Cleansing the Liver/Gallbladder

Liver/gallbladder flushes are used to stimulate elimination of wastes from the body, to open the blood and lymph flow to the liver, to increase bile flow and to improve overall liver functioning.  Liver/gallbladder flushes can purify the blood and the lymph supply to the whole body when your liver “filter” has been cleansed.*

What Does the Liver Do?

Your liver’s job is to make sue that your body absorbs the nutrients it needs and dumps everything else that it doesn’t need!  Your liver’s major duties are to:

• Metabolize protein, fat and carbohydrate to provide energy and nutrients
• Store vitamins, minerals and glucose
• Filter the blood by helping to remove harmful chemicals and bacteria
• Make bile, which breaks down the fats that you eat
• Help uptake and storage of fat-soluble vitamins: A, E, D and K
• Store extra blood that can be used in times of extra need or stress
• Make serum proteins, which maintain fluid balance of the blood and act as carriers
• Help maintain electrolyte and water balance of the body’s fluids
• Make immune substances, such as gamma gobulin
• Break down and eliminate excess hormones, such as estrogen

Common symptoms of a poorly functioning liver:

• Digestive Problems (such as burping often, bloating, intestinal gas, stomach pain)
• Food allergies and sensitivities
• Chemical sensitivities (such as reactions to gasoline, cleaning agents, soaps, cosmetics, etc.)
• Rashes, various kind of skin problems
• Eye problems (such as blurred vision, eye pain, decreasing eyesight, eye flutters or twitches, etc.)
• Difficulty sleeping
• Irritability, frequent anger, depression
• Tendon or muscle problems (such as frequent sprains/strains, muscle injuries, delayed healing)
• Swelling of the breasts
• Menstrual problems (such as too little or too much blood flow, blood clotting, cramps)
• Testicular problems
• Headaches (especially pain at the vertex of the head, and throbbing headaches).

Pathways

According to the science of acupuncture, the liver meridian (a major energy channel of the body) flows through different parts of the body, especially influencing the eyes, digestion, tendons, muscle, and the sexual organs.  The ancient theory of Oriental Medicine also describes how the liver is related to anger.  Thus, if a person is easily angered, a liver cleansing program maybe needed to clear the “stuck” energy of a congested liver pathway.

Cleansing The Liver

Clearing the liver bile ducts is one of the most powerful procedures that you can do to improve your body’s overall health.  For best results, it should be done after a basic cleansing and nutritional program have been followed for a period of time.  Otherwise, a Liver Flush may be too strong and might cause too many cleansing symptoms.

Bile: The Body’s Fat Emulsifier

One of the liver’s main jobs is to make bile, an amazing 1 to 1 1/2 quarts per day. The liver synthesizes bile and delivers it to the gallbladder through many tiny bile ducts.  The gallbladder is the liver’s storage reservoir for bile.  When you eat fat, the stomach signals the gallbladder that fat is on the way.  The gallbladder in turn contracts, sending bile into the small intestine to emulsify the fats.

Bile Sludge: From “Bad Fats”

For many people, including children, the biliary tubing is choked with gallstones due to eating the American diet, full of fried foods and hydrogenated oils.  These toxic oils stagnate the bile.  Chief offenders in the diet are margarine, mayonnaise, salad dressings, and even baked foods.  When you eat a cracker, it doesn’t seem like you are eating fried food, but in fact the oil in the cracker has been heated to a high temperature because it has been baked.  Highly heated oils initiate destructive free radical cascades, stressing and aging the liver.

Normal bile is the consistency of a light oil.  When the liver is subjected to dietary stress, the bile becomes thick like honey and forms sludge.  This can form small cay-like balls and stones which lodge in the liver, along the biliary tract, and in the intestines.

Because of this clogging of the bile tubing, may people develop poor digestion, chronic allergies or allergic reactions such as sinus problems or hives.  Often a scan or x-ray of the gallbladder shows nothing.  Sludges of old, sticky bile and gallstones are often not in the gallbladder, but lodged in the liver or in the bile tubing.  Many stones may be too small or not calcified, making visibility on x-ray almost impossible.  Ultrasound may sometimes detect uncalcified gallstones, but not always.

Gallstones

There are over half a dozen varieties of gallstones, most which contain cholesterol crystals.  These stones can be black, red, white, green, or tan-colored.  The most common is the pea-green color.  As the stones grow and become more numerous, they clog the tubing, creating back pressure on the liver, causing it to make less bile.  Imagine what would happen if your garden hose had marbles in it.  Much less water would flow, which in turn, would decrease the ability of the hose to squirt out the marbles.

Bile: A Natural Parasite Killer

With gallstones, much less cholesterol leaves the body because bile flow in the small intestine is needed to precipitate excess cholesterol from the blood.  As a consequence of reduced bile flow, cholesterol levels may rise, even though the person may eat a good diet.  Bile is a key factor that naturally kills many pathogens, such as parasites, which commonly enter the digestive tract via food.  If the bile flow weakens, the digestion becomes less efficient, paving the way for more infection.

Since gallstones are porous, they can pick up bacteria, cysts, viruses, and parasites that are passing through the liver.  In this way, nests of infection can form, continuously burdening the body’s defense system.  The body’s immune system must fight ceaselessly to keep these harmful organisms in check.  Yet the body cannot rid itself completely of these organisms without first purging the bile formations.  Intestinal bloating and other chronic digestive problems are difficult to clear permanently without eliminating the gallstones and gallstone sludge from the liver and intestines.