Irritable Bowels, Gallbladders

How and When To Be Your Own Doctor
by Dr. Isabelle A. Mose, Steve Solomon

(Page 19 of 23)

Irritable Bowels

Some peoples' lives don't run smoothly. Jeanne's certainly didn't. She was abandoned to raise three little kids on welfare. Her college diploma turned out to be useless. Jeanne used to help me at Great Oaks in exchange for treatment. During those early years she had done a 30 day juice fast with colonics. Twenty years later at age 60, having survived three children's growing up, surviving the profound, enduring loss of one who died as an adult, after starting up and running a small business that for many years barely paid its way, and experiencing an uninsured fire that took her house, she began to develop abdominal pains the doctors named 'irritable bowel syndrome' or 'colitis.' The MD offered antibiotics and antispasmodics but Jeanne had no insurance, the remedies were unaffordable. She also retained considerable affinity for natural medicine.

Prior to these symptoms her diet had been vegetarian, and had included large quantities of raw fruits and vegetables and whole grains. But the bran in bread was irritating to her bowels, she could no longer digest raw vegetables or most raw fruit.

Jeanne's vital force was low; her healing took time. She started on a long fast supported by powdered vitamins, vegetable broth and herb teas, but after three weeks was too weak to do her own enemas at home and could not shop for vegetables to cook into broth. So she had to add one small serving of cooked vegetable per day, usually broccoli or steamed kale. This lasted for one more week but Jeanne, having no financial reserves, had to return to work, and needed to regain energy quickly. Though not totally healed, she progressed to a maintenance diet of cooked grains and vegetables and food supplements, very much like a Macrobiotic diet. She felt better for awhile but wore down again after another stressful year.

Her abdominal pains gradually returned though this time she noticed they were closely associated with her stresses. About one year after ending her first fast, as soon as she could arrange to take time off, she began another. This time to avoid extreme weakness, she took vegetable broth from the outset, as well as small amounts of carrot juice and one small serving of cooked vegetable a day for three weeks. Again, this rest allowed the digestive tract to heal and the pain went away. She returned to her Macrobiotic diet with selected raw foods that she could now handle without irritating her bowel.

She was now healthier then she had been in many years. With improved energy and a more positive attitude, Jeanne returned to University at age 65 and obtained a teaching certificate. Now she is making good money, doing work she enjoys for the first time in 35 years. I hope she has a long and happy life. She is entitled to one!

A Collection of Gallbladders

Gallbladder cases are rather ho-hum to me; they are quick to respond to hygienic treatment and easy to resolve. I've fixed lots of them. But an inflamed gallbladder is in no way ho-hum to the person afflicted with it. I've been frequently told that there are no worse pains a body can create than an inflamed gallbladder or the sensations accompanying the passing of a gall stone. I hear from kidney patients that passing a kidney stone is worse but I've never had a patient who experienced both kinds of stones to give me an honest comparative evaluation.

The only thing dangerous about simple gallbladder problems is ignoring them (between the bouts of severe pain they can cause) because then the inflamed gallbladder can involve the liver. I already told the story of how my own mother lost half her liver this way.

The condition is usually caused by a combination of hereditary tendency, general toxemia, and/or a high-fat diet, especially one high in animal fats. The liver makes bile that is stored in the gallbladder, to be released on demand into the small intestine to digest fat. A toxic, overloaded liver makes irritating sediment-containing bile that inflames the gallbladder and forms stones. A high-fat diet forces the liver to make even more of this irritant.

A toxic, overloaded, inflamed, blocked gallbladder is capable of causing an enormous array of symptoms that can seem to have no connection at all to their cause. In part these same symptoms are caused by a toxic, constipated colon that, in part, got that way because of poor fat digestion over a long time. These symptoms include: severe back pain; headache; bloating; burping; nausea; insomnia; intestinal gas; generalized aches and pains.

Medical doctors used to remove a troublesome gallbladder without hesitation; it was an organ they considered to be highly dispensable. Without one, the bile duct takes over as a bladder but its capacity is much smaller so the person's ability to digest fats has been permanently crippled, leading to increased toxemia and earlier aging if fats are not eliminated from the diet. These days the medicos have a new, less invasive procedure to eliminate stones; they are vibrated and broken-up by ultrasonics without major surgery. Inflamed gallbladders are usually removed because gallbladder inflammations resist treatment by antibiotics.

There are several very effective natural gallbladder remedies. The best is a three week fast, taking the juice of one or two lemons every day, along with colonics. The lemon juice tends to clear the bile duct. The fast allows the gallbladder to heal from inflammation. In cases that aren't too severe I have had very good results simply eliminating fats from the diet and using a food supplement derived from beet tops called AF Betafood. However, in all these cases, once the gallbladder is no longer 'acting up,' the person must stay on a low fat diet. Any fats they do eat must be vegetable and in small quantities.

By healing their gallbladders and cleansing their colons, several of my clients have resolved severe, debilitating back pain, pain so severe that the suffers were becoming bedridden. Medical doctors don't associate gallbladder disease with back pain.