I am new to this blog but well-versed in holistic and allopathic hep c treatments. I am also trained in zoology and clinical laboratory Science (medical technology). I have had hepatitis c for 30 plus years and I am now 55 years old. I have the worst genotype, 1A, and I underwent drug therapy 3 1/2 years ago, but was unable to finish after 12 weeks due to massive dermalogical allergic symptoms. The treatment nearly destroyed me.
Six months later I went to the Gerson clinic in Big Bear. That was essential to restoring function to my liver. The Gerson protocol is for cancer, however, its therapeutic focus is on the liver. Dr. Gerson believed that all cancers, wherever they occured in the body, were due to liver dysfunction and his protocol targets the liver to restore function. The protocol is powered by fresh juice on the hour, but includes a wide range of solid foods, both cooked and raw.
It occured to me that the Gerson protocol was very appropriate for me, however, hepatitis c is a much different situation that terminal cancer. The food in their program, I came to believe, is necessary to slow down the detoxification process. This is necessary for their protocol because the patients are very fragile and sudden massive detoxification would probably kill most of them.
What eventually evolved for me is based on a couple different things. One is the fact that the virus is difficult to eradicate because it is born inside the cell, although its particles are released in massive quantities into the blood. Intracellular viruses are notoriously difficult to manage, especially using drugs to target blood-borne (extracellular) particles. The other important fact is that it is cirhosis that kills the liver, not the virus. These facts resolved me on a course of action to target the cirhosis, rather than the virus. There are many examples of people dying of old age, even though they have the virus, because they never develop cirhosis. Four years ago my biopsy scores for my liver were at stage 3 out of 4 for fibrosis, and 2 out of 4 for inflammation. I reasoned that if I restored liver function by reversing scarring, then the body could do its job of eliminating, or at least, keeping the virus in check.
The great thing about cirhosis is that it is macro-cellular and extracellular. In other words it is outside of the cell, on a larger scale than micrsoscopic sized particles like viruses, easily accessible to blood borne nutrients, and also accessible to physical techniques like massage and organ pumping.
Cirhosis is fibrosis, or scar tissue in the tissues of the liver. The liver is composed of a huge number of blood vessels, a huge number of lymph vessels, and a huge number of bile ducts. (Liver flushes empty the bile ducts of stagnant bile, but do not reach to cleanse the actual organ tissues.) In the liver tissues, especially in hep patients, are fat deposits that become beds of inflammation. These are called called fatty liver or steathosis. These fat beds promote the development of fibrosis, or scarring. Remember, inflamation (the arachidonic acid cycle) is a fat metabolism pathway. Fatty liver is increased by body mass index, although in hep c patients the condition exists even in non-overweight patients.
So, a 15 months after drug treatment, and 9 months after Gerson, I did a 70 day green juice fast. I also had weekly 2 hour treatments with a very skilled deep tissue massage therapist in my area. We pumped my liver every week of bile, and the massage increased blood flow to the tissues. Week five saw a sudden expulsion in my bowel - 48 inches of bowel movement in five consecutive days. This material was small dehydrated, marble sized balls all stuck together. They had been enclosed over by the mucous membrane of my digestive tract and were actually adhesed to the tissues and ligaments of my back and bowel. Ever wonder why a colonoscopy shows nothing but nice clean mucosal lining? It's because the mucous lining grows over the pockets. The pockets become embedded in the actual tissue of the intestinal walls. Week six saw my liver swell up to a huge size and we pumped out about a quart of noxious black paste, which was elimated through my bowel. I think that could not happen without the bowel purging first, the week before.
Since then I have continued green juicing (with raw food added) combined with massage and core exercise. My liver is functioning perfectly, it seems, and my energy is through the roof. My sense of humor has returned and I am also buffed out physically.
I have tried literally all of the stuff in this blog - 100 g intravenous vitamin C treatments, every herb, nat-cell, lauricidin, olive extract. But it eventually occurred to me that this is more like digging a ditch than finding the perfect natural drug. Let me emphasize that all that stuff works well - it just works really well in a clean system.
I have not bothered with lab tests, but I will at the five year mark. For now, contact with doctors is just a downer, and it won't affect what I do anyway, because the tests are okay for measuring liver enzymes and virus particles, but only a biopsy measures fibrosis, and I am not going to drill a hole in my liver to find out what I already know in my heart anyway. My deep tissue guy, who is the best, tells me that my liver feels healthier than ony of his other clients. That's good enough for me.
By the way, I would have to think hard about considering organ massage (if I had never done it before) without accompanying it with a pretty intensive elimination program. But, when done correctly, a skilled body worker can really accelerate the progress of the program in the liver, as well as all areas of the body. My massage guy has realigned my spine (double scoliosis), freed up my fused left hip, and helped significantly with my right shoulder and neck (We're working on that now). I seem to be realigning from the feet up and now we are at my shoulder. All fueled by green juice!
Hi, and thanks for the comment. I use a Norwalk Juicer, which was developed by a pioneer of natural healing, Dr. Norman Walker. (Norman Walker believed that everone should live to 120 - he only made it to 112, but was sharp as a tack mentally and physically his whole life, even after 100.) This is the only juicer that Gerson recommended because centrifugal juicers use spinning metal cages that set up powerful magnetic fields that neutralize the enzymes in the juice. Actually he came to that belief when he switched to a centrifugal juicer and his cancer patients took a sudden downturn in health. I use a recipe that includes one head of romaine, one head of red leaf lettuce, one half bunch of dandelion leaf, half a purple cabbage, two bell peppers and a half a bunch of Celery . That give me about 2.5-3 pints and I do that three times a day. I don't eat in the morning, just doing two juicings and work out doing cardio and core. I would recommend that - talk about altered states of conciousness! Then later in the early afternoon I eat raw food or lightly steamed whole veggies. I am not currently juice fasting because I am trying to maintain by cleansing my tissues using core workouts with a lot of twisting and strength mpovements and I need more protein to do it. The juice does the work of the program anyway, but without the long fast, what I do today would not be as appropriate.
Also, what I found was that fruit juices were too sweet unless used 1/2 pint per hour max. My blood sugar rose and I saw bacteria and yeast in my live blood exam, which was a tremendous sap on my energy because my immune system was fighting them hand-to-hand. When I switched to all green my pH went to 8.0 and it was the nuclear option for the bugs - they can't survive in an alkaline environment like that. My energy increased dramatically and instantly.
The black paste that came out was the fat from the fatty liver tissue as well as (I assume) expelled fibrotic material. Since then my health and energy has been better than it has since I was young and dumb. (Youth is wasted on the young!)
I hope this info helps you. Knowing what to do when the health challenges come is an important thing - but finding the resolve to actually do it is more rare.
yes i am familiar with the norwalk juicer and have always wanted one but the price has been prohibitive for me. although i do believe norman was actually 99 when he died, but thats another issue.
thats a great recipe, i may try something like that. i do like lettuce juice, although i dont drink it very often. thanks for the recipe.
The second best option is to use a Champion juicer, which is slow grind and cold process just like a norwalk, but you take the screen plate out and just pulp it. Then you buy a hydraulic press and squeeze the pulp using a norwalk filter bag. You can find the hydraulic press on the Gerson site. I think the press is about $150 US and a Champion is about $180, but don't quote me on that. This then gives you the same process as a norwalk.
And yes, I have a wheat grass juicer, but I like the volume of the other juice, the wheat grass is so concentrated and I can slam a quart and a half of the other recipe at a time because it actually tastes good!
hi sunangel...so the green juices you did, it was that lettuce/pepper/celery/cabbage mix 3x/day..., that'd be around 15 glasses/day, right? and per day, it'd be 3 heads each of romaine, and red lettuce, plus 1.5 cabbage, 1.5 bunch Celery , 1.5 bunch dandelion, and the peppers...just checking, that's waaay more green than I've ever done, I thought I was doing good getting in 2 bunches/day...maybe this is why I haven't been able to take things to the next level..and you did 70 days on just this juice? wow...good for you.
Yes, that is about a quart and a quarter per juicing, three times a day - three heads each of the lettuce, etc. per day. So, I don't drink any water. This is my program that I have been doing since the long juice fast, which I am doing for the next eight weeks. AM juice, cardio, juice, core, stretch and balance, rest and lunch - raw, cooked, but all whole foods, no fats or oils except from food matrices, very rare animal protein (sushi hound), beans and rice, bee pollen, then pm juicincg and food prep for the next day. Also oatmeal, quinoa, etc. I eat from the whole food palate.
On the long juice fast - which ended a year ago january, I went down to 165 from 210 or so. Since gained up to 185-190, but this is the third program since the fast incorporating the juice, food and excercise. I hired a 91 year old lady to juice for me and it did her a ton of good too. Now I am juicing myself. I am committed to a five year program, scheduled to end next september - two more eight week programs like this one, but not including this one.
Let me say again - the green juice workouts are, like, extraterrestial. The juicer presses the juice out of the cells of plant, and ten minutes later it is entering my cells. When you pump up with water your muscles release it very soon after you excercise, but this stuff slowly releases over many hours.
The best thing for me is that my protocol is based on demonstrable effectiveness. I don't have to have faith that my silver bullet herb is working. When I do something on my program and it works, I know it because I can feel it. Intensely. So I power the body's healing processes and just get out of the way. The body has infinite wisdom, and there is no scientist that has a mind that could even grasp the intricacies to the things that the body does to cleanse and heal itself. (A scientific study is like a gainy black and white photo of a marathon shakespearean play.)
When looking back over this thread I noticed that I appear to give the impression of having great discipline. That is far from the truth. I have copied part of a blog response I gave to someone considering undergoing drug treatment for hep c. It is from a conventional medicine Hep c blog:
I personally made the decision to do the therapy and have not regretted it even though it failed. The reason that I did the drug treatment was because I knew that I did not have the discipline to do it naturally. I knew that in order for my liver to purge, not just bile , but down to the actual organ tissue where the steatosis and fibrosis resides, it would take a very prolonged juice fast, or else a Gerson-type diet, most of the time and probably for life. I knew that I couldn't do it. I had tried very hard and could not manage it. I realized very clearly it was more like digging a ditch than finding the magic herb that would make everything all better.
Sometimes, as they say, you have to hit rock bottom, and the interferon/ribavarin therapy threw me down hard. I probably failed the program precisely because I had been doing so much cleansing that my body was too reactive to accept the drugs, but it ruined my health and immune system, and then I had no choice but to be dedicated to the natural way, because I wasn't ready to die. The greatest motivations are fear and pain, and I had plenty of both.
I look at my quality of life now and I realize that all of it - the horrible reactions, the long painful healing process, and even the disease in the first place is a blessing. It was a challenge, and we all are challenged, or will be even without hep c, and your life is all about how you live and respond.
But please have no delusions. The holistic way is hard; brutal, even. I call it holistic chemo. Last year in the New England Journal of Medicine a case history was written about a man on a rapid weight loss program that was in the intensive care unit because the vast amount of toxins released in his blood stream from detoxifying almost killed him. Aggressive techniques are required and they will hit you hard. Less than aggressive techniques may not be enough. Most people do not have the dedication that maybe only extreme desperation brings.
Good luck to you. I hope you find your way and all is good for you!
This was a response to another blogger:
I'm sorry, I don't think I was being too clear. The holistic program that I engaged in is based on diet manipulation, not herbals or supplements. In the history of holistic healing the pioneers all used diet manipulation - juice fasting especially, to cleanse and heal the body (see Max Gerson, Bernard Jensen , Dr. John Christopher, Arnold Erlich, etc.). Supplements follow the drug, or medical model in that everyone looks for the silver bullet herb, exactly like the drug researchers are looking for the silver bullet drug, to do all the work.
But juice fasting is a process that powers the bodies natural healing and cleansing response, rather than by manipulating it with an outside drug. The two systems are completely different. They are like two different logic systems. What works and makes sense in one is wrong in the other because the corollaries, or fundamental unquestioned truths are actually diametrically opposed. In other words, in the medical drug model the system is manipulated by, and flooded with drugs. In the holistic system drugs are expelled with all other toxins and the aim is for the body's normal systems to be reset and normal function restored. I think I failed the drug program because I had trained my body to shed toxins, and my body did that with a vengeance. I was like the centerfold in a clinical dermatology textbook - I had about five different seeping, sloughing, bleeding, itchy skin conditions covering 3/4 of my body by week 12.
I found the process to be a lot about taking control. In the drug model, the patient reliquishes control and will, and has faith and hopes for a favorable outcome. In the holistic program its about establishing control over one's diet and choices and steering the ship back to health in a very agressive way. It is about powering the systems of the body and having faith that the body, in its infinite wisdom, knows what to do. But it takes a high degree of committment, which I was fortunate to have, being beaten and terrorized by the drug regimen. At that point, what seemed impossible seemed not so hard after all. Certainly much easier that what I had just gone through.
I know all about scientific research. I'm trained to read and understand scientific medical studies. But in reality, a study is like a grainy black and white photo of a marathon Shakespearian play. Looking at the photo one has no idea what the true colors of the costumes are, much less the plot, the characters personalities, the interactions between the players, and what's going on behind the curtain. No scientist can know the incredible intricacies of the body's healing processes - because our mind and vocablulary is limited and is incapable of understanding all that the body does naturally to heal. We can only look at grainy snapshots and try to guess what is going on.
A last word about taking responsibility and control. When I called my GE about my alarming condition caused by the drug, he refused to see me, telling me to "get to a dermatologist". Of course the dermatologist tole me to get off the drugs if I wanted it to stop. That was the last consultation my GE had with me. At my six month checkup I saw only a phlebotomist to draw blood and was shown the door. So responsibility was firmly thrust back in my lap, with what I considered to be a shrug and a yawn. No one is nearly as concerned about your condition as you are.
So, what you're saying is that if this juice fasting protocol you did purged toxins out of your system. So would it purge the Pegasys/Ribavirin and supplements/herbs out of your system too? I eat mostly vegan except for organic eggs and alot of raw. I just started the Peg/Rib. protocol in April and just started Dr. Zhang's herbal protocol last week. So far, I have some side effects, but what's kicking my butt mostly is the daily fever. That just zaps my energy. I don't want to take Tylenol but sometimes I just have to take 1 to ease it a little.
I did not juice fast during treatment. But I had done a moderate amount of fasting prior to treatment and ate a clean raw/veggie diet during. I believe that led to problems on drug therapy for this reason: when cleansing your body is working to eliminate toxins. The drugs are toxins and if as you introduce them constantly, you might not necessarily want to induce purging because then there is a collision in the middle. For me that manifested in dermatological problems that were interesting, but incredibly severe and they made me completely miserable. They also forced me off the drug therapy. If I had done a full-on green juice fast during treament, I actually shudder to think of what would have happened. They actually recommend that you take the drugs in between meals with high fat content. No one told me that when I started, but apparently that's what they tell them in the U.K.
I noticed that people on crummy diets were much more accepting of the drugs, and many went on to achieve zero viral load after six months.
I would recommend extensive cleansing after treatment, however, whether the virus is eradicated or not. As the months went on, every time I went deeper with my cleanse, including the long ten week green juice fast, I would dig up another layer of ribavarin and the same rashes and skin splits would occur. It took years for that to stop, but it only happened when I was at a really deep point in cleansing, so the occurrence of the rashes on my sides always told me I was at my deepest level yet. Also, any herbs or alternative treatments that are effective are more effective the cleaner you are. In my experience, everything worked the best when juice fasting. This included TCM herbs, lauricidin, ozone (rectal insuflation), Vitamin C IV drips (100,000 mg over 6-8 hours), natcell thymus, lugol's, pancrease, etc. The first ozone treatment I gave myself resulted in an immediate 50% increase in energy and never went back. The vitamin C was very good too - I would get deep tissue organ massage and liver pumping lying on the massage table with my IV pole, with pretty wild results. Talk about Chi Bombs! I am currently just doing the juice/raw food diet, deep tissue massage, and lots of exercise.
I would also recommend coffee enemas using s.a.Wilsons special enema coffee in Canada, http://www.sawilsons.com/
. What happens is the caffeine goes straight to the liver and the liver and bile ducts constrict and purge the bile. Then the liver is free to cleanse more blood. A lot of the pain, headache, etc of detox is from metabolites that back up into the blood because the liver is full. As soon as the liver dumps it cleans up the blood and provides relief immediately. For me coffee enemas work to competely stop detox reactions. Eight minutes after introducing the coffee, the detox fog lifts like a cloud from my head. This is very important because for years I suffered with detox reactions when I started fasting, especially the first three days, but also all through a cleanse to a lesser degree. But this stuff works like I never thought anything would work. I did not do coffee enemas during drug treatment however, so I do not know how much relief it will provide during treatment, but the stuff is invaluable when your body is working normally and you need to cleanse. And I would not be surprised if they prooved helpful during treatment.
But, besides stuff like coffee enemas, when you are on drug treatment it might be best to just assume that you are making a mess of your body and its systems, and you will just have to clean it up when you are done. I would be careful of using dietary cleansing while on therapy, and that's because it works too well and is too powerful and is in direct conflict with the aims of the drug protocol. But that is my personal experience and it might not be valid for you.
He has coffee that is specially selected and he prepares with as little heat as possible in order to grind it. The problem with regular coffee is it is roasted crispy. The darker coffees have been roasted longer. Then, when you drink it, the stomach acids derange the nutrients even further. Not so with the enema coffee.
I always use a big dose - more than recommended. I use a cup of coffee to make four pints of coffee - each pint being an enema's worth. So four enemas per cup. I bring it to a boil in a pan, then let it simmer for fifteen minutes, strain it and I put it in 4 pint mason jars, filled to brim before putting on the cap and lid. That way there is little oxygen in the jar to oxidize it. Then it swill stay good in the refrigerator.
I must say, the coffee buzz is much purer than when you drink it. Not jittery at all, but still strongly effective.
After I put it in (fifteen minutes total, I do a manual self massage on my liver to help it activate and dump. I dig my fingers under my diapragm and under the right side of my ribcage and draw my fingers down towards the gall bladder, which is about half way between the sternum and the belly button and a little to the right. I also put my left fist on my right ribcage and pump it with my right elbow. As I said before, coffee enemas are the only thing in thirty years that I have seen that can stop detox reactions cold. You know the ones that hit in the second and third day of a juice fast? Eight minutes into it, the fog lifts like a cloud.
Both you and your brother have blood sugar problems. I do when I go off diet also - a component of the hep c - diabetes association. The green juice stops sugar cravings immediately for me, and never reappear when I am green juicing. I think the key is the alkaline pH of the blood. Mine gets to 8.0 with the green juice. You can measure with a test strip in your urine - you urine is an ultrafiltrate of your blood, so its pH is identical to your blood's pH. You should try it with an eye towards observing this phenomena. I think it is significant because it seems to be less about treating a symptom and more about correcting a process. Or like halting the progression of a process gone bad.
By the way, there are therapists that cure diabetes. One I heard of puts her patients on a 500 calorie a day elimination diet, sends them away, and tells them that in thirty days they should have dropped x many pounds, and if they haven't don't come back until they do. Only then can they get to work with her treatments and supplements. I think a green juice diet is an elimination diet that is therapeutic at the same time. If I had diabetes I would approach it that way, with a goal to cure it. I believe that would be easier than viruses or cancers, for sure.
Another god book is written by C. Leigh Broadhurst, something about diabetes in the title. She advocates and evolutionary diet. Man has existed for 50,000 of which only fairly recently have cooking, oils and other processing has taken place. So she says to normalize and optimize you should eat like our ancient hunter-gatherer-grazer ancestors. Raw food and lots of grazing. And she says that diabetes goes away with an evolutionary diet.
Also, pancrease is a little pricey, but worth it - remember insulin is a pancreatic enzyme. It also takes a big load off your liver.
Good luck developing your program brother. You can make it a race car or a jalopy, but you gotta own it and love it!
I am lucky enough to have a skilled bodyworker. He is trained in myotherapy but he does all my deep tissue massage work. The liver is mainly hidden on the right side under the ribcage but some of it peeks ou from underneath the diaphragm under the strenum down to the right of the ribcage. So part of the liver is accesible to direct pressue and the rib cage can be pummped to compress the liver underneath. All movements are toward the bile duct, and we can feel and hear the bile gurgling out as he does it. You can also do it yourself with a car buffer or massage thumper. But you have to be extremely clean to do it. You should only do it after a deep long fast or cleansing diet because you do not want to create damage, especially if you have liver disease. The question I had to ask was, if I am on a super clean diet could it hurt me? And the other question is, can you break up fibrosis with physical massage? No medical doctor has been crazy enough to try it, but I would do it on other scar tissue, so I figured why not? My massage guy says that my liver feels really plump and turgid with better tissue tone than any of his other clients who have undiseased livers, and I believe him.
This is the same reason I focus on core exercises. My whole purpose is to strengthen my liver tissue and also the surrounding fascia and whole environment. How can it be clean if if is sitting in a bunch on congestion? Your liver should be able to transmit physical force, to expand, contract and twist and all of that increases blood flow to the tissues, which increases healing. It's all about chi.
Thanks. I am going to try a green diet as you did. I can't afford to lose any weight, so I don't want to do a juice fast. I did The Master Cleanse before I started tx. I do want to juice and eat as you are doing. I want to make sure of what you ate. I think it was:
---One head of Romaine, One head of Red Leaf Lettuce, On half bunch of dandelion leaf, half of purple Cabbage, two Bell Peppers, and a half bunch of Celery - 3 x's a day.
Did you ever eat carrots or beets, or were they too sweet? Can you add chard, kale or collards to the mix? Any seasonings or no? Did you ever do Dr Clark's liver cleanse, (gall bladder flush)?
How long before you saw any improvements? Any suggestions?
Was the coffee enema done with 1 qt of clean water in a pan, bring it to a boil, add 2 flat tbs of coffee. Let it boil for 5 mins, turn the stove off and leave pan on the hot burner.
Allow to cool to a tepid temp.
Use 1/2 qt first and clamp off the tubing. Hold for 12 or more minutes.Then do the other 1/2 qt for 12 mins.
Did you follow with another one right away?
How often did you do them?
Actually I just switched the red leaf to green leaf and it tastes better. And yeah, my mix is just personal preference. All the green leafies are good. If you go with whole solid foods - fruits and veggies 75% raw, or a good macrobiotic diet plus juice you can get there without fasting, it just takes a little longer. But if you have hep c you might notice, as I do, that blood sugar cravings disappear, anger is not a problem (your sense of humor will be restored and you won't be grumpy and hateful), and blood clotting improves. Those are the only symptoms that I feel, or am aware of, but when I eat badly all three of those areas drift off in a negative direction very quickly, and it gets worse the longer I eat bad. When I eat good those symptoms disappear.
You know there are a lot of people who have done strict diets with success. The Gerson Institute is full of people that beat terminal cancer with combo juice/healthy food. I personally know two people who cured themselves of terminal cancer with the Gerson diet. But no one wants to talk about them so you never hear the success stories. Anecdotal evidence! But it is not some superhuman feat, lots of people do it.
Good luck with your program. And I mean that - you have to own it, or it will never work. Listen to your body!
I'm sorry I just ralized I didn't answer your enema coffee question, and also the question about carrots and beets.
I probably use double the coffee I'm supposed to - it just kind of drifted that way over the last few years. Mainly because the buzz is so good! Much better than drinking it. I use a cup of coffee for four one pint enemas - one half gallon total, after boiling. I bring the coffee to a boil, and then turn it down to simmer it for fifteen minutes When done I strain the coffec grains out and fill up four one pint mason jars - fill them to the brim with added water to purge the air before you screw on the lids. One pint per enema, body temperature!!!. I just use an enema bag. Hold for fifteen minutes. I also self massage my liver while the coffee is in to activate it and get it to dump.
The Gerson people did four a day for the terminal cancer patients. Their bodies are very toxic, so they need a lot of help for the pain.
Also, good question about carrots and beets. You should be careful not to do more than half a pint of carrot juice per hour because of the sugars. Of course, I did too much in the beginning, and I must have had leaky gut syndrome or something, because my live blood exams showed bacteria and yeast in my blood. No wonder I was tired! My immune system was fighting them hand-to-hand! The pH shift when I shifted to all greens was like the nuclear option - they just all got wiped out and it didn't cost me any energy. I just avoid both of them now, although beet greens are good.
I also do an occasional grapefruit juice, at least one a day. It still counts as a fresh juice, it's very good for hep c - see naringen and VLDL's. It also turns alkaline in the stomach.
They used to say, eat your fruit and juice your veggies - for exactly that reason.
Thanks, Sunangel,
I am gearing myself up to do it. I ordered Gerson's book and am looking for a juicer.I don't have HCV anymore since I did the meds, but the cirrhosis is still there. And minor inflammation of my fingers since having HCV is scary. I don't want to be in this condition or worse in 2 years from now. I want to be better. I did a candida diet once and never felt better, so I am going to do the greens, too. Starve anything out of there that doesn't belong!
BTW, my ND said that Gerson uses juiced organic liver. Did you ever do that? Ewwww.
Good for you! It's an adventure, but you'll never higher!
The best juicer is a norwalk, but a champion is next best. If you buy a hydraulic press from the gerson site they (champion plus press) simulate the same action as a norwalk.
And yes, he did juice raw calves liver. But his institute stopped it because they ran into campylobacter bacterial contamination that strikes the immunocompromised hard. I know, it happened to me after treament (not from liver juice) because the treatment had destroyed my immune system.
Very wise move to cleanse too - the ribavarin in very deep in you, and I gotta warn you, the sh*t is just as bad coming out as it was going in! All my symptoms reappear even 3.5 years later when I hit a new depth to my cleansing - skin rashes swollen fingers, and calluses with bleeding splits. They are an immune reaction flaring up because it sees the ribavarin in my blood again!
If you are like me you will see an immediate cessation of sugar cravings and after a while all the anger will go away and your sense of humor will come back full force.
Thanks Sunangel,
I really appreciate it. I did find a norwalk juicer and am going to pick it up in a few weeks. I sent you a private message to try to ask you some questions personally, but if you don't want to, I understand. I did an intensive sauna detox like the Scientology Purification rundown, but I started to lose weight, so I stopped. But I did feet brighter. How long do you think it takes before the drugs are out of your system? I'm not sure if I can gear up to do years and years of this, but will do it if I need to. As I said, I do not want to be like this in 2 years. My fingers have been swollen before tx from the HCV, and they still are.
And I want to thank you for inspiring me to take another step toward healing.
So to re-cap, the Gerson diet has very little protein. They also exclude all fats and oils except flax oil. I adapted my program and its similarities are the points just mentioned low fat and protein and the use of regular and prolonged juicing. The types of food I eat is much more varied than the Gerson protocol. I go for almost all whole foods, but I also avoid all oils and go light on protein, but I eat some protein in my food because I have a greater requirement due to exercise. I recommend grinding flax seeds in a coffee grinder and putting it on salads rather than the oil.
But an all-juice diet is a lot different. That is rapid and quite reactive. If detox becomes too much, you can always eat.
Your weight will go to its perfect weight. You have to expect to lose some due to the stripping down action of cleansing. Rest assured that you could put the weight back on in a matter of days if for some reason you wanted to. But I went to 165 and stayed there through the last four weeks of my ten week juice diet. It was a very lean, but very good sized for me. Now I'm 185.
The juice is the power. The raw and steamed whole foods act as the brakes for the rate and level of detox. So, to power up the process, go liquid. If you have to slow down, do it by eating whole foods while still watching the protein and fats.
WOW!!! I am very happy for you, but sad also for a lot of us who are just not financially well off to afford a Norwalk juicer or go and get deep massage therapy. I have a centrifugal juicer and now I feel that I am just wasting my time.
:-(
Well, you can reproduce the same process by using a champion juicer, which is the same cold grinder and runs about $200 and get a hydraulic press for $150. I think you can get them at the gerson institute website. Then buy filter cloth bags from the Norwalk people and you are ready to go. The hydraulic press is good because you will get more juice out of the pulp than just using a regular champion. But the champion by itself will give you the same qualtiy as a norwalk.
The produce is more expensive than regular food though.
Thanks for the info, now all I have to do is save $350.00!!
May I ask you a question? I have had Hep C for about 23 years now and been ignoring it since. Well now digestive troubles are starting. I have done a ton of reading and from what I have read there are 2 opinions on protein. Some say yes, and some say no because it creates too much ammonia in your body. I CRAVE PROTEIN! I crave red meat!!
I also seem to bloat up on everything I eat except brown rice. I am constantly BELCHING every day even if I do not eat meat. But I crave meat protein. I realize I need to get a better juicer but what do you do for protein? Is it good or bad? Sorry if I am asking to much I am just confused!!!
You can easily get by with just the Champion juicer. You just get more yield when you add a hydraulic press.
Your liver is responsible for the metabolism of all food groups - fats, sugars and proteins. But meat proteins are hard to digest and hard for your liver to deal with . The beginning of the end for hep c patients is when the ammonia from protein floods the bloodstream, taking the pH of the blood out of range and resulting in dementia. These episodes recur until you one kills you.
The idea of restricting protein is basically to give your poor liver a rest. A macrobiotic diet is the best.
If there is one supplement to take it might be alph lipoic acid.
Also you should go look at the Low Dose Naltrexone website. It is an FDA approved drug, but it has no side effects and works by activating and modulating your immune system to perform efficiently. It is given in almost a homeopathic dose.
This stuff is curing the most incurable diseases, and on a consistent, amazingly high percentage number of cases.
I realize that you are approaching hep c tx by dealing with the cirrhosis and not the virus. However, what do you think of colloidal silver. I have hep c with cirrhosis, genotype 1B and have been diagnosised since 2001.
I take suppliments, exercise, and eat well, do homeopathy, but lately not feeling too well so interested in doing something more.
Thanks in advance for your reply.
I enjoyed reading your thread,
Gladiola
Hi Gladiola,
I can only give you my advice based on my own experiences. No two people react the same.
But, in general, the three things to face for you are:
1. viral activity measured by pcr. This means the amounts of viral particles in your bloodstream. Ideally you should try to get the numbers down. Interferon therapy tries solely to target the viral particles, at the cost of everything else. Holistic therapy tries to strengthen the body's immune system to deal with the virus.
2. Amount of fibrosis, or cirhosis. It is now acnowledged (a new development for the medical establishment) that fibrosis can and does get reversed. But it is important that that happens because it cirhosis that kills you. Viral load doesn't kill you. Cirhosis kills you. But cirhosis can be reversed.
3. Clearance of congestion from the tissues. This is necessary and can only be done with diet. This makes all the other things possible. It can be done by simply cleaning up your diet, or diet can be used more aggressively, for instance liquid-only juice diets.
You say that you are doing a lot of right things. That is very important. I think a person in your situation should be on a strict macrobiotic diet because it is clean and avoids fats, oils, dairy and processed carbs, etc. Vegetable or green juice would be a helpful dietary addition-especially as a meal replacement.
You should look into orthomolecular with your treatment. That means targeted nutrient megadoses. Go to http://www.orthomolecular.org
Intravenous alpha lipoic acid is very good. A naturopath can give you those. ALA stops all further degradation of the liver and is extremely hepatoprotective of the healthy cells. Also IV phosphatidylcholine and glutathione. You should do lot of alpha lipoic acid orally as well. Also phosphatidylcholine, but no oral glutathione, because it doesn't absorb well. See Burton Berkson PhD - the FDA lead investigator on Lipoic acid. He first used it to treat toxic liver poisoning on numerous wild mushroom pickers. These acute and (diagnosed) terminal patients responded immediately to IV lipoic acid because of its extremely protective qualities to the liver and recovered quite quickly. He has since used it for a number of things, but for the liver there is nothing better to protect your healthy cells. The phosphatidylcholine will eat up the scar tissue. Berkson has been using LDN and lipoic acid to treat cancer, quite successfully.
You should also find an integrative MD who will prescribe LDN (Low Dose Naltrexone) for you. Their website is here: http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org
This is the only drug that you need - I know, it is a drug, but, when you understand how it works you will see that it is not a drug in the universal model of modern pharmaceutical drugs. It is actually a homeopathic dose of a drug that has been shown in tests to be hepatoprotective in even large doses. And it works by activating and truly modulating the the body's native immune system. See the LDN thread here on this page. You could try to go to my doc, but he is in Seattle.
The LDN will strengthen your immune system.
The Alpha Lipoic Acid will strengthen your functional liver cells.
The phosphatidylcholine will help break down your fibrosis.
The diet changes will clear the liver of steatosis (fatty deposits) that cause inflammation and fibrosis.
The combination of all will power your body's native healing systems to clean things up and make them heal.
As for colloidal silver, I would first do all the above important things. After that, yes definitely, and there are a lot of other good things out there, and they all work optimally when your system is clean and ready to utilize it. It is your body that does all the work, it needs all the high powered nutrients and tools that can help.
I recently started taking LDN and using orthomolecular techniques. Because not many people have taken LDN for Hep C, I was persuaded to do my labs for verification purposes if I send them and follow up labs to the NIH for the Yahoo LDN/HepC group.
I haven’t done my labs in a while, but for my purposes, it is also a good time to do a lab evaluation because it is a big shift in my therapy. My labs tell me what progress I have made in the period of time from the end of treatment to the present.
Here is the timeline with corresponding pcr viral load values:
Before interferon my viral load was between 2-3 million.
Bailed out of interferon treatment after 12 weeks on Sept 2005. Viral load 2. Just 2, but my immune system, along with a host of other body functions were destroyed as seen…
Feb 2006, six months later, viral load 7 million and probably going up!
Eight months later, on Oct. 30 2006, the day I started a ten week green juice liquid-only diet my viral load was above reportable range of 5 million. (They picked a test that only reported a value of up to 5 million.) My enzymes were AST/ALT 124/203.
Jan 18 2007 at the finish of the 10 week juice diet, viral load 1.6 million, enzymes AST/ALT 77/90 I considered it good but not great.
Then, March 2, 2007, three months later and viral load again over reportable range of 5 million! This one really surprised me because I felt so much better, my body was freer and my energy was good. So I decided that the gains were going to be long range and therefore the tests should not even be done until I had finished a prolonged period of therapy.
And now, after 18 months of green juice, exercise and clean diet, viral load of 1.2 million! This is the result of a program that consisted of only good diet and exercise and also very few supplements in the last 18 months (since my last labs of over 5 million).
I did not order the lab tests for enzymes, but my liver function seems good, (GGT was normal), the liver tissue texture is very good, and I think the enzymes are way under control. I attribute the lowered viral load to the fact that my immune system is stronger. I hope that it is about to get a lot stronger with the LDN and Lipoic Acid.
I also have hypothyroidism, probably from treatment. TSH 7.54 with 4.50 high normal. T3 and T4 both normal, but T4 low normal. To address it I am taking USP Thyroid tablets, 2 a day for about a month. Also Lugol’s.
I was low on Vitamin A – I have not been using carrots in my juice – and CoQ10. Everything else was good.
I have H pylori! I have had a few mild symptoms just recently – they probably hate the green juice. So I am taking Betaine layered between bites of food at meals.
All fixable, and,
The good news:
I have very low ranges of heavy metals – arsenic, mercury, lead, aluminum, cadmium
My GGT is 39, 3-85 is normal. Very good!
PTT is good, 30, 22-36 sec normal. Very good – blood clotting had been an issue.
CBC with diff showed all blood parameters normal.
SED rate very good 0, <20 mm/h normal
Vitamin D 27, 20-100 ng/mL so low normal also
Natural Killer Cell Function 90, 8-170 LU30 normal, so that is very good!
CoQ10 0.89, 0.44 – 1.64 mg/L, so normal
All in all, I am extremely happy to the point that I have reached. Treatment really hit me hard, and I think if I had not done the things that I did I would be in pretty drastic shape right now. Instead I feel great, and the labs back that up. I think this diet program was a key to building my native systems back up. And I am now at a great starting point to see what the orthomolecular nutrition and LDN (see http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org),
in addition to my existing diet and exercise program can do.
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hepatitis c treatment focus - cirhosis or virus? 
