Re: Would you like a liver flush with that colon cleanse?

 I read the article and I couldn't find a single proof against the Liver Flush in it.

It amazes me at how the "liver flush" supporters never seem to see any evidence against these flushes even when it is put right in front of them.  The author actually provided a lot of evidence against the flushes, and especially against the wild and fraudulent claims made by Hulda Clark.  Then the author even went in to the analysis of these so-called "stones", which again PROVED they were not real gallstones as has also been shown by "liver flushers" who had their green blobs analyzed as well by labs.  In those cases as well those blobs were shown to be saponified oil, not real gallstones:

What has been done, however, is a lovely little study that suggests just how much self-delusion is involved in liver flushes. Like the case of colon cleanses, when seasoned con men learn how liver flushes actually “work,” they will be likely to tip their hats in appreciation for such simplicity and perfection, a scam, where the remedy induces the “evidence” of its efficacy. But on to the case report to which I refer that a group in New Zealand contributed to the Lancet:

A 40-year-old woman was referred to the outpatient clinic with a 3-month history of recurrent severe right hypochondrial pain after fatty food. [Note: Here "hypochondrial" means "below the ribcage,' not "hypochondriac."] Abdominal ultrasound showed multiple 1-2 mm gallstones in the gallbladder.

She had recently followed a “liver cleansing” regime on the advice of a herbalist. This regime consisted of free intake of apple and vegetable juice until 1800 h, but no food, followed by the consumption of 600 mL of olive oil and 300 mL of lemon juice over several hours. This activity resulted in the painless passage of multiple semisolid green “stones” per rectum in the early hours of the next morning. She collected them, stored them in the freezer, and presented them in the clinic.

Microscopic examination of our patient’s stones revealed that they lacked any crystalline structure, melted to an oily green liquid after 10 min at 40°C, and contained no cholesterol, bilirubin, or calcium by established wet chemical methods. Traditional faecal fat extraction techniques indicated that the stones contained fatty acids that required acid hydrolysis to give free fatty acids before extraction into ether. These fatty acids accounted for 75% of the original material.

Experimentation revealed that mixing equal volumes of oleic acid (the major component of olive oil) and lemon juice produced several semi solid white balls after the addition of a small volume of a potassium hydroxide solution. On air drying at room temperature, these balls became quite solid and hard.

We conclude, therefore, that these green “stones” resulted from the action of gastric lipases on the simple and mixed triacylglycerols that make up olive oil, yielding long chain carboxylic acids (mainly oleic acid). This process was followed by saponification into large insoluble micelles of potassium carboxylates (lemon juice contains a high concentration of potassium) or “soap stones”.

In other words, the “stones” that liver cleansers are so proud of and go to such effort to strain their poo for after doing their flushes are not gallstones and were almost certainly the product of the actual flush itself! (Cue the con men tipping their hats in appreciation.) It makes perfect sense, if you think about it. These protocols usually involve fasting and then consuming up to a half liter or more of olive oil at one time. That could easily provide the conditions for this sort of reaction to take place. Neat, isn’t it? The very sign of “success” of the liver flush is something that has nothing to do with gallstones and everything to do with the results of the flush itself. Indeed, it’s quite clear that, even if you don’t have gallstones, if you do a liver flush and then look closely enough, you’ll find things in your stool that very much look like gallstones that are really due to saponified oil. Now I know (and you do too) why virtually every liver flush protocol includes large amounts of olive oil or similar oils plus epsom salts or orthophophoric acid and fruit juices. Unfortunately, I have not seen any more recent studies, and I’m not sure if any are really needed after the investigators discussed above conclusively showed that they could mimic these “stones” chemically.

So here we have solid proof that the blobs are not real gallstones, but the "liver flushing" must be affecting the vision of the "liver flush" supporters because they still cannot see the evidence even though it is put right there under their noses!!!

He kept bringing up ultrasound and how great a procedure it was in detecting gallstones. I know for a fact that it isn't so great.

Actually ultrasound is very good at picking up stones as small as 2mm.   Although sludge can be mistaken for gallstones with ultrasound.

Years ago my mother got diagnosed with colon cancer. After having surgery to remove the tumor, she had nine rounds of chemo because the doctors saw 'spots' on her liver, which they took for metastasis. Every month they would give her scans and ultrasounds to the liver to make sure the 'spots' didn't grow. Eventually, they gave up on the idea that they were cancer, however, they couldn't come up with an explanation for their existence. I didn't know anything about liver flushes and liver stones at that time, so I went along with the doctors. Now I know they were looking at calcified stones. The chances that a doctor looking at liver stones knows what he sees are nil. 

I have an extremely hard time believing any part of that story for several reasons.

For starters look at this ultrasound image of a tumor in the liver:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/medical/IM03871

Now look at this ultrasound image of the gallbladder:

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=138761&ref=...

Notice that 1.  It is very easy to distinguish between the liver and the gallbladder.   2. That it is very easy to distinguish between a liver tumor and a real gallstone.

Now you also mentioned scans.  Well CT scans are almost always used prior to MRIs.  So take a look at what a liver tumor looks like in a CT scan:

http://stjameshospital.adam.com/content.aspx?productId=39&pid=1&gid=0...

And this CT scan of REAL gallstones:

http://www.ajronline.org/content/185/5/1159/F1.expansion

Notice that 1.  It is very easy to distinguish between the liver and the gallbladder.   2. That it is very easy to distinguish between a liver tumor and a real gallstone.

Now maybe they also did an MRI.  So let's look at what a liver tumor looks like in an MRI:

http://www.bio.davidson.edu/courses/Bio111/MRI/liver1.GIF

Now, let's look at what gallstones look like with an MRI:
http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/257197/enlarge

Notice that 1.  It is very easy to distinguish between the liver and the gallbladder.   2. That it is very easy to distinguish between a liver tumor and a real gallstone.

Being that most patients have more than one doctor working on a case, you are expecting us all to believe that multiple trained doctors could not differentiate between a gallbladder and a liver and between tumors and gallstones on different tests when the differences are so obvious?!!!!  Sorry, but I don't buy it!