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Missing Your Gallbladder?

Bile Salts Can Heal

By Dr. James Howenstine MD.
NewsWithViews, December 3, 2007

Bile salts can heal psoriasis, septicemia, viral infections and excess estrogen.

Most surgeons are blithely ignorant about the lost function of the gall bladder in patients who’ve had a cholecystectomy. All patients lacking a gall bladder suffer from deficiency of bile acids. Patients lacking a gall bladder are unable to control bile secretion into the intestines to regulate proper absorption of fats, fatty acids, and fat soluble vitamins.

Proper removal of toxins depends on bile acids that are not available in appropriate quantities after cholecystectomy. All persons who have had cholecystectomy need to take bile acids permanently. Without a gall bladder the patient has lost the ability to stock up on fat that can be used as a source of calories in illness and famine, essential fatty acids and fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K).

One of the main functions of bile is to break toxic substances into smaller pieces. These small pieces become bound to sulfur containing substances like glutathione and pass into the colon. Beneficial intestinal bacteria protect the colon from the toxin. These same healthy bacteria later facilitate separation of the toxin from bile acid which is reused to remove more toxins from the body as the toxic substance is eliminated in feces. Persons lacking healthy intestinal bacteria will be unable to protect the colon from toxin injury and separate toxins from sulfur transporting particles. Consume healthy live bacteria from food daily(sauerkraut, unpasteurized goat yogurt, raw milk etc.) and make certain you truly need antibiotic therapy to prevent antibiotic killing of good intestinal bacteria.

Carcinogens such as cleaning compounds, pesticides, food packaging substances, hormone mimicking pollutants, water contaminants etc. become stored in the body in fat, liver and lymphatic tissue when they are not promptly removed. These carcinogenic substances produce inflammatory reactions and ultimately can cause cancer.

Failure to excrete toxins promptly can produce immunologic reactions and inflammation in the liver arteries. As the arteries become injured the blood flow into the liver decreases damaging the health of liver cells and ultimately the liver’s ability to produce adequate bile suffers. When bile flow is reduced the cholesterol levels rises in the blood producing sludgy blood flow.

The skin of the human body is our largest organ for elimination of toxic substances. Hungarian researchers have done superb work in learning new valuable uses for bile acids. They theorized that bile acids might be useful in treating psoriasis as they felt the skin manifestation of psoriasis might be indicative of lack of adequate bile acid production producing failed breakdown and elimination of toxins through the gastrointestinal tract. The toxins then get absorbed into the blood stream and are moved to the skin for removal from the body. Their excretion produces a psoriasis like rash. The psoriatic like rash thus appears to be initially caused by failure of an adequate supply of bile acids to the intestines.

They treated a group of 800 patients with acute and chronic psoriasis with either bile acid therapy or standard psoriasis therapy for up to 8 weeks. Two years later 57.9% ( 319 of the 551 psoriasis patients treated with bile acids) were asymptomatic[1] but only 6% (15 of 249) of the 249 conventionally treated patients were symptom free. Results were better in acute cases than chronic cases. This provides an incredibly safe new therapy for psoriasis using bile acids.

Toxic substances(excess estrogens, bacterial endotoxins, viral particles, etc.) are broken down in the intestines into smaller nontoxic particles by bile acids. The bacterial endotoxins are among the most dangerous substances known. Several endotoxins are capable of producing irreversible shock with bleeding disorders when they enter the bloodstream unless these bacteria are promptly killed by the correct antibiotic so they immediately cease supplying the blood with more endotoxins.. Bile salts split endotoxins into harmless particles[2] preventing them from reaching the blood stream.

Bile acids now appear to be of value in treating sepsis (blood poisoning), viral infections, herpes, arteriosclerosis, symptoms resulting from intestinal radiation injury, and hepato-renal syndrome. The problem of sepsis is steadily becoming worse due to excessive use of antibiotics which has caused antibiotic resistant bacteria to be common in all hospitals. Average sepsis mortality is 40% but this rises to 80% in the elderly. In sepsis the fragments of bacteria (endotoxins) are able to enter the blood stream where they cause shock, coagulation disorders and other destructive effects. Bile acids split endotoxins into harmless substances preventing their entry into the blood stream.

Having enough bile salts in the intestines during septicemia could make the difference between life and death for many patients. All septic patients should be placed on bile acid therapy. Family members would be helpful if they supplied sepsis victims with bile salts to take during their days in the intensive care unit, S low blood pressure and other sepsis related problems probably do interfere with normal production of bile salts. If intestinal breakdown of bacterial endotoxins and viral particles fails to occur a fatality is much more likely. This information about bile salt therapy of sepsis is not likely to be seen by mainstream medicine.

Bile is also able to breakup the lipoprotein coating of large viruses thus destroying the virus. This process can thus make the rapid reproduction of viruses impossible thus healing viral infections. There are no simple ways to measure bile acid production. Therefore, having bile salt tablets in your home could prove very worthwhile with acute viral sepsis illnesses like SARS virus.

The liver is a storage site for carcinogens, drugs, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides etc. Inability to remove these toxic substances can lead to inflammatory changes,[3] decreased liver blood flow and decreased bile production. When toxins are not eliminated from the intestinal tract they overflow into the lymphatic system, blood, joints and other tissues. One of these Hungarian researchers speculated that by the time a patient developed allergies and joint and muscle inflammation 75% of the bile production was lost. When a serious illness like cancer arrived up to 90% of bile production was probably lacking.

Beets increase bile flow and thin the bile. Lecithin, choline, turmeric, curcumin, yarrow, Oregon grape root, taurine, milk thistle, artichoke and dandelion have similar effects.

Footnotes:
1. Pathophysiology 03;10(1):57-61
2. Orv Hetil 99;140(1):3-8
3. Williams, David G Alternatives Vol 12 No 5 Nov 2007 pg 39

You might benefit from understanding “Cholecystectomy and risk of metabolic syndrome“.

Author: Dr. James Howenstine MD