The Mother of all Stones

For the past week, I’ve been drinking copious amounts of apple juice while gearing up for a liver flush. If you’ve never heard of it, I can assure you that, until a few months ago, I’d never heard of it either – and even when I did, the mere idea of the flush, complete with detailed descriptions and images ((I’ll leave the image-searching to you: “gallstones after liver flush”) – immediately filled me with dread, nausea and a truckload of skepticism.

But I was in Bali then, island of all-things-are-possible… which translated into opening myself to the idea of trying out holistic / natural / detox / cleansing remedies of the most distasteful-sounding kind. I was also attempting to boost my digestive tract.

Bundling up all the necessary ingredients – fruit, olive oil and Epsom salts – I was ready, though warily so, to plunge (liver first) into some major cleaning of my insides.

Sure, I read up quite a bit about The Liver Flush. Sure, I was vacillating between forking out for a colonic cleansing and maybe just sticking to a water or coffee enema (pre- and post-evacuation). But in the end, with information gathered from websites, naturopaths, friends and other longtime flushers, I resolved to go the purist route: just the flush.

Let me just say that the books and sites and stories don’t quite prepare you for the physical and somewhat visceral experience of … ummm… voiding stones from your gut. But when you follow the instructions down to the letter, with a stopwatch in hand and all ingredients strategically placed on the counter so you can’t possibly miss a step, well then you’re going to get it right.

Let me also state that downing a hefty mixture of Epsom salts and cold pressed extra-virgin olive oil in one go cannot be anyone’s idea of a tasty treat. But that is what’s required, and that’s what I did. Ugh.

And so it turned out to work just as the prophets, the seers, the yogis and friends said it would. The stones came tumblin’ out.

Fast forward to yesterday. They were tumblin’ again. My liver, gallbladder, digestive system en masse got a good rumble.

As Andreas Moritz, among the preeminent gurus of the liver flush points out: “Remember, your liver and gallbladder have undergone major ‘surgery’ albeit without the harmful side effects and expense.”

Maybe this whole flush is a bona fide way to detox, or perhaps it’s been roundly and often debunked for good reasons (and if you’re among the skeptics, then so be it); but whatever the ‘truth’ of it is, I know that I’ve felt better in the past – and expect to this time around too.

Anyway, my feeling is that it’s no coincidence that just a few days ago, after an extended period of hospitalization, treatments, meds, blood work, MRI, and more, a surgical intervention via laparoscopy brought to a swift end the potential production of gallstones in my mother’s belly.