Is Liver Cleansing Bullsh*^t? The Pre And Post Blood Test Results of Ben Greenfield's 7 Day Liver C

Oh, hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. This podcast sounds a little funny sounding. It's because I'm out in the middle of nowhere, way out in the hills of Napa Valley, if that's nowhere. And I'm at this event called Runga, but I happen to be staying in what they're calling the cookhouse, which I think is a fancy name for the barn. So I'm in kind of a cavernous room that might sound a little echoey with all of my traveling podcasting equipment. I've also had to pass the marshmallow test many, many times in this little cookhouse because it's where they're cooking the meals for all the guests and they're doing these amazing scrumptious breakfasts and lunches and dinner. But it means that the entire place I'm staying in is, like, littered with cacao nibs and spirulina and truffles and superfoods and organic almonds and cashews and these amazing heirloom vegetables. And so I'm just trying not to wake up at midnight and eat at night. So that's a big pat on the back for me. I did a good job not eating all of the food. Some may or may not have gone missing. Just saying. Anyways, I'm also recording today's episode as a solo sod. Why am I recording it as a solo sod? Which I really like to say, obviously, because I've gotten so many questions about this liver cleanse that I did this liver cleanse and whether it's just complete woo woo bull or what happens if you do a liver cleanse or whether there's any science behind it. So I actually. I did this, right? I did. I got pre and post BL test results. I tracked my aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase and GGT and testosterone, all these hormones and enzymes and markers that would theoretically change if one cleanses their liver or does what I'm about to explain to you, I'm going to detail it all on today's solo. So there, I said it again. Anyways.

I'm recording this introduction for you, and because I am on the move, because I'm traveling, you may even notice that the audio changes a few times throughout today's show. And that's because I'm literally recording on trains, planes and automobiles on my way over to Toronto to speak in Toronto. But that's the way she goes, as they say. I don't know if they actually Say that I maybe just made that up. Speaking of cleansing your liver though, one of the things that I wanted to mention you is that in Bama county, which is located in western China on the slopes of the Himalayas, they have a disproportionately high number of centenarians. You don't hear that talked about as a blue zone a lot, but it is. And one the things that they consume quite a bit of is very similar to what's called wild bitter melon or bitter melon extract, which you may have heard me talk of before as one of the best ways to control your blood glucose after a meal. Well, I've actually been taking during this cleanse rock lotus extract because it's been shown in clinical trials to improve liver function and decrease fatty liver, which is a huge issue these days. Non alcoholic fatty liver disease, which you may have heard if you listen to my last episode with and Luis Gittleman. So anyways, this rock lotus extract and bitter melon are the two key ingredients in a supplement that I formulate at Kion and it's called Lean. You can check it out and I'm going to give you a 10% discount. So you go to getkeon.com and this is fantastic for liver, for weight management, even as a pre meal digestif. It's called Kion Lean. You go to getkeon.com and the code you can use over there on lean is Benlean 10. That's Benlean 10.

In addition to the fabulous food here, this runga event that I'm at and if you don't know what that is, just do a search for Ben Greenfield. Runga R U N G A googly moogly that and you'll find more information and podcasts I've done on this event. The next one's in the Dominican Republic a couple months actually. They've got in every single room this big light panel called a joovv light. The Joov light is something that is used for what's called photobiomodulation. Photobiomodulation? What does that mean? Well, photobiomodulation is specific wavelengths of light that have been shown to do things like increase testosterone when you shine them on your crotch or improve your skin health if you shine them over a scar or an area with excess skin stretching.

Increase joint pain and inflammation? No, decrease joint pain and inflammation. If you shine them on a sore joint, they improve muscle recovery. It can even increase thyroid activity when you shine a light like this Joovlite on your thyroid. Multiple uses and I'VE got several at my house. My kids have have one. I think they're amazing and they're really one of the best researched forms of photobiomodulation out there. You can get it and you can get a unique bonus with your Joov Lite. You just go to Joovv.com Ben. That's J-O-O-V-V.com Ben and you're off to the races with your Joov Lite.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. This show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movements get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

All right, so here's the, the very quick backstory and I'm going to link to everything that you're about to learn about if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com LiverCleanse. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com liver cleanse. Approximately three and a half weeks ago, I did a complete blood panel. As I do on a quarterly basis, I test everything under the sun. I worked with a company called Wellness FX to help them develop what they call the Greenfield Longevity Panel. And it's everything. It's inflammatory markers, it's all the particle counts for LDL and HDL free fatty acids, full testosterone panel, very complete thyroid panel, all metabolic hormones, all liver health hormones, kidney health hormones, et cetera. And one of the things that leapt out on the results for that panel were the fact that my liver enzymes were markedly elevated, indicating a high amount of liver stress and even the type of elevated liver enzymes one might see in, say, non alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is a growing epidemic, actually, especially in the United States. So what do I mean by this? Well, my aspartate aminotransferase, it's risky if that's above 40. Mine was at 172. It's risky if what's called your alanine aminotransferase, another very important enzyme, is above 55. Mine was at 83. I also had mildly elevated what is called alkaline phosphatase, another liver enzyme, relatively high albumin levels, a type of protein in the blood. And although my inflammation was low, I was showing all signs of some pretty significant liver stress. So I got to thinking and what I decided was that I wanted to test out these liver cleanses that are so popular these days. Kind of piece something together for myself that didn't involve drinking copious amounts of juice, which I really do not consider to be very blood sugar friendly at all, and instead involved almost like a doable detox that I could still do at home, that I could still work out during, which was very important to me and that I could accomplish in a relatively short period of time because I didn't have a lot of time. I had about seven to 10 days at home. And so the first three days of this protocol, actually all I did was just not drink alcohol and not drink coffee, both of which are recommended to avoid on any type of of liver cleansing protocol. And then I started into, for the next seven days, exactly what I'm going to describe to you. And again, I'll include photos of all this and some pretty comprehensive resources, along with any of the previous podcasts I've done on things like detoxification and a podcast in which I go over that initial blood work panel, which I think folks found very interesting. Lots of good feedback on that, on that, how to interpret your own blood work, basically. But we're just going to focus on the liver today, so you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

For the show notes. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com LiverCleanse so let's start here with liver flushing. So think of the liver as almost like this intelligent central processing unit in your body that can filter and clean about a liter and a half of blood each minute. And it's got about 500 different biochemical reactions that occur within the liver, including phase zero, phase one, phase two, and phase three detoxification pathway, which I've outlined in other articles on my website that I will link to. So these processes include things like the division and the breakdown of chemical substances, what we refer to as catabolism, the synthesis of protein molecules, what we call anabolism, and a whole host of functions that make it so that if the liver's enzymes, which are responsible for many of these metabolic reactions, are not working properly or out of balance, or are markedly elevated, then many of these processes are not going to work properly. You no doubt know that the liver acts as a purification plant for the blood, and it plays a vital role in detoxifying and excreting a wide variety of both endogenous and exogenous compounds. However, the liver it can regenerate pretty rapidly. It can regrow and function with about 10% of actual healthy liver tissue. You know, when they do a liver transplant, about 7 ounces of healthy or transplanted liver can save human life, even though the entire liver organ weighs about four and a half pounds, or when it's full of blood, up to about £7. So the liver has some pretty significant regenerative properties. So there's actually a. There's a tale. There's a tale, Greek mythology about the regenerative properties of the liver. The myth of Prometheus. Prometheus was the Titan who was very generous towards humanity and who stole fire from the king of the gods, Zeus, and distributed the fire as a gift among humans. So Zeus punished Prometheus by having him chained to a rock wherein an eagle would pick at his liver every day. But then at night, Prometheus's liver would regrow at the same rate as the eagle devoured it during the day. So eventually he was freed. But it's very interesting how in that Greek mythological society, it was considered to be capable of regrowing or regenerating the liver. Then there was the Greek physician Hippocrates, who described four different, what he called humors. And one of them was the yellow bile of the liver. And he basically said that the bile, when it doesn't flow, can stagnate and form like this thick black substance. And so the word melancholy actually means black bile. And it can affect your digestion and your mood. And in many times, people who are having liver issues, they have poor digestion and poor mood. It's associated with feelings like rage and anger when your bile doesn't flow properly. I realize that sounds a little woo, but there are actually many references in ancient and modern medical literature to the influence of the liver on the mood, on the emotions, on the anal intellectual state, and instructions for how to clean the organ as well. So, according to traditional Chinese medicine, for example, the liver holds your soul. It's associated with being an organ full of energy and powers. And, you know, in Chinese traditional medicine, cleansing the liver is a regular practice. It's thought that if your key, your vital energy, is not able to flow along the liver meridian, it ends up concentrating in the organ, and it shows up as irritability and anger and depression and being melancholy. And the gallbladder, which I talked about with Anne Louise Gittleman in my last podcast, operates very, very similarly. So the idea is that cleansing the liver is something that involves amplifying the ability of these detoxification Pathways to actually work properly. And this is important because it's also going to assist with bile production. This is where it ties into the gallbladder piece. Because the cells of the liver, your hepatocytes, Those produce about 500 to 1500 milliliters of bile a day. That's like two and a half pints of bile. And that's that den yellow liquid, you know, the Hippocrates was referring to, that circulates from the bile ducts, which are the bile vessels to the common bile duct, to be stored in the gallbladder after it's produced by the liver. Now, over time, the bile retained in the gallbladder can condense. And because it's composed of bile salts, these can form mineral stones. And in many cases, people who need a liver flush or liver detoxification, they will actually see these little stones in the toilet after they've taken a crap. You'll see these little stones in your poop. I actually investigated my poop during this liver protocol and did not notice anything like that. So perhaps I wasn't all the way down the road of minerals accumulating as bile salts in my gallbladder. But ultimately, when you detox your liver, you increase healthy bile production and you also stimulate release of the bile by the gallbladder in addition to peristalsis. If you're doing things like the coffee enema that I did during this cleanse that I'll talk about. So occasionally another issue that can happen is if the bile isn't adequately expelled due to a dysfunction of the muscles of the gallbladder. What can happen is what they call congestion of the liver. A sensation of feeling really full after eating, bloated, frequent constipation, kind of heaviness like this foul smelling poop, and kind of hard feces that a lot of times look like deer or goat droppings rather than well formed human stool experiencing any of these type of issues, then you should continue to pay attention because I'm going to talk a little bit about how to cleanse your liver and how this actually works.

So a few other terms you need to be familiar with. When I talk about a fatty liver or a liver that needs flushing, what that means is the cells of the liver are saturated with fat. Think of this like liver pate and what are called the intrahepatic bile ducts found inside the liver. Those are full of bile, but they have a very concentration of cholesterol in them. In that case, because the amount of cholesterol produced by the liver and then reabsorbed and recycled in many cases can accumulate in the liver itself. And so you have excess cholesterol in the liver and you also have these issues with bile accumulation in the liver as well. So during a flush, the liver is basically gently encouraged to increase its excretory function in order to eliminate all that bile trapped in the bile ducts and to allow the gallbladder to evacuate that bile. And it typically involves the drainage and elimination of any accumulated toxins or cholesterol or other fractions of fat, and then an increase in actual bile flow. And learning how to detoxify and cleanse the liver is actually something that I think is smart to know how to do, because.

It'S something that if you know how to do what I'm about to explain to you, you can regularly care for your liver without having to go to medical clinic, per se. You know, I'm not a doctor. I don't want you to misconstrue this as medical advice. If you do have like, you know, non alcoholic fatty liver disease, I do recommend that you see a doc and that you not just like, you know, drink celery juice or something like that. But ultimately, knowing what you're about to learn here, which is really simple, is something that you can do multiple times for a year, especially if you come back with blood results similar to what I have had, or if you've ever struggled with constipation or bloating and gas after a meal, or if you've ever had a period of time when you eat while in a stressed out state, or you've used a lot of, for example, excess alcohol or coffee or just use that for a long time consistently. In general, there's a lot of things that you can do to increase the need for the liver to be cleansed. In my case, I drink alcohol regularly. I drink, drink coffee regularly. You know, I exercise regularly, which can also, and we'll hopefully get to that on this podcast or a future podcast, which can significantly affect many things like white blood cells and CRP and your liver enzymes and your cholesterol and what's called your prostate specific antigen. There's a lot of things that can be influenced by exercise and elevated by exercise, but exercise can even elevate liver enzymes to a certain extent. You'll a normal would be up to double the high end of normal levels. But the thing is, I didn't exercise any differently prior to this liver enzyme panel as I had done prior to other panels. And yet it was significantly, significantly elevated and levels More than two times the upper limit are unlikely to stem from exercise. Those are typically the type of things that stem from some pretty serious liver issues. And in addition to that, my liver was also my liver and gallbladder, when I palpate them, when I put my hands on them and kind of palpate them, they were also pretty, pretty tender to the touch, which also made me weigh pretty seriously this idea that I may be able to benefit from some type of a cleansing protocol for the liver. So rather than me putting myself at the risk of talking about things that I don't think have been heavily researched, I instead just want to tell you what I did, which is more of like the use of ayurvedic cleansing principle poles, and then tell you what kind of results that I got from those. I'm not going to make this into an hour long podcast about the physiology of celery juice and how exactly it could work if theoretically it would work to cleanse the liver. I instead just want to tell you how to make it and how I used it, how I combined all this together and what happened when I did that. So I'm just going to walk you through this step by step.

But before I do, I'm actually going to cut straight to the chase and tell you exactly what happened when I tested my labs, what they actually looked like. So as I mentioned to you prior to doing what I'm about to explain to you, my liver enzymes were markedly elevated in the way that I described. Aspartate aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase and alanine aminotransferase were all elevated. In addition, my hormones were actually pretty good. My free testosterone was at 78. My total testosterone was at 880. My sex hormone binding globulin, which you actually want in most cases to a certain extent lower, not higher, because that binds up your hormones and makes them unavailable to be used in other tissues. That was at 84. And then one value that I did not test on the previous test, but that I tested on the follow up test was what's called ggt, Gamma glutamyltransferase. You can think of those other enzymes I mentioned as good proxies for liver health, but GGT is a good proxy for gallbladder health, as you may have heard if you listened again to that last podcast that I did with Ann Louise Gittleman. Now I'm going to publish all these results over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com LiverCleanse but in a nutshell, I'M going to read to you the number. My alanine aminotransferase was at 83. After the three days of no alcohol and no caffeine, followed by the seven days of this liver cleanse dropped from 83 to 33. My aspartate aminotransferase dropped from 172 to 37. From 172 to 37. My GGT, the marker of gallbladder health, was rock bottom bottom at 15, meaning extremely, extremely low risk. Now, in addition to that, here's what surprised me even more. My free testosterone jumped from 78 to 115 and my total testosterone jumped from 881 to 1,154, which I hadn't expected, but it makes sense because the liver actually plays a crucial role in the processing of hormones. And so when I see a steep rise in testosterone like this from this type of protocol, I know that some of it was probably due to the fact that I was not drinking any alcohol at all. And alcohol can have a mild suppressive effect on testosterone. But I think a big part of this also came down to the enhanced liver function that occurred during this cleanse. So ultimately, pre and post blood testing was profound in terms of what it showed actually happened when I did this cleanse. Hey, I want to interrupt today's show. I want to interrupt me. That's kind of awkward. I'm interrupting myself talking. Anyways though, that's the way these things go. During the course of the cleanse that I was doing, one of the things that on a few of these days I put in that celery juice that I was drinking was a greens powder and it's made by this company called Organifi. In a moment, I'm going to give you a discount code on this stuff, but it is moringa, chlorella, mint, beets, spirulina, matcha, green tea, which is actually a really good appetite suppressant too. A lot of people don't know that. Wheatgrass, extremely nutrient dense ashwagandha, turmeric, which is an excellent anti inflammatory of course, as you no doubt know, very soothing for the gut too, too. Lemon and then some potassium rich coconut water. So what the good folks at Organifi have done, God bless them, is they've taken all these ingredients and managed to put them in very dense, very nutrient dense format into this stuff called organifi green juice. And you can just put a couple of scoops of this into, for example, celery juice. Like everything I'm describing to you on this episode, you could use like this. This passes the test. You could use this. And I did a couple of times to increase the nutrient density of what I was drinking. Drinking. You get 20% discount on anything from Organifi. They have a red juice there too. They have a gold juice. You just go to Organifi.com Organifi with an I.com and the discount code that you use over there is greenfield. Greenfield. That's automatically going to save you 20%@Organifi.com this podcast is also brought to you by. Really, the only reason that I look halfway decent when I go out these days, and that is Viore, which sounds like a fancy European sports car, but it's not. It's a clothing line. It's a clothing line of performance gear designed for men. But what they wanted to do was make performance apparel that moves well in the gym. But that also looks like a million bucks. That theoretically, if you were to smear out enough deodorant, you could wander out of the gym and go to a cocktail party and still look pretty decent wearing this clothing. It's perfect for hiking or running, any type of training. Extremely versatile. 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Okay, so I know if you're listening, you're probably a foodie. So I want to start with what I actually ate for breakfast. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the seven days of this cleanse. After I spent those first three days, as I mentioned, not drinking alcohol or caffeine, what I ate was a meal called Kitchari that's spelled K I T C H A R I. I'm gonna give you the exact Recipe over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com LiverCode Cleanse, along with the few twists that I made on this recipe. But Kachari is essentially one pot meal of lentils and rice Typically made with little ghee or clarified butter and some spices, along with garlic and onions. I didn't use garlic, I didn't use onions, I didn't use ghee, I didn't use rice. And I actually used what are called split yellow mung beans. Split mung beans are not only a fabulous source of a lot of proteins and vitamins, but they're also something that are traditionally used as an actual liver cleanse. So I use the spit mungies. The reason I didn't use the rice was the same reason that I did not juice. I did not juice. And I will tell you what I did instead of juicing momentarily because I did not want to do a cleanse that that involved lots of sugar, lots of fructose, lots of carbohydrates. I wanted to actually maintain a relatively ketogenic state while still consuming enough food stuff to keep my metabolism elevated and to give me energy and allow me to work out. Now.

The only thing that I miss out on when doing that is that when you add the rice to the beans, technically that makes a complete protein. That's why kachari typically has the rice. With the beans, it's a grain with a legume, and that does make a complete vegetable based protein. But I got my protein via other means that I felt were kinder to my blood sugar levels. Now, another thing that's used in Kachari is a special herb called hay. It's also pronounced asafoetida. It's a very pungent, sulfuric smelling spice, but it's extremely rich in sulfur. It's widely used as a digestive aid in Ayurvedic medicine. It's a staple in Indian cuisine. Very simple to find. You can buy it off Amazon or you can, you can find it at just about any grocery store. You only really need a pinch of that. But that's one of the prime ingredients in kachari. You know, think of it as like almost like glutathione and herbal form form a sulfur rich antioxidant. And then there are also a lot of black mustard seeds which increase what's called sulforaphane, which is incredibly important antioxidant and detoxification compound. Mustard seeds increase the bioavailability of the sulforaphane that you would get from cruciferous vegetables. And so I put that in there too, because I put specific vegetables that I'm about to tell you about into this kach as well. Now here is exactly what I did. I made a huge pot twice. That's all it took and just kept the pot in the fridge for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I would just have a big scoop of this stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I used the split yellow mung beans. I used coconut oil rather than ghee. I used a little bit of miso for flavoring, like a non GMO organic miso. I used to 4 cups of bone broth made by kettle and fire used what's called a kettle and fire bone broth. And then 2 tablespoons of coconut cream. Okay, so those are all the ingredients. And then the spices were cumin, fennel, coriander, ginger, turmeric, fenugreek, black mustard, and that hing stuff that I told you about. I used two cups of bok choy, cilantro and dinosaur kale. So I got a lot of the cruciferous activation combined with those muscle mustard seeds. And then every time I ate it, I just used a little bit of fresh lime juice, a dollop of coconut yogurt, which is a really good stomach friendly, gut friendly, probiotic rich compound, and then just sea salt to taste. So, you know, I'll put the exact instructions. I don't expect you to memorize them on the podcast, but essentially you just, you know, you simmer all this stuff over the stovetop after you've soaked the beans, of course, for about 24 hours before, beforehand and rinse them and then you make this. And I just had a big old scoop of this for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner, along with one giant 16 ounce glass of celery juice, which is also quite commonly used in a lot of these detoxification protocols. Tastes amazing, very mineral rich. And I just wanted to see if there was anything to this whole celery juice thing. Now, admittedly this is a multimodal approach that I was using and some people say, well, how do you know it wasn't just the celery juice or just the kachari or just whatever else? But the fact is that it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter. If you're going to do a multimodal approach to get the results that I got, just do the multimodal approach and who cares which one of those little things like move the dial the most? I say just do them all because I think this shotgun approach, assuming it's healthy, is, you know, it works. It works. So, and it just, it simplifies things. Rather than trying to split everything out. Do just the celery juice, then pre and post lab test, then just the kachari and pre and post lab test, that would just be a nightmare. So anyway, so I ate the kachari for breakfast, lunch and dinner for seven days. And honestly, it's pretty tasty. Like I put some nice salt on there with the coconut yogurt and the lime juice. It's pretty good. And along with the glass of celery juice, it, it was very fulfilling. Now one thing that I did do, and this will answer the protein piece for you, is with the celery juice, I put two scoops of the cool lime flavored amino acid powder from kion in there. So I was getting 20 grams of protein, 20 grams of extremely bioavailable amino acids with very low digestive.

Distress or the need to break down the protein because they're all pre broken down down the essential amino acids. So those were in the celery juice. The other thing that I occasionally do to the celery juice is I would add just a little touch of greens powder to it, stir all that up, and I would just drink that right before I ate my kachari. The other thing that I added to each glass of celery juice, and this is important because malic acid is used quite commonly in liver cleanses. But the way that most folks tell you to do it is they tell you to, to eat or, I'm sorry, to drink apple cider. Like copious amounts of apple cider. Well, I didn't want to mainline that much sugar and fructose into my bloodstream, so I didn't do the apple cider. Instead, I cut straight to the chase and I purchased organic malic acid powder on Amazon, which is the active ingredient of apple cider that one would use for a cleanse. And I just stirred that into the celery juice. So I basically made celery juice with a, a teaspoon of malic acid, couple scoops of kion aminos and then kachari. And that's just what I ate each day. And what I tell people are like, I get bored with eating the same thing every day. Just shut up your inner bitch. Enjoy the food, put some salt on it and you know, step up to the plate and eat it. Actually, it doesn't taste bad. People are starving in Africa. Eat your kachari. So that was, that was the majority of the actual foods that I consumed during this cleanse. My workout energy was just fine. I felt great. My blood sugar levels stayed very low. As a matter of fact, I didn't even mention this to you, but on the lab results, I should have mentioned this when I was giving you my lab results because I also did test my blood glucose and my blood glucose, it dropped from 90 fasted blood glucose to 50. So I was in full on ketosis while still consuming, you know, basically Lentil Stewart for breakfast, lunch and dinner with very low blood glucose levels. So that is what the food piece looked like. So next what I'll do is move on to some of the practices that I incorporated throughout the week. In addition to what I was actually eating, there are some other things that I put into my body, so to speak. So the first thing was, was that each night in the evening prior to bed, I used the ayurvedic cleansing herb that originally I recommended in the past as being very fantastic for constipation. But it is an extremely polyphenol rich cleanse that works incredibly well to improve digestion and to cleanse the gastrointestinal tract. It's another kind of iron Ayurvedic staple. It's called triphala. It's made up of three fruits. That's literally what triphala means. And it's called Amalaki, Bivitaki and haritaki. It tastes like ass. But what I would do is I would mix it up with some hot water. I put some vanilla stevia in there and it didn't taste that bad. The other thing that I did as part of this cleanse, and this is another thing you'll see very often recommended in the liver cleanse, again, I would do a glass of this at night, was Epsom salts. Epsom salts, it's basically powdered magnesium sulfate. It induces a pretty significant bowel movement in the morning. I'll warn you, if you do this, you're going to want an extra 20 minutes or so in the morning. But this 1, 2 combo of Triphala along with the Epsom salts was what I was actually consuming in the evening. And it was about two teaspoons of Epsom salts along with one kind of heaping teaspoon of the triphala. So I put the. I didn't combine them together. That would just be even more, more assy than ass. I instead just stirred the Epsom salts into a glass of warm water and then I had the triphala that I would sip along with a little bit of vanilla stevia added to it. So the next thing that I did, and I know a lot of people, they squirm about this, but it's one of the best ways to increase bile production by the gallbladder, by the liver, and release by the gallbladder, peristalsis, upregulation of glutathione production by the liver. And I think it helps dramatically. And that was a coffee enema. Now, I'm not going to get into many of the nitty gritty details of the coffee enema that I did three times during the course of this week that I was doing the liver cleanse. But in a nutshell, you bought what's called a stainless steel enema kit on Amazon, and I'll link to, to a full article I've written about this. You make a pot of coffee, like, good, clean, organic coffee. You then lay on your back on, like, the bathroom floor. You put the stainless steel bucket with the coffee in it up on the bathroom counter. And then you basically open up, like this little clamp lamp and this coffee all goes up inside your butte. You have like a tube inserted from the steel stainless steel bucket into your butt. And then you lay on your left side for 20 minutes, then you get up and you go to the bathroom and that's it. So, and I just would, like, lay there and, you know, take care of stuff on my phone and text people and, you know, Snapchat. My coffee and enema may or may not have done that, so on and so forth. So it's, it's not like a huge waste of time because you can do stuff while you're laying there. Some people also massage their stomach from left down on the left side, and then across to the right side in the direction that the colon naturally moves or naturally progresses through the gut. So I mean, in a nutshell, that's the coffee enema. I'll, I'll put a link to the full protocol because I understand, like, you don't want to go stick some up your butt based on 60 seconds of an explanation you heard on a podcast. You may want to take a deeper dive than that. But again, over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Liver Cleanse. I'll link to that. So I did that three times. I felt that was sufficient. Essentially, I did it every other day. Now, a couple other little things that I threw in there. One was that I used a, on the very final day, I used a castor oil pack. Castor oil, It's a very, very kind of small molecular weight oil oil that is very commonly used in cleanses and literally placed on a little. What I used was a wool pad. And it supposedly stimulates lymph function and liver function. And so I poured the castor oil pack on a wool pad and then what I did was I own one of these. This sounds funky, but it worked. This sounds like a little bio hacky, but I have this belt made by a company called Hyperice and it vibrates and produces heat. So what I did was I wrapped the castor oil pack with that belt, turned the belt on so I'm getting vibration heat, and I had the castor oil located directly over the liver area, upper right quadrant of my abs. And I swear, I know this sounds woo, but I could almost like feel my liver twitching and feel my gut churning in a good way as this thing sat on there. And then I got up and took a massive dump after that too. I was definitely taking a dump two to three times per day while following this protocol, which is why I kind of want to be at home. I just want to be in my personal environment. I also didn't want to do freaking coffee enemas in hotel rooms because I think hotel bathrooms are gross enough as it is. So anyways, that was the protocol. Kitchari, breakfast, lunch and dinner with the celery juice with amalic acid and aminos added to them. Epsom salts at night in the warm water and then the triphala at night, just made in the hot tea. The castor oil pack with the. With the Hyperice thing added to it. The coffee enema three times, no alcohol, no caffeine, and a few other important things. Just from a dietary omission standpoint, if you decide you don't just want to eat kachari, you can also have, to a certain extent, some nuts, some raw honey, any herbal tea is fine. Any vegetable milks like oat milk or rice milk or almond milk or hazelnut milk, that's fine. Fruits and vegetables, for the most part are allowed. I again, just want to keep things pretty simple. And I did have those three vegetables I mentioned added to my kachari. And again, the ones that I used were bok choy, cilantro, and dinosaur kale. That's just what we happen to have in the garden, honestly. But there's really no meat. That's why I was doing so much of the kion aminos, because I didn't want to lose muscle. So I was still getting 60 grams of protein per per day, plus the protein from the lentils and the kachari. No dairy products, no fried foods, no coffee, no alcohol, no tobacco, no processed foods, obviously. And those are the biggies. And then I would just eat three times per day. And that kachari is pretty filling stuff, really, especially I use the coconut yogurt. It's really one of the only coconut yogurts you can get from the grocery store. It's gosh, I forget the brand. It's in like the, the refrigerated section of the, like a, like a Whole Foods has them.

Thrive Market probably has it. I'll hunt down the actual brand. I can't believe I'm blanking on it. I think it's GTs. It's the same company that makes that kombucha. GTs. They make a kombucha. They do a coconut yogurt, but I just use the total non flavored stuff. Yeah, it's GT Living Foods coconut yogurt. That was what I used was GT's Living Foods Coconut yogurt. So anyways, those are the nuts and bolts of the actual liver cleanse. So it really was pretty simple.

And I think that that's doable for just about anybody to be able to pull off. Like I mentioned, 7 to 10 days C seemed more than sufficient. I felt fine. I got all my workouts in and my results just from a pure testosterone standpoint and also a liver health standpoint were profound. And again, I'll link to all of this in the show notes if you kind of want to see what happened. I'll also link to my Kachari recipe. I'll link to the coffee enema post. I also had a fascinating podcast on. It's called the Rain Barrel Effect. It was with this guy named Steven Cabral on a lot of these Ayurvedic concepts and how they work. I realized that in today's show, unlike many shows that I do, I didn't even make an attempt for you to take a deep dive into the science of say, celery juice or the science of Kachari. I just wanted to give you the practical nitty gritty. So that really is the nuts and bolts of the Ben Greenfield modified Ayurvedic liver cleanse that seem to work like gangbusters for my liver enzyme, also for my testosterone, also for my gallbladder. So if you have comments or questions, I would love to help you out with this. So just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com LiverCleanse also linked to the same Wellness FX Liver Blood Test you can do if you don't want to do the full meal deal test. And that should give you just about everything that you need to cleanse your liver. So I hope this has been helpful for you. I hope this hasn't been too woo for you. And ultimately it really isn't because I got some fantastic results. Just shows you when you kind of combine some ancestor wisdom with some modern science and biohacking, this stuff freaking works. So try it out. Again, it doesn't take a lot out of your day, out of your time. Just involves a few little modifications and a few extra extra little bit extra time spent in the crapper, I will admit, but ultimately I highly recommend it. So if you like these type of solo soads as well you find them practical or informal. Also let me know in the comments section over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com LiverCleanse thanks for listening.

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