How I reversed Liver Cirrhosis
To jump straight to the ‘how to’, you can skip the entire article if you wish, the product details are in the very last paragraph. For reference though I am not selling any product whatsoever, and all I have learned is given freely to anyone it may pertain to.
My Story
I was out one evening, and saw a friend who I’ve known for a while. He looked at me oddly for a moment and said “the whites of your eyes are yellow”. I dismissed it as a trick of the light. Later that week I saw him and he said “your eyes are white again”, to which I replied “of course they are, it was just the lighting”, “well Bud, you can say what you like but we’re in the same place in the same seats with the same lighting, so take make of that what you will”. The week after that I saw him a third time, and once again he said “they’re yellow again”.
Now everyone knows what yellow eyes and skin means, and I didn’t want to entertain that idea so I put it out of my mind… but come to think of it I’d been dropping weight for quite a while – both fat and muscle. I was quite pleased that I no longer had much belly fat without even trying (though I would go days without eating, and if my stomach rumbled I’d have maybe a can of tuna straight out of the tin, or a block of cheese and that would be it for another day or two. I put the muscle loss down to low calories.
Now, you can dismiss what I say next if you think it is not scientific or proven in a double blind placebo controlled experiment, but without putting too fine a point on it, I was in enormous constant pain every waking moment. Not physical pain, but emotional. The girl I loved (and still do) had an incident that meant she lost her freedom for some years. Since I’m writing this story from after the event, I can look back and pinpoint what happened and when – information which wasn’t available to me at the time.
Looking at it from this vantage point I can see that my decline started about the same time as losing my girlfriend. Usually relationships finish for different reasons such as an argument, infidelity, abuse, being taken for granted, letting oneself go when it gets too comfortable etc. I thought I’d hit the jackpot with this girl (see below - good), and she made me proud to be a man, to be with her, and I have to admit that ego got some enjoyment from the envy of many (including her friends – though she’s the one with the looks, I have to make my living by being the brains rather than being charming and gregarious to compensate). Anyhow, she cooked, she cleaned, she kept the house in order, she would be polite with my friends (even if she had reservations about some of them). Hard work and sweat is something I respect. I also like that she can be showered and ready to head outdoors as quickly as me, without all the face painting and vanity jewelry that is only as beautiful as the price tag.
Anyhow, back to the point. I decided to take a holiday (solo due to circumstance) to Phuket to meet another friend, and we would hang out on the beach, in restaurants, meet lots of people and also got quite drunk a few times…okay, every day that I was there. I am a regular drinker by the way. I wouldn’t say a drunk (I don’t like to be drunk-drunk, I like to be relaxed and be sharp enough to be witty and contribute my part to the social commentary, though I do have social anxiety, and have had a few full blown panic attacks. Anyone who has had one of those knows that there are more pleasant experiences than your body telling you you’re about to die whilst your logical mind cannot ascertain a threat to respond to).
In summary, if I’m being social then I like a few beers, and if I stay home I don’t care about the stuff at all, but when I do it is certainly above what RDA would suggest (which is actually less than 1 bottle here). I mention this as people automatically associate cirrhosis with alcohol abuse, when in fact that is only about 20% of cases.
More about the island hopping. My friend and I splashed out and got this amazing hotel room (did I say room? It was bigger than both floors of my house, with full kitchen, island stove, refrigerator stocked with food, the usual beverages, and a choice of wines in the rack included in the (rather large) price. It had a Jacuzzi and its own pool. I was just toweling myself dry after showering and caught a glimpse of myself side on in the mirror, and my stomach was huge!
So I was skinny all over apart from this huge belly that was very hard to the touch, and my feet had begun swelling. My skin started to develop a yellow tinge. Then the naevia (aka spider bites, due to their property of when you press these small red lumps on your skin and squeeze out the blood, when you let go you can see capillaries flood back that look something like spiders legs). I decided it was hospital time, and went to the best on the island. They gave me scans and blood work (almost as a formality, as they already knew exactly what was wrong, even though I didn’t). I had low red blood cell count (the blood would not clot in 30mins also, which normally should be 10-12 seconds), AST and ALT levels almost off the chart, low LDL (made in the Liver btw) and low testosterone. This stomach thing was getting embarrassing, and when I sat down I could feel it on the top of my thighs it had got that big. They told me I had Ascites (liquid that is not in the blood stream and not in the cells, but sits between the organs, and the kidneys aren’t connected to that area so they don’t remove it. I had portal biliary constriction with scarring which was causing back pressure so the bile could not be removed, meaning that under pressure it was diffusing out to the skin (hence the yellow colour). I also had a significant amount of advanced Cirrhosis as well – slightly shy of ‘end stage’ as they call it.
I asked in my best Thai if they could put a shunt in and drain some fluid and pointed to lower left abdomen. The doc thought for a moment, said something to one of the nurses and the syringes, pipes and containers appeared. They anesthetized the local area before putting the mother of all shunts right through the skin and muscle wall to get it to the fluid and started to tap out what looked like dark coffee (it wasn’t that painful, just uncomfortable). They filled a 2 litre container then the nurse asked me if I wanted to continue. Yes I sure did. She got to 3 litres and the Doc said “that’s enough for one session”. I didn’t look any different, but was a little light headed. I was 86Kg when I went in, and less than 2 hours later I was 81Kg. If it were 3 litres of water then it would have been 3Kg, so whatever this stuff was composed of it was heavier than water. The docs put me on a few different pills, nothing remarkable, some Lasix (diuretic), Milk Thistle, a multivitamin etc, and sent me on my way.
Nothing really changed from there. About a month later I flew to Bangkok enroute to Malaysia then Singapore for a business opportunity discussion with some manufacturers. I met up with some long time friends there who hadn’t seen me in about 5 years (I was 46 by then). I held out my hand to shake and I got “Oh my God! What happened? You look about 70. Get to the hospital right now”. Well fine thanks, and you? Off I went to what I’m told is the best hospital in the country (Bumrungrad Bangkok) where the Royal Family are treated. They did the same thing as the first hospital except without the option of a shunt, and charging me nearly 300% more, then gave me a telling off like I was a school boy which I didn’t appreciate. I was told that I would be dead within in a year at this trajectory, “and if you have any dependents then you should consider them when you behave like this. Get your affairs in order”. I asked “behave like what?”, “Well it’s obvious you’re a complete alcoholic to get into this state. Do you hallucinate?”. I protested “I drink beer, but alcoholic…well that depends on your definition”. I’m quite moderate compared to the majority of ex-pats here (who don’t have a job or hobby to keep them busy, so default to socializing)”. “Oh stop. All alcoholics say that. They lie to themselves”. I got seriously offended, and asked him if he had anything useful to add before I left. He said the only option is a Liver transplant, and they’re not easy to come by, but no alcohol at all, ever. “Forever? Forever ever?”. “None” and don’t take anything else that makes work for your liver, and eat 6 egg whites a day (presumably something to do with Albumin) but that was the crack (excuse the pun) in his argument I’d been waiting for. There’s a long standing myth that cholesterol comes from your diet. The liver produces LDL far and away more than your diet, so eating the whole egg is not only not a concern, but is more nutritious, and that more the issue with LDL it’s trying to patch up (eg. Arterial damage) the more it will make. It’s a kind of band aid that keeps you alive a bit longer since the arteries can blow a hole about once every 300,000 heart beats that that needs to be stopped immediately, but doesn’t solve the problem which comes from proper nutrition to remodel the damage in a sustainable way (I can write about that another time, and how to deal with it in an inexpensive and no drama way, but don’t want to get off topic too much right now). I knew then that I was talking to a ‘text book doctor’. Still, that didn’t stop him from getting through my defenses.
I suddenly started shaking like crazy, could barely keep my balance, or walk straight, or hold a glass of water with both hands without throwing half the contents all over anyone nearby. I got a drinking straw as a life saver tool so that I could get liquids into me. I also cancelled my flights and plans and booked a flight to get back to my home city. Waiting in the queue at the airport to check in was quite the ordeal. I had to try to find something to lean on or sit down. When it came to my turn the lady behind the desk took my passport and compared the picture to me. I was gaunt, yellow and obviously in distress. She said “I don’t think we can let you on this flight. I suggest you go see a doctor”. I explained that I’d just got out of there about 90 minutes ago and that was why I was returning home. She made several different phone calls, and eventually someone who I presume to be the manager appeared. He said “if you’ll sign this release form absolving the airline of any responsibility then you can fly” (phew!). “I just need you to fill out these details and sign”. I tried to explain that I couldn’t write. That must have sounded very odd, but I asked him to fill it out and I would read and sign it, which thankfully he did (Full marks for AirAsia btw).
Meanwhile, my friend from the Island hopping adventure was in my city and collected me from the airport. I’d been following the calendar for almost three years and thought that surely my girlfriend would have shown up by now…I didn’t have any closure to move on with life. He went to task on tracking her down on facebook and said that I’d be pleased to see her. She said she wanted desperately to come back, but was too embarrassed after all that had happened and the damage it caused so many people. She hadn’t even been to see her family (if you know Thais, then that is a big issue). She did travel that same day however, and I was lying curled up on my bean bag when she arrived, and barely moved for the next three days in the foetal position. She took care of me wonderfully, got constant and varied food down my throat, and never left my side. After three more days I felt strong enough to stand up for more than a minute or two, and go outside for a walk, and decide how I was going to deal with this.
I spent I would imagine, several thousand hours studying. [By the way, ask a doctor, any doctor, and they will all tell you that reversing Cirrhosis is Impossible. A little inflammation and abuse then sure, the Liver is very good at healing itself and has a very fast cell turnover, but Cirrhosis…Definitely No]. My first doctor said that. Friends said get a second opinion, same answer, so they said get a third opinion, same answer. Finally I managed with a lot of help from my sister, to get contact with a specialist in UK for a fourth and final opinion. Even though I’m from UK, he is not legally allowed to treat me unless I go back there, and his opinion after seeing all the test results (in a non-advisory capacity) was the same as the first three, so that’s four unanimous opinions spoken as if it were fact that what I wanted was impossible.
I love the fact that if you break your leg you always have someone knowledgeable and capable to help you recover. Surgeons I respect. Anesthesiologists I believe are the unsung heroes who never get the limelight, but when it comes to pharmaceuticals and vaccines, my senses go on full alert (remember the phrase “follow the money”). Ask your doctor how much of their training was devoted to nutrition (not much at all, maybe a couple of weeks). They have a role to play for sure – as a filter perhaps, but remember the ego and kickbacks behind the invisible curtain.
So, at this point I have accurately been diagnosed, given a prognosis, but no solutions, just props to extend a slow miserable death into a slightly longer one, so instead of say 1 year I’d get maybe 15 months, and then die anyway. That really didn’t suit my version of my “life movie” and how it would play out, but I had a few things going for me now. I had my girlfriend back and the decline/improvement chart pivoted around that day, but clearly more needed to be done.
I discovered a lot of different products and bought all that appeared to have merit. Surprisingly the hardest thing to acquire was Hep-B and Hep-C tests (the docs wouldn’t hear of it because they’d already decided it was alcohol). Sure that goes on the ‘this is bad for you’ side of the list, but Hepatitis shouldn’t be ruled out, nor should parasites, or Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). I started with the best Curcumin I could source, then I added copious amounts of Luteolin (anti-inflammatory), handfuls of Milk Thistle and anything else that said it would assist the liver (no pharma, all herbal in my choices) although regarding the Doc prescription stuff after a month my Lasix was dropped in favour of Spironolactone since it is potassium sparing. It was only a 50mg dose but wow, I never knew someone could visit the bathroom so many times per hour and drop maybe half a litre+ of liquid each time. Luckily my Kidney function was unimpaired. It comes from nowhere also…that is to say, you’re lying down and feel a sudden urge to visit the bathroom, and as you stand up it’s like it sloshes around and you run a couple of steps and….too late. Time to shower and change…again. After removing all that liquid I stood at 67Kg (I’m 182cm in height, or close to 6ft in old money). I’m now 86Kg and getting a little porky (I have a plan for that which I will write about another time if my experiments are successful – I have to save some cash and not raid the self-administered pension), but at least the muscle came back with it, so I look ‘normal’ for what my daily behavior (largely sedentary) would suggest.
Recently, someone who had seen me at my worst asked my girlfriend how old she thought I looked on the first day she saw me again, and she said “about 60 or 70”, but to borrow from Bob Dylan “I was so much older then, but I’m younger than that now” :) I’ve recently turned 48 at time of writing this, and the doctors opinion is that I look very fit and healthy. I can pinch an inch though, and I want to see that six pack just for a challenge.
One more thing I want to say before we get to the ‘how to’: If you remember that story of poor cock robin who threw himself into the icy waters and drowned(?) Don’t doubt for a second that it is possible to die of a broken heart. My girl is still with me to this day, but now she has a ring on her finger. If I should lose her then it’s just me and the dog and walking the beaches in the mornings. She’s irreplaceable. I have eternal gratitude, no matter what may come, for the happiness I have experienced in this life, no matter how it ends, today or in 50 years, who knows… The hindsight view is that, if you’re going to drink, even modestly, then make sure you get the nutrition that your body needs (don’t copy my stupidity). If you don’t drink, the same still applies. Calories aren’t nutrition, and in my case I wasn’t really eating. Get a good chunk of food of whatever pleases you before you think about leisure drinking, as my own case shows it doesn’t take a lot of alcohol, and certainly not bottles of whiskey (I’m a beer guy) to damage your body if you concomitantly challenge it by not giving it any ammo to deal with any abuse.
If you want diet advice then I know the rules but I don’t follow them that strictly, but a good and simple strategy would be “eat anything you like and as much as you like …so long as…it is unprocessed” – that alone will remove about 90% of most people’s food choices. At least then you have half a chance of getting something useful into your body. My GF/Wife had a constant and varied supply of food handed to me and she did me proud, so it was a no brainer solution for a derelict keyboard addict such as myself, whereas alone I found my failing. Her return stopped any further decline, and my part then was ‘simply’ to reverse the damage. Doable, and here is how:
The information I learned from a reference in the Chinese Traditional Medicine encyclopedia Materia Medica (1986 version) which made a small remark about a ‘white coat’ experiment of a small group of individuals who took between 6g and 9g of this per day, and then reassessed after 90 days. Even though it was a small group (only 21 participants, all with Cirrhosis, which many would say is not enough to be statistically significant), all made a dramatic improvement within 90 days, and some with no symptoms remaining at all. The actual white paper is a little obscure, and even when I hunted it down, then it is lacking in detail and would likely be dismissed by purists, but I’m writing this today because of it, so statistics be damned. The take home message I was curious about was 6-9g and a percentage being symptom free, so I just took at least a tablespoon full per day in water (it doesn’t taste so bad) because I would have wanted to be in the higher dose group. 1 Tablespoon being approx. 15g by the way, so higher than the experiment (but then again, I was running out of time fast), but it is food and not pharma, so not something to be concerned about if you take a little more than the experiment. There doesn’t seem to be any toxicity at all from my research to date. It would just be a waste to take more than your body’s repair rate at maximum. I know it sounds crazy that the impossible is so easily overcome, but I decided to try it (what could I lose?) and it worked for me (and all of the 21 in the test group).
My local clinic doctor was astounded by the rate of recovery and also reversal. He would have me on the Ultra sound and say “hmm good, very good, I can see you have given up drinking”. I said “No, I haven’t”, and he looked at me straight in the eye and said “wow….WOW! you repair very good…really!”. He kept me returning every month despite him using the word “perfect” quite a lot, but to be honest I felt he was curious as to how it happened. I never told him as he refused to tell me what tablets (generic) he was giving me, although with google I worked out most of them. They varied, and at one point was giving me Testoviron shots (huh?), Dianabol (huh?) in measly doses (5mg/day lol) and some anti-anxiety tablets that I tried only once as I reacted badly to them. I only kept going for the scans to see change, as it was clear by then that my knowledge in this particular niche was much further ahead than his. Real nice guy, but I had to learn how to work him, when really all I wanted was a partner to work with on the issue at hand and talk straight instead of him being all superior. We’re pseudo friends now, and he said I should check in once every six months just to be sure, but he can see nothing whatsoever wrong with my liver. Doctors can quote from books all they want, and they frown upon us pretending to be ‘google doctors’. I had my life on the line, not his, so it got my attention much more than anyone else would be aware. I don’t want to undermine the usefulness of carefully controlled experiments with hard facts, but, when your life is on the line and you have less than a year to solve it…Universe provides if you don’t fight it, and things happen.
All the best to those who endured my very long winded and selfish report, though I hope it will save a thousand lives. Or more(?).
How to...
The product is called Cordyceps Sinensis which is supplied as a brown powder that grows only in certain regions of Tibet, Nepal and China (though they’re getting good with aquaponics these days). Thankfully it is not expensive (well, it’s a lot less than a transplant or a funeral). I would suggest to skip the capsules and get the raw powder (‘extract levels’ aren’t important, and the tests were done with the dry ‘whole product’ powdered version rather than targeting a specific component. That btw keeps it cheaper, as extracts of portions of a plant/mushroom tend to escalate in parabolic fashion according to percentage).