And one other thing...

The whole point of my post, Mark, was that personal experience is the basic research unit of alternative health. Not "thinking about it". That's what the MD's do -- they "think" that these stones couldn't possibly be gall stones, so they toss the stones in the garbage and decide it isn't important to even bother testing. Too much thought, not enough looking!

This has nothing to do with your opinion having merit or not. (I even posted that your hypothesis might actually have some merit, in terms of oil having something to do with these stones -- particularly the small ones.) It has everything to do with "terror" being used to frighten people away or scare them, which is how your post came off to me. Wait a couple months and re-read your post, Mark. It's "physically impossible", you say, for a stone to pass through the biliary duct, and yet I've passed them both painfully and not.

There probably is a physical limit to the size of a stone that could pass. I suspect it's a lot larger than you believe, and I gave analogous data to support my belief. I have not taken a caliper to my biliary tubing, nor have I stuffed wedges up said tubing, to attempt to determine the precise size of an object I can pass through it.

We aren't here trying to find scientific proof. We're here trying to find health. We're here trying to find out if this stuff works or not -- to be responsible for ourselves and our health.

We aren't the ones representing that this stuff is scientifically valid or anything else. We're reading what others who have travelled this journey have had to say about it, and we're walking the path ourselves, sharing our experiences along the way for others. We don't discount anecdotal evidence, because that's the medium we use. We're telling people what we know, what we've seen, etc.

Science, on the other hand, holds this method up for ridicule, and, because it isn't the "scientific method", it derides us for it. Now, there are perfectly good reasons for using the scientific method. Do not try to twist my meaning here. There are even means of using the scientific method in alternative medicine -- there is nothing that explicitly forbids it. Because we use the whole plant instead of the "active component", however, Science has issues with most alternative medicine. In any case, that isn't what we are here. I'm fresh out of people I know with cancer to run tests on.

I AM MY REFERENCE. We here who post here are our own references. Get it?

I am not trying to educate anyone here. I am chronicling my path along this journey, with the hope that it might benefit someone to know what I've seen, what I've been through, how I've gotten through this difficulty called "gall stones".

Above all else, I seek to encourage others who are on the cusp of responsibility for themselves and their own health to take that step and assume that responsibility.

If there are dangers, then you are right to note them. No argument there. But, again, your post came off as nothing but a terror tactic, with a lot of unsubstantiated (i.e. personal experience) claims. You claim to have done two flushes. We have folks here who have done dozens. They still live to tell the tale. Their insides haven't been irrevocably destroyed by consuming a half a cup or a cup of oil. Their biliary tubing hasn't been ripped from their insides.

For the record, I do not believe that a diet which consists of cups of oil each and every day is a good idea. Not one bit. On the other hand, I do not believe that half a cup of oil is "harmful". Belief aside, the only personal evidence I have is that I'm still here, I didn't die, my insides still seem in tact, and, other than a brief bit of burning sensation around my anal opening (due to very watery stool, or something in it), I found no irritation at all. Oh, yeah, and my wife seems rather healthy in spite of three flushes so far, too. Let's make my wife my guinea pig. Muahahahaha...

Now, if I have somehow misread you (in the interests of honesty, allow me to say that I don't believe I have), perhaps the attack of one "Dr. Sharat something-or-other" helped to set me off. Two separate "attacks" in one week seemed a little... conveniently coincidental.

The whole point of this web site is, I believe (feel free to correct me, Reader), to support each other in this quest for personal responsibility for one's health. Your post did not look to be doing that at all, but merely an attempt to plant the seed of doubt in the minds of readers, using what looks like terror tactics, with some "scientific basis" to add an air of legitimacy; except that your "scientific basis" is a lot of thought about what happened or happens, and no actual (or very little) personal experience with the topic -- either one's own experience, or one's experience as applied to others (as in a scientific study).

This sounds a lot like how "modern" medicine treats alternative medicine. It sounds like the hubris that has chained humanity's knowledge of itself and its environment for countless centuries.

=-John-=
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