HJ: To be safely removed from your body, toxins must first pass through your liver to be ‘disarmed’ into harmless forms that can safely be excreted. Simple enough, yes, but what if your liver is only functioning at 50% capacity… or less? “But, I’m young and healthy!” you might be saying right about now, and while that may generally be true, if you haven’t been doing liver cleanses regularly for pretty much your entire life, there is a good chance you have an under functioning liver.
This is not because you have done anything wrong per se (although many of you will have abused your liver in some form through poor eating habits, drinking, stress and other common lifestyle traits), but because we live in a world filled with toxins and it is simply impossible these days to not have them accumulate in the body. Love it or hate it, the solution is to regularly cleanse your liver, either with the liver flushing protocol outlined below or through gentler but extended methods.
If you have also been drinking or eating poorly either now or in the past, you are at a higher risk for depressed liver function. But let’s be clear — this isn’t an article about scaring you or trying to make you worried when you otherwise had peace of mind in this area, because that certainly is not going to help anything.
Consider this article a friendly reminder to start cleansing your liver and therefore experience the abundant energy, clarity of mind, happiness, and health that awaits you after a successful liver cleanse. You can expect all these qualities and more as a result of giving your liver what it needs because it is one of (if not the) most important organ in the body. We typically don’t realize how much better we could feel than we do now until we have experienced it first hand. Then we realize that our happiness and energy was only operating at a fraction of what it could have been, after the fact.
Speaking from experience (I have done 9 or so liver cleanses over the years), I felt truly rejuvenated in every way after a liver flush and experienced major improvements in health. This goes for any deep cleanse really, but liver flushes are particularly powerful as they go.
If you are truly interested in experiencing these incredible benefits for yourself, we recommend reading the article below, getting a general idea of the protocol and then, if it seems right for you, giving it a shot. It is truly a life-changing experience to be sure.
– Truth
Liver-Gallbaldder Cleansing: Total body detoxification and the way to healthy aging
By Robert Moroney
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The blood tests requested by Dr. Gordon Tessler when I first visited him in 1982 revealed that all my liver enzymes were above normal, indicating a stressed and sluggish liver. “Your whole body is toxic and your liver is working overtime,” he said, “but I don’t want you doing any liver flushes until we get your colon straightened out and your adrenals working again.”
It took several months of coffee colonics and enemas, dietary changes, and food supplements before Gordon gave me the go ahead to do a two-day liver flush. I suffered no complications from this procedure, so he had me do one liver flush a month for the next five months. By the time we did a third blood panel, the liver enzyme scores had returned to normal, and I was feeling considerably better.
I don’t think anyone really knows how many functions the liver performs on a day-to-day basis: anywhere from 190 on up, depending on what book you read. Appendix I lists a few of the liver’s major functions, which include the breakdown of every carbohydrate, protein, and fat entering the body; the detoxification of all poisons; the breakdown of all hormone residues; and the arranging and rearranging of proteins into amino acids and amino acids into proteins.
Chinese medicine treats the liver and gallbladder as one unit, as they work together to process and emulsify fats. The liver is considered a vital organ—we simply could not survive without it. In Western medicine, the gallbladder is regarded as expendable, as many doctors quickly remove it when it becomes clogged with stones, which are small, hard, pathological constructs composed chiefly of cholesterol, calcium salts, and bile pigment formed in the gallbladder or bile duct.
It takes the entire digestive tract from the mouth to the small intestine to break down and separate food into its nutrient constituents: proteins, carbohydrates and fats. These get routed to the liver, where they’re disassembled and reassembled into forms the body can utilize in the production of energy and the replacement of tissue.
The liver can become congested from an intake of toxic and fatty foods, overindulgence of alcohol and drugs, overeating, constipation, and physical and emotional trauma. A liver that can’t clear its own wastes will quickly bloat, harden and swell from the accumulation of stuck toxic substances.
How do you know if your liver is sluggish? Start with the shape of the gut. A bloated gut is a sure sign of a sluggish liver, poor dietary habits, possible digestive problems, and toxicity in the small and large intestines. Elevated liver enzymes, as determined from blood tests, are an indication of a malfunctioning liver under stress.
Most Americans older than forty have sluggish livers, especially if they drink alcohol regularly. Fat (cholesterol) and metal (calcium) combine to form globules that clog the liver and gallbladder. As a general rule, stones in the liver mean that there are stones in the gallbladder, but stones in the gallbladder do not necessarily mean that there are stones in the liver.
Fortunately the liver is a resilient organ that can regenerate itself if its host changes the eating and lifestyle habits that created the problem. If you are a newcomer to living a healthy lifestyle, I suggest you consult with a nutritionally oriented doctor who will test your blood chemistries for imbalances, analyze your food allergies (most people have them), and run urine and hair tests for metabolic errors and heavy-metal levels. These tests will provide you with a comprehensive evaluation of your health status, a profile of your specific health challenges and a protocol for addressing them. You will probably have to pay cash for these tests, but they aren’t prohibitively expensive and they will provide a reliable laboratory record of your progress.
Caution: Liver flushes can be tricky if you are new to detoxification. Work with a doctor or practitioner who can evaluate your risks until you have completed at least two flushes. You do not want to do a flush if your liver energy is weak or if you are carrying large stones in your gallbladder as they could get trapped in its narrow opening, creating pain and possibly necessitating surgery to remove them.
That is where IonCleanse and food supplements supports come into play. Proper food supplements will strengthen the liver, thus raising its energy level, which in turn increases its ability to mobilize toxins. The IonCleanse provides the internal relaxation that enables toxins to move and gives them a little extra push to leave.
When my liver crashed on December 8, 2004, the result of a lifetime of sustained stress and heavy alcohol intake, the medical doctor I visited called it nonviral hepatitis, pending more extensive tests, but a medical intuitive called it cirrhosis, a far more serious pathology that often requires a liver transplant. At first I did not agree with the medical intuitive’s diagnosis, but my painfully slow recovery, still ongoing, has proven her right. I’m still recovering six years later, but my energy level is half what it was ten years ago, when I was able to play an entire game of full-court basketball.
I employed an infrared LED light therapy device broadcasting Global Scaling Energy Waves, along with a milk thistle dandelion supplement from Herb Pharm and detoxifying footbaths in a continuing effort to regenerate my liver. To date I have been partially successful, as my energy level is slowly improving, but I’m no longer the powerhouse of my late forties and fifties.
I have to give some credit to Alpha Lipoic Acid Drip Therapy, a series of intravenous drips developed by Dr. Burt Berkson, a medical doctor and leading FDA alpha-lipoic acid researcher in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I highly recommend Berkson’s protocol for anyone with diabetes, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV, chronic fatigue, or liver disease.
I took ten treatments over five days, resulting in a seven-pound weight loss and a substantial increase in energy. As I sat in his treatment room with a needle in my vein for two hours each session, I had the opportunity to interview upwards of fifty patients with serious ailments who had been taking his therapy over many months, and every one reported an abatement of symptoms and an increase in energy. I also recommend his book Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough.
Chemical detoxification
The liver processes toxins. Alcohol, allopathic medications, heavy metals, chemical residues and inhalants from tens of thousands of industrial and petrochemical products stress the liver from the moment we come into life, including the time spent in the womb. Add to this toxic soup our cultural tendency to overeat, which overloads the bloodstream with fat and glucose, and the liver stresses even further. Nonalcoholic liver cirrhosis is becoming more frequent in our culture.
Never in human history has the liver been required to perform more work, and the strain is evident in the girth of our citizenry. Americans are among the fattest on the planet. As a fitting testimony to our cultural weight gain during the twentieth century, the architects who refurbished Yankee Stadium in 1980 reduced the number of seats from 65,000 to 55,000 to accommodate the four-inch expansion in the American derriere since the stadium had been originally built in 1920.
Statistics tell us we’re living longer—but are we living better? Today heart disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease account for more than 80 per cent of deaths in the United States, versus 12 per cent in 1900, and many Americans die broke , mostly from health-care costs. These four conditions involve a buildup of toxins somewhere in the body—arterial plaque for heart disease, tumours in cancer, glycation in diabetes, and amyloid plaque in Alzheimer’s disease—that ongoing detoxification protocols can probably eliminate if begun while the body is still in decent health.
Important note: Detoxification is not a treatment for severely impeded arterial blood flow. If you’re experiencing symptoms that relate to impeded blood flow, you should seek medical treatment.
Accumulated fat from overeating and poor food choices compounds the disease problem by speeding up the onset of chronic degenerative disease, resulting in a diminished quality of life, a shorter life span, and higher disease-maintenance costs. One would think that as a society we would be more invested in teaching healthy lifestyles, instead of encouraging indiscriminate consumption of pharmaceutical drugs to mitigate the symptoms of disease.
Since toxic accumulation accompanies most diseases, it appears that eating a healthy diet and periodically detoxifying the body will greatly reduce the incidence of chronic degenerative disease and increase healthy life span.
The organ of anger
Chinese medicine recognizes the role of emotions in the health of the body. According to teachings that have survived for more than 2,500 years, grief is held in the lungs, anger in the liver, fear in the kidneys, worry in the stomach and joy in the heart. Obviously, the greater the intensity of an emotion, the greater the amount of stress in its corresponding organ.
Angry individuals who transcribe these emotion-organ links to physical events will likely experience liver problems over the course of their lives, because any deviation in liver chemistries will only increase the amount of toxic by-products the body must process. My research has shown that an angry person is more likely to be attracted to cigarettes, alcohol and drugs—poisons that might neutralize the emotional pain but that add to the body’s
toxic burden.
I was an angry adolescent who discovered cigarettes at age thirteen and alcohol at fifteen. I started having liver problems at twenty-one —that was when a doctor gave me my first warning about cirrhosis. I discovered marijuana at twenty-seven and cocaine at thirty-five, hence the elevated liver enzymes and lung cancer at forty-three.
I was able to cut my alcohol consumption way down because of marijuana. However, because of business stresses and abstinence from marijuana, my alcohol intake escalated when I was in my early sixties. I didn’t think I was drinking that much, but I didn’t think about the weakness of aging and past cumulative damage, which is why three years after I reintroduced alcohol into my system my liver crashed.
My story is typical of many recovering alcoholics and drug addicts I’ve worked with over the years. Because they were angry personalities who took to some form of drug relief early in life, these addicts benefited greatly from the many months of food supplements and detoxification rituals required to reconstruct their organs and nervous systems.
Statistics have continuously shown that recidivism is much lower with recovering addicts who take supplements and detox regularly. L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, was the first to recognize the benefits of supplements and detoxification in the recovery process, and many programs now incorporate these modalities in their curriculum. While Hubbard’s program ignored the emotional aspects of addiction, it did help me rebuild my vitality and physical strength, which enabled me to cope with the stresses of dependency. It took three years of physical rehabilitation before I could tackle my pent-up anger and rage.
A powerful liver cleanse and gallbladder flush
This flush takes five days.
1. For each day, do a half-hour castor-oil pack treatment on the liver as follows: cut a piece of chamois of sufficient size to cover the entire liver, which extends from the centre of the body to its right edge. Cover the chamois with a thin layer of castor oil and place it over the liver. Cover the chamois with a strip of wax paper, and place a heating pad set to medium heat over the wax paper. Lie down and turn the pad on for thirty minutes as you maintain a stationary position.
2. Consume only raw salads and fresh vegetables or low-glycemic fruit and vegetable juices throughout the entire five-day period. Each day drink several glasses of filtered water with the juice from a lemon wedge. (See Chapter Seventeen: Water.)
3. Shortly before bedtime on the evening of the fifth day, drink eight ounces of virgin olive oil combined with juice from four or five whole lemons. Lie in bed on your right side, knees pulled up in the fetal position for at least thirty minutes. Go to sleep. You will probably awaken in the middle of the night for one heck of a malodorous bowel movement. That odour and the strange objects you will view in the bowl are the toxins and gallstones the flush has removed from your body.
Ideally, you should do this cleanse twice a year.
Robert Moroney, MA, DA, earned advanced degrees from Boulder Graduate School and Alphabiotics International in Dallas, Texas, and was in private practice for sixteen years as a nutritionist and peak-performance coach. Robert was born in Astoria, Queens, married his wife, Barbara, in 1973, and has one son.This article was excerpted from Robert E. Moroney’s book Total Body Detoxification: The Way to Healthy Aging. Copyright © 2014 Robert E. Moroney, MA, DA. Published by Swing-Hi Press. Buy the book>>
