Re: Issue 177: Science Project: Dyeing to Know the Answer

It occurred to me that the stones might be porous and absorb the red dye even though they were formed over weeks and months earlier. So I don't think that your conclusion that the stones were formed overnight during the flush was conclusive. We still have some homework to do. I also thought about your Liver Flush survey. Properly edited, and hopefully supported with a few bits of chemical analysis, it could be publishable. Let's say for example, that you extract from the questionnaire that 40 people had positive ultrasound evidence of gallstones, and that after they did the flush, 39 of them had negative ultrasound results. Or let's say that you extract the information that the 50 people had Psoriasis before doing the flush, and that afterwards, 75% improved. The publication could open with some hard scientific analysis of stones produced during the flush. Even if we only analyzed stones from five people, that would be very significant. Then we could go on to present sifted data from the survey in an organized fashion. After rereading the 2005 Lancet article, it occurred to me that some of the stones people get may be legitimate and some may not. The hard stones that I got resembled the pictures of stones removed surgically, not the green stones above them. They also had a lingering extremely strong foul odor, suggesting that they had been in existence for a long time. The odor was not fecal in nature, and I have never smelled anything like that before. Also, the sludge and stones that appeared every night for five months after that third single flush had that same foul odor. I would have a normal bowel movement that would be practically odorless, and then later the smelly stuff would come down. I don't see how this could originate in the intestinal tract. The color and consistency of it, along with the odor, strongly suggested that it had been around for a long time, and I can't imagine where else it could come from except from the liver and gallbladder. I think the odor is an important factor. You should include that in your questionnaire. It is important that we continue to work on this. If some people are indeed manufacturing stones with their oil and lemon juice, we need to know about it. The Lancet article mentioned using potassium hydroxide. This is an extraordinarily strong alkali, much stronger than would occur in the human body. I think that the Lancet article should be taken seriously, but also with skepticism. Tweet