Everything leads me back to the liver.

The main motivation behind me finally starting this blog is to provide my personal experience on my journey to cleanse my liver and gallbladder. I’ve reached a point in my healing journey where I’ve tried most of what has been suggested to help with endometriosis and I still have pain.

I’ve cleaned up my diet –  cutting out gluten, dairy, soy, red meat and caffeine, I juice just about everyday, and have focused on healing my digestive track with probiotics and lots of organic fruits and veggies – but I don’t feel like this is enough. I still suffer with pain during my period, and I have regular symptoms that indicate hormonal imbalance.

Healing Endometriosis by Healing the Liver? 

At the beginning of my natural journey, I came across Julia Chang’s story about healing her endometriosis on her web site Sensible Health. She’s essentially healed herself with various Chinese herbs that aid in liver functioning and by cleansing her liver and gallbladder. I was interested in her research and personal experience, but kind of blew off the idea of actually doing the cleanse.

Towards the beginning of the year, Melissa did a blog on Endo Empowered about her personal experiences with doing a liver cleanse and how it really helped her digestion and allergies.

I thought about it again, but only for a moment. After looking over the cleanse it was way too much for me. It wasn’t until she blogged about it again that I actually started to consider it.

The suggested cleanse is called The Liver and Gallbladder Miracle Cleanse by Andreas Moritz.  I checked out the reviews on Amazon and decided to pick it up. I read the book cover to cover in a couple of days and was pretty sold on the cleanse.

I decided to try it out the following week. I spent the next couple of days before starting the prep part of the cleanse scouring the Internet, reading blogs and watching a YouTube video on one guy’s results – Ha, Ha 🙂  I must admit I was a little afraid.

Taking the plunge – Colonics, Olive Oil, Epsom Salts and All…

I did my first liver cleanse a couple of months ago. My husband decided to do it with me (He’s the best husband ever 🙂 We started the prep on a Monday and were pretty disciplined in following Dr. Moritz’s suggestions – no cold food or drinks, no supplements and we only had animal products once towards the beginning of the week.

The first few prep days we drank 32 ounces of apple juice and my body definitely felt the effects of all the sugar. I got headaches and my endo flared up. To avoid the sugar,  we switched to drinking food grade, powdered malic acid on the fourth prep day. Malic acid is super sour – kind of like drinking the outside of a sour candy.

My body definitely reacted to the malic acid. I was visiting the bathroom every half hour to hour letting go of what I am assuming was stagnant bile. All I have to say is – Ouch.

Since neither of us had ever had a colonic, we were both a little wigged out by this part. We opted to do two before the cleanse in hopes that everything stuck in our colons came out 🙂 My first experience was…well…weird and I think my husband came out a bit traumatized.

But visibly seeing the crap come out of me was enough to convince me that it was worth it and I did feel better afterwards. We had a closed therapy with a machine called the Angel of Water. If you’re curious, check out the YouTube video the therapist showed us. We had our second colonic the Friday before the cleanse.

On Saturday morning we were a little bit late getting started so our cleansing times were off by about a half hour. I drank all of the malic acid in the morning and started passing stagnant bile again and got really sick – ugh.

We stopped eating after 2PM. I was worried about the fasting period, but it really wasn’t that difficult. I stayed busy so I didn’t stop to think about being hungry.

Come 6:30PM we started the actual cleanse. I drank the epsom salts through a straw so I didn’t really taste them. My biggest struggle was with the olive oil and grapefruit mixture I consumed before bed. I alternated with tastes of honey to help me get it down.

I managed to get all of the oil down and sat still for the next twenty minutes. I felt vibrations on my right side, which Dr. Moritz says are the stones dumping out of the gallbladder. After about a half an hour I had to get up to eliminate and then again a half an hour later. I was feeling very nauseous, and on the second trip to the bathroom the oil sort of slipped out of my throat – into the sink.

Once I tasted the oil again, it was all over. I puked up most if not all of it and went back to bed, feeling defeated. After struggling through the prep week, the colonics, and drinking the oil, I felt like it was all for nothing. I tried to remain positive, keeping in mind Dr. Moritz’s comment in his book about how on one occasion of getting sick during a cleanse he still managed to pass a lot of stones.

Sure enough, on my next subsequent trips to the bathroom I saw white stones floating at the top of the toilet. I tried to sleep but didn’t really. I got up early to take the last rounds of epsom salts. At this point, I was consistently passing dark green stones from my liver.

When all was said and done I passed about 150 stones, with more than half of these coming out of my liver and my husband easily passed over 500 stones!

Unfortunately that night I started my period and it was quite painful. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to feel the full supposed great cleansing feeling as I was dealing with my period pain.

We had colonics done a couple of days following the cleanse and afterwards I felt simply AMAZING! Clear headed and full of energy. I decided then that it was all worth it.

What? You Did it Again?!

Dr. Moritz is clear in his book that once you start the cleanses you should continue until you have two subsequent cleanses with no stones.

After feeling so great after the first cleanse I was willing to go through the trials again. My cycle following my first cleanse proved promising. I got no pimples – a first that I can remember since coming off the pill over three years ago. I had no spotting prior to my period – a symptom that has been pretty consistent with me, and my period flow was bright red, with no clots. Best of all I had no bloating – no preggo belly that always shows up prior to ovulation and my period. My stomach was flat as a board.

I did another cleanse about a month ago and opted the second go round to do half apple juice, half malic acid on the prep days. My body took better to this combination and I didn’t suffer through passing all the stagnant bile I suffered on the first cleanse.

The second go round I did the cleanse on a Friday night since I had plans on Saturday night.  We only did one colonic before hand and did it the day of the cleanse. The colonic was much easier and dare I say almost enjoyable? Relieving anyways 🙂

I struggled again with the olive oil mixture, even with upgrading to a better olive oil. After trying to hold it down, I puked it all up again two hours after taking it. Regardless, I passed over 600 stones the second go round – some of which were close to two inches in length! Wow.

Digestive Woes

Dr. Moritz suggests eating lightly after the cleanse and for the next few days following the cleanse. The body has just gone through “surgery” – he explains. Wish I’d taken this advice.

The night following the cleanse I hung out with some girlfriends. Having fasted the past day I was starving. I let my stomach get the best of me and devoured an entire gluten free veggie pizza with spinach as the main ingredient. Bad idea. I started feeling super gassy. This feeling remained the next couple of days until getting another colonic.

After the colonic I was super hungry so I cooked up some beans and onions. OK – another really bad choice. Note to self – do not put gas producing foods into the body following a colonic. I suffered the night with painful stomach cramps and gas.

These digestion woes really haven’t improved the last several weeks following the second cleanse and I think these poor decisions following the cleanse are the reason behind this. Ugh. Admittedly, I haven’t been eating the best and I know that this isn’t really helping things either.

I believe that I may have stones caught waiting to come out. A few days following the cleanse I got a big ‘ol pimple right between my eyebrows – an area of the face that relates to the liver. Dr. Moritz says that pimples here mean that you have gallstones in the liver. Coincidence that it showed up after the cleanse?

I’ve had an unyielding headache the past couple of weeks, pain in my lower back and pain in my right shoulder – indicating gallstone issues. I plan to do another cleanse in a couple of weeks and am hoping that this helps.

My Word to the Skeptics

When I told people about my cleansing experience in conversations with my family and friends, I received a lot of backlash. Even the colon hydrotherapist was skeptical about the whole thing – make sure that what comes out are actually gallstones – she said.

A lot of people believe that what comes out is merely coagulated olive oil and epsom salts. But the stones that came out of me and my husband were hard as rocks. There is NO WAY these were olive oil.

On a second point in both cleanses I threw up most, if not all, of the olive oil shortly after consuming it, so I had little to no olive oil in my system to produce the amount of stones that came out of me on the second cleanse. Again, no way this was olive oil.

I think the best way to overcome skepticism is to try the cleanse yourself. Once you see the crap come out during the colonic and the stones in the toilet bowl after the cleanse you may think differently. I know that I did.

On the Positive Side?

Actually seeing the toxic crude stuck inside has opened my mind to the toxicity of my body and has made me more mindful of what I put into my body.

Since doing the cleanses, my skin has cleared up and my hydrotherapist said that it is glowing 🙂 My eyes are whiter.

I am convinced that this process will assist in my healing and help my hormonal balance and plan to continue to do monthly cleanses until no more stones come out. I will document my journey along the way in hopes that this process will heal my endometriosis and offer motivation for other endo gals out there to try it.

Have you done a liver cleanse before? I would love to hear about your experiences below…

Much LOVE,

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• Pinterest
• Gmail