much.  Well, this pain did not, would not, go away.  Next thing, I was overcome with nausea and… you can guess the rest.  When I’d recovered, I was left completely puzzled and put it down to one thing: food poisoning.  It was the only plausible explanation.  I did mention this (nicely) to the guys on the market stall who were not best pleased with my insinuations but I only wanted to alert them to this batch (produced by themselves) in case anyone else complained about being ‘sick’!  And that was that, till a fortnight ago… as I type… *Got to select/get permission for pics yet, not to mention (I just did) typing this to perfection… but hindsight is a wonderful thing.  I had been experiencing niggles after meals, the odd abdominal discomfort and when out leafletting, put this down to eating too quickly (I hadn’t) or getting back to physical work too soon after my lunch break.  All signs that I ignored.  Is the picture coming into focus now?

My wake-up call came after breakfast… a fortnight ago… as I type… *repeat the above… a breakfast that included muesli with nuts, followed by toast with its usual splurge of (dairy-free) marg (and marmalade).  Again I got a pain across my diaphragm/beneath my bra; nowhere near as intense as DT (dukkah time) but discomforting and worrying all the same and it stayed with me for 2/3 hours.  Some (dark) chocolate… which is good for you… eaten in the afternoon, had the same effect and I had to wait hours for that pain to subside so I could enjoy an evening meal of stir-fried vegetables with noodles followed by strawberries and (soya) cream.  Well, it was a case of  ‘here we go again’, but this time I went Googling and also phoned a couple of friends.  It all pointed to one thing: I had gallstones.  When I was training as a nurse, I was told these were the prerogative of women who were fat, fair and fourty.  Well I am fair… but that comes from a pack of hair dye.  Fat/40?  Nope/nope.  Female?  Well, yeah… Definitely a candidate for gallstones then.  First thought: ‘Yikes. This is it. Got to have my gall bladder out’ and texted my kids that an op looked likely.

But it wasn’t convenient to undergo surgery now… I need all the work that comes my way, not having to take 2/3 weeks out for recovery along with the accompanying zero income… one of the advantages of being self-employed.  Of course, I was forgetting about that thing called the ‘waiting-list’ which could mean an op was months down the line.  Fortunately, as events transpired, it was a Saturday, so no doc poss till Monday.  As I now believed the pain to be linked to fat consumption, I did an online search of the fat content of various foodstuffs and put myself on a low-fat diet.  Yep, agony over!  Recalled the dukkah incident and thought back over the abdominal discomfort of the previous months and realised the pain intensity was proportional to the amount of fat I’d ingested.  That dukkah/oil combo was one helluva fat hit to give to a ‘what I didn’t know then’ under-functioning digestive system… A question of ‘No way, Jose’ so reverse peristalsis put into action instantly.

To cut a long… and getting far too long… story to the point, I phoned a friend who told me about a ‘liver and gall bladder flush’ and strongly recommended I took this self-help and gentler option, rather than surgery.  Am very anti-surgery, if it’s possible, very anti-‘men in white coats’ and have for years favoured and used the ‘frowned upon’ Alternative Medicine or holistic therapies.

My friend spoke of a book which I’d read about in Cygnus Review… an excellent MBS (Mind Body Spirit) magazine which is published monthly… Free, if you place an order.  This is THE BOOK I referred to 1,000 words ago…  ‘The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush’ by Andreas Moritz. (Gallbladder written as one word in this American volume).  This book is the reason I can hang on to my gall bladder (our vital bile pumping organ) and has saved me the inconvenience of an operation with its many attendant risks; risks that include bile duct injury (very common with keyhole surgery) as well as intestinal infections from escaping stones that lodge in the gut.  This book has meant I don’t have to subsist on a low-fat diet which is not good for us and will help guarantee (nice oxymoron there!) that I live to 100.  I’ve learned SO MUCH from reading it… for instance,

that no matter how good our diet, if our food ain’t digested properly, our cells cannot assimilate the necessary nutrients needed to reproduce satisfactorily…

and we’re replacing 1000’s of cells every day.  They therefore, can’t function as they should, or at all, may instead mutate into cancer cells or not even be replicated, which is why they say that body organs in the elderly have shrunk in size and explains how degenerative diseases set in.  By doing this simple procedure, I can optimise my health, and keep going to 100+.  No reason not to really, barring accidents… along with a positive attitude and following my passion… but that will defo have to wait for another blog.

But like most people I thought ‘Got gallstones. It’s ‘Gall Bladder Out’ time. Bingo! Problem solved.’  Right?  No, wrong!  What I didn’t realise (till I read THE BOOK) was that…

    … gallstones are also present in your liver and ‘liver removal’ is one operation that ain’t done! 

On a par with removing yer brain!  So if any of us have spent years on the wrong diet, or overeating, or eating between meals, eating too much protein, eating refined salt, eating meat (especially red meat), eating heavy meals in the evening; if we’ve had an inadequate water intake, lost weight rapidly, had a disruptive lifestyle with erratic sleep patterns, experienced emotional stress, smoked, watched TV for hours, been on HRT, the contraceptive pill or other pharmaceutical drugs, drunk fluoridated water… and alcohol, which goes without saying (though thought I’d mention it)… All this and more causes gallstones to form.  How many of us can escape this little lot, eh?  Small wonder a cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal) is such a common operation. “Routine” the ‘men in white’ term it.  But there are communities in the world (some would call backward), who escape this list; people so in tune with their bodies and their environment, for whom being 90 years old means still to be young AND fathering children!  The Hunza people are one such group who are remarkably healthy, long-lived (and happy).  Our Queen would get writer’s cramp signing birthday cards!  (Yes, telegrams are a thing of the past).  Not unusual either, for many of these people to attain 130 years of age!  Hope for me yet then, eh?!

So had I not had that day’s breathing space and gone to my doctor… which some people advised… undergone the various tests, then told him/her that I was going to do things my way (I already refuse mammograms and cervical smears), I think there would have been hell on.  But the overriding factor in all this was that I’d followed my Truth, my Inner Authority (and you will all have to tune in later on, to what will be a  fascinating blog)… Suffice to say, taking this natural route sat so very well with me that I knew it was the right thing to do.  Interesting to note the reaction of two doctors when a colleague of mine presented them with a flare up of port wine patches on his skin and suggested… cos he’d read my book… that a ‘liver and gall bladder flush’ might be the answer: to treat the cause rather than the disease.  Not only did they profess ignorance of the subject, they did as expected: pulled out the prescription pad for some cream or other, to rub into the skin!

So these gallstones are forming inside all of us, getting larger, even calcifying and blocking the many ducts that supply the digestive tract with juices and bile.

One can have up to 20,000 stones in one’s liver.  I repeat… 20,000! 

This however would be someone with serious health problems.  Small wonder, eh?  For all the good my healthy, late evening meals were doing me, I may just as well have binned them.  Secretions of bile and digestive juices naturally peak at midday, says Andreas, and your bile is always on cue to do its job… Could be well paid, huh?  And how do we pay it?  Hmm… BUT if enough of this ‘ready-to-go’ bile doesn’t get used, Gall Bladder thinks to itself “What’m I gonna do wiv dis lot (again) then? Guess I’ll just have ta turn it all into stones, as per. Grrr.”  And so it does.  It was going to be fascinating to find out how many stones I was carrying around!

Nothing quite prepares you for this ‘flush’, however… Air Freshener should be on the ‘to get’ list as well, Andreas… but once you start this ball rolling… stone(s) really, ha ha!… you can’t stop and don’t forget, it is a long term commitment.  You have to be ‘stone free’ for two consecutive months before you can call a halt and this can be several flushes down the line!  As you progress with the detox itself though, you marvel at a process which is going to give your body a chance to recover from years of mistreatment.  Funny how people look after their cars more than they do their bodies.  Years ago, we’d never have filled up an engine designed to run on 4* fuel, with 2* petrol.  Vehicles today get serviced and checked over regularly yet we don’t ever give our bodies an MOT.

We fill ’em with crap and expect peak performance!

Summing up ‘the flush’ procedure then, involves sipping a litre of (ideally) organic cold-pressed apple juice* a day for 6 days.  This softens the stones.  *Biona was available locally and is very pleasant to drink… Needs to be, mind, drinking this volume!  It also contains 460kcal per bottle so I was noticeably less hungry.  On the evening of the actual flush, one has to drink the first of 4 glasses of Epsom Salts.  This dilates and relaxes the bile duct valves so the stones pass painlessly and also clears out your gut.  (N.B. It may be obvious but do use food grade Epsom Salts, not the stuff you put in your bath!)  The ‘fat hit’ that causes a rush of bile to be excreted along with the stones, is achieved by drinking a concoction of olive oil and freshly squeezed juice.  (Red grapefruit is recommended).  The instructions are simple but detailed and specific and must be followed implicitly for this to be successful.  The whole thing has to fit in with the lunar cycle as well… The moon has an effect on all fluids, don’t you know, including the tides!  So forget the online stuff which seems vague and inaccurate and get hold of this book instead.  Andreas knows what he is talking about and developed this tried and tested formula after years of ill health as a teenager.  A brief look at the anatomical diagram (below) might help understand how it all works/hangs together.

For those who may be confused, the gall bladder is not the urinary bladder.  You will not pee stones.  You will poop them!  May be obvious to most of you but many people do not understand how they’re wired up and I often forget that I have the advantage of anatomy and physiology knowledge from my nurse training days.

Ingesting the olive oil gloop was not as bad as I expected… A bit like salad dressing minus the garlic, mustard, salt and pepper!  The top quality oil I bought probably helped but there is so much of it to drink!  By this stage, though, you’re already 2  glasses of Epsom Salts down and beyond the point of no return so just glug it down as quickly as possible.  The worst bit by far was the Epsom Salts, not helped by the fact (as I was later reminded), that American measures are different to ours and that the 4 generous tablespoons I used, should have been dessertspoonfuls!  Checking this out online leaves me confused.  Is there really that much difference?  Anyway, it really does taste foul, and holding your nose as suggested, does help… Didn’t dare not to!  By the time your insides have been purged and you’re pooping nowt but water, which is really weird, you realise THIS IS IT; that the next dose of Epsom Salts in the (far too early) morning will clear out the stones.  I hardly slept, worrying whether I’d successfully make any dash to the loo and ended up instead, jotting down notes for this blog!  But I needn’t have worried; next time I’ll sleep.  Andreas warns that some people may experience nausea overnight which is due to a surge of gallstones and toxins forcing the oil mixture back into the stomach.  No nausea for me, which was grrrreat!  It does make us aware though, of how toxic we’ve allowed our bodies to become and gives us an incentive to see this through to the end.  It’s also a procedure that’s distasteful enough to ensure that we make those life-style adjustments because every cup of coffee, glass of wine, late evening meal, etc after we’re ‘in the clear’ will contribute to the stones of the future!  Don’t want to be killjoy though… This flush just makes us mindful of our actions and habits.

I have to admit I was curious to find out how many stones I would release.  One could even get a sense of one-upmanship… “Ooh, only 500 eh, I passed 1,000!” etc.  The stones people rattle in a jar to show their relatives, are those collected by the surgeon.  These however, have been softened by the apple juice and “float on the water” (You’ll have to excuse me… Deep Purple’s riff has sprung to mind) in the loo so, yes, you can count them and see how big they are!  I was concerned that mine were all like peas (recent stones) and that the calcified ones remained, (these sink) but during the colonic irrigation… haven’t mentioned that yet… passed many more, I was reliably informed, including the calcified variety which were mostly grey and yellow in colour… the largest as big as butter beans!  Stones come in all shapes and sizes, some over 2″ across, and in a variety of colours, not unlike the pebbles one might see in a stream.  Pretty… but they spell disaster for your health.

I mean, how can our gall bladder do its job of excreting bile when it’s clogged up with stones? 

By the time you’re having gall bladder attacks it’s pretty jam (stone?) packed in there and the pain you experience when you eat fatty foods is the bile trying to bypass the obstruction.  There are are plenty of gruesome ‘n’ gory looking dissected gall bladders online but to illustrate my point without making you all all sick, I was inspired by the image of a soya bean on the side of my milk carton and this picture of a broad bean pod is not unlike some of those surgical photos, the bile duct being at the stalk end, so to speak.

Broad bean pod

As for the colonic irrigation, this is a crucial part of the procedure (not mentioned in other online info I’ve read so far) because the ‘liver flush’ alone won’t ensure that all stones are passed.  The majority of mine were passed at this juncture which proves the point.  Any that lodge in the intestine can cause abdominal discomfort, headaches and even infection.  I’d describe the colonic as an ‘interesting’ experience which was carried out very discreetly.  Not at all uncomfortable despite having a tube up yer bum!  Warm water is whooshed in and flows out carrying any stones with it.  This is repeated several times and the therapist also massages your belly to loosen any that may be stuck on the wall of your gut.  When you leave you feel… amazing.  Well I did!

Have y’all read down this far, I wonder?  This has turned into a ‘much longer than expected’ blog but I decided to go the whole hog, to describe my experience, so you guys’d know what to expect if you decide to carry out this DIY operation to optimise your health.

“So how many stones did I pass then?” you’re all dying to know.  Not!  Approximately 200 in all, which is not bad but not good either, when I reflect on that number that were camping out inside my liver and gall bladder.  Well, yer holiday’s over pals!  This doesn’t mean that next time I won’t pass many, as there may be stones from the back of my liver that will have moved forward ready for the next round of flushing.  There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to the numbers passed or when, either.  You just have to get to the ‘2 clear runs’ stage.

As I type the end of this blog… yes, the end is finally in sight… the weeks have moved on and I’m at the ‘drinking lots of apple juice’ phase of my second detox.  In a strange way, I’m looking forward to the outcome.  At least I know what to expect this time round but if anyone has any queries, Andreas does have a FB site and I too, would be willing to assist, although my experience is limited.  Thing is: How can I convince any of you reading this, to do yourself the biggest favour and buy THE BOOK, read it, digest it (excuse pun), be wowed by it and then when it sits right with you, to go for it?  You owe it to yourself… BUT DON’T WAIT FOR SYMPTOMS TO SHOW UP, YEARS DOWN THE LINE.  The damage is being done while we’re living our erratic lives.  However (and I quote):

‘You will only feel drawn to liver flushing when you know deep within yourself that this is something you absolutely have do.’

Yes, Andreas, you are right… and it has been an amazing experience.  Thank you so much for getting me back on the road to health.  Pssst, I still need you to reply to my message for permission to use your pics!!  As to ‘furry tongue’… It’s going, going but a far cry from ‘gone’ which makes me think that this is not so much ‘the beginning of the end’ but merely ‘the end of the beginning’!  Could keep you posted!

PS: What irks me though, is the fact I’ve saved the NHS £1,000’s while I’m having to shell out for juice, oil and colonics… Those ‘holes in dem soles’ of my walking shoes meanwhile, are gonna have to get bigger!  Now match de hole in my pocket!  S’not fair, but sometimes our priorities have to change and I value and am grateful for my health.

“But this stuff’s not proven!  It’s quackery!” cry the WC Brigade*, while thousands the world over are quietly testifying to its power and their incredible stories of health recovery continue to pour in.                                                                                  *White Coat

IT WAS WITH DISMAY THAT I READ THIS ANNOUNCEMENT ON ANDREAS’ ‘ENER-CHI.COM’ FACEBOOK PAGE TODAY, 21st OCTOBER, 2012. IT IS NOT A HOAX. THE VERY MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE RESPONDED ARE, LIKE MYSELF, SHOCKED AND SURPRISED AND WONDERING HOW A MAN WHO WAS THE EPITOME OF HEALTH AND WELL-BEING COULD HAVE PASSED OVER. HAD HE MET WITH AN ACCIDENT? YET THE FOLLOWING INTIMATES THAT HE KNEW HE WAS DYING. NO DOUBT AN EXPLANATION WILL BE FORTHCOMING IN DUE COURSE. SO VERY, VERY SAD. 

COPYRIGHT FOR IMAGES:

‘Olga faking it!’ copyright owned by myself, Cassandra Scott.  Thank you Olga, for offering (being collared) to help.

The ‘Gallstones’ image courtesy of Orcee, taken from her blog site ‘Health Blog.’

The ‘Broad bean pod’ photo copyright belongs to me, Cassandra Scott.

The ‘Diagram of gallstones in the liver and gall bladder’ taken from the book ‘The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush’ by Andreas Moritz as well as the images of both book covers have been published WITHOUT THE PERMISSION of the author.  I tried to make contact quite a while ago and sadly now will never be able to do so (see ‘official announcement’ above).