Be Young Gall Bladder Cleanse

First let me get some legal requirements out of the way.

Gall bladder removal is one of the most common surgical procedures in the United States (source here). According to our family Dr, this is not true in Europe. Why is that? Is it because we have different gall bladders here? Hardly. Is it our diet? Perhaps. It couldn’t be the Dr’s, could it? Why would that matter? Your gall bladder is either fine or it needs to come out, right? Besides, a gall bladder is practically useless. You only need it for digesting fat and everyone will live longer on a low fat diet anyhow so good riddance! (Ok if you have been following me for very long you know that I don’t believe this.)

My Dr is from Germany. I went to him when my gall bladder first started acting up and he told me that in Europe Dr’s do not take out your gall bladder just because you have some pain. Instead they work on ways to heal your gall bladder. Ask a GI Dr in the United States and he will tell you that it is impossible to heal a gall bladder. If you have stones your only choice is to get the offending organ removed. Not doing so is foolhardy they would say. That, in fact, is what 3 different GI Dr’s plus a resident told me. Get it out! When I told them that I didn’t want to they looked at me like I was crazy and asked me why.

There are a couple of reasons why I want to keep my gall bladder.

The top reason for me is that I do not handle surgery well. Even relatively minor surgeries. I had laporoscopic surgery for endometriosis 11 years ago. I spent the night in the hospital instead of going home right afterward, and spent the next several months using a wheelchair or motorized cart when out in public because of my constant pain and weakness. My body does not handle surgery well.

Also your gall bladder serves a very important function in your body. It concentrates and stores bile. Bile is made in your liver at a relatively constant rate, but it is only needed when you eat foods containing fat. Often those foods contain a lot of fat and so a large dose of bile is needed all at once to help break up the fat and allow your body to absorb the nutrients from it. Oh yes, fat has nutrients! Things like vitamin E, vitamin D, and vitamin A are what is called “fat soluble vitamins”. These are contained within fat and if you are not digesting the fat you intake then you can’t absorb those vitamins from it and can become deficient in them. Without a gall bladder to concentrate and store your bile you will not have enough bile to digest a large dose of fat and so that fat will often simply pass through you undigested and those nutrients will be lost. It does you no good to eat healthy foods if they are not being digested and absorbed by your body. I already have health issues. I do not need to contribute to them by depriving my body of fat soluble nutrients.

I will not lie to you. Gall bladder attacks are very painful!

I had my first one when my older daughter was 2 years old. I had to call my husband to come home from work to care for her because I was out of my head from the pain. I did not know what was wrong, but I am not one to go to the ER without a very good reason so I didn’t. The pain was not near my appendix and didn’t seem to be life threatening so I stayed home and rode it out. I thought that perhaps I had an ulcer. My pain is a bit atypical for gall bladder and is felt centrally, in my stomach, not on the right side where my gall bladder is located. Upon palpation I can tell that it is my gall bladder that is tender when I am having an attack. This is an unusual but not unheard of presentation of gall bladder pain according to the GI doctors that I consulted with.

I called my Dr and asked for a referral to a GI. Then I called that GI. He could see me in a week. Hmm… apparently he didn’t think it was an emergency either.

The first GI I saw wanted to take it out based on my description of symptoms alone. He also wanted me to get an ultrasound of my gall bladder just to be sure. This first GI also had a long rambling rant in his office about his ex-wife. After that rant I was pretty clear that I did not intend to let him do any surgery on me, so I got the tests that he ordered and moved on. That ultrasound showed nothing and yet he called me at home urging me to get my gallbladder removed anyhow.

I went to another GI who immediately told me that he didn’t do gall bladder surgery (why did he let me make an appointment then???) but he thought I needed mine out. He sent me to the surgeon who took out his wife’s gall bladder. Seeing that surgeon was a month wait. (Hmmm…. I thought keeping my gall bladder was life threatening?). That Dr had me see a resident first and she was shocked that I didn’t want to sign right up for the surgery and worked to pressure me into it. The Dr however was not interested in twisting my arm (and I hope his resident learned something that day). The reason that I made the appointment was to get his expert opinion on the benefits and risks of the surgery and to learn if he thought that I was at a particular risk. His opinion was that if I really didn’t want to have my gall bladder out I should keep it for then and come back if it became a problem again. The fact is, in case you missed it, at this point I had zero proof that the pain I was experiencing was something that would resolve with the removal of my gall bladder. All of my tests had come back normal, finding nothing wrong. And yet, all of these Dr’s had the expert opinion that I needed to have my gall bladder removed anyhow.

Now don’t get me wrong. Pancreatitis is a very serious life threatening condition caused by gall stones getting stuck in your bile ducts. I am not implying that there is never a reason to get your gall bladder removed. That is a decision that you need to make with the guidance of your doctor. I’m simply saying that there are also risks to getting it removed and good reasons to keep it and those need to be weighed when making a decision.

In the meantime I began to treat my gall bladder with herbs and homeopathic remedies that my family Dr suggested and it stopped hurting. In fact by the time I was at that last surgeons office it hadn’t hurt me in a couple of weeks. I felt nothing from it for the next few years. It is very common for women to have their gall bladder go bad while pregnant or shortly after having a baby so I was nervous when I got pregnant again, but I still had no issues. I thought those days were behind me. Yay natural remedies!

It started up bothering me again about 2 years ago. (about 18 months after we started GAPS). This time I am trying a different approach to managing the pain. I use an essential oil blend called Chiro Touch over my gall bladder when it hurts and the pain goes away almost immediately. Digest is another blend that can work very well applied over a gall bladder. My chiropracter has worked on my gall bladder a lot. She can get it working really well for me by physically manipulating it, but again it isn’t lasting relief.

Dana Young, the founder of Be Young Essential Oils was in town in March and I went to his talk about each of the essential oils. It was amazing what we learned that day. Anyhow at lunch I heard someone else asking him about her gall bladder. He suggested that she could try the gall bladder cleanse that I have listed below. It is also supposed to work on kidney stones. There is some talk in low oxalate groups about gall stones possibly being made of oxalate like kidney stones are. They aren’t typically tested so it isn’t know if this is the case or not. There are anecdotal stories of people having gall stones and gall bladder pain when “dumping” oxalate but again it is not known if there is a real connection of if it is coincidental.

Since my gall bladder has been acting up lately, I decided to try the Be Young Gall Bladder Cleanse. This is not a harsh cleanse like many of them are. No need to fast for days or eat only vegetables or drink cup of olive oil. You eat your normal diet throughout. This is designed to dissolve the stones, not to force you to pass them. My health care practitioners have always warned me that the olive oil type cleanses are too harsh for my system. This cleanse is very supportive and not harsh.

Here is what you need

• 1 qt sauerkraut Juice
• 1 qt tomato juice
• 10 drops Be Young Peppermint Essential Oil
• 10 drops Be Young Lemon Essential Oil

Mix all of that together. Then divide it into 2 one quart jars and drink one the first day and one the second day.

I drank this with breakfast and wow did my digestion feel good those two days! It slowly went back to not so great after those two days were over so I plan to repeat it soon in hopes that another cleanse will help me get more lasting relief. The advice that I got was to repeat it monthly if you do not get lasting relief.

For those on a Low Oxalate Diet. -Tomato juice does have quite a bit of oxalate. Nearly 40mg in the quart of it used in this cleanse. My opinion was that since it was just for 2 days it would be ok. That is only 20mg of oxalate extra a day and while not insignificant, it is still a lot less than a spinach salad. You, however, will need to make your own decisions about if this is acceptable for you.