Re: Can drinking alcohol stimulate detox--Rich

[Guest guest]

It's a good thing if you're tired of life and want to move on,

otherwise it's not such a good idea to overtax your alread

overburdened liver.

We need to take care of ourselves.

I've found that the road to recovery is to clean up your body by

uncongesting your liver, doing a series of kidney cleanses and

cleaning your colon, not by adding to the problem that already

exists. Eating the proper foods, and using other methods of detox,

such as the sweating you mentioned are also part of it.

Both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda explain how our body

works, you can find links to the using google.

Some may find this interesting...

http://www.itmonline.org/5organs/liver.htm

Rick

> Bottom line: could punishing the liver and showing it who's boss be

a good

> thing periodically for stimulating renewed detox?

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

I quit the Tylenol. It made me feel a bit bad, and the whole idea

made me nervous. I still wonder about it though from time to time.

Esp. if you would " feed the machine " right after you get through

challenging it.

Zippy

=========================================================

> Hey Rich or anyone else. I got drunk Sat night by drinking too

many beers

> and I was not really all that drunk at the time as I recall but the

next morning

> I really had the worst hangover in my life and was hating it.

Despite

> already having done sauna that morning I did have some pre-existing

CFS symptoms at

> the time I started drinking and so I was thinking that maybe I was

> over-toxified to begin with and shouldn't have drank that much

(maybe 8 beers is all I

> had) but boy did it throw me for a loop. Well, Mon morning I was

feeling very

> good and felt about as good as I ever do and it reminded me of what

Cheyenne

> was doing with Tylenol when he gives patient Tylenol to tax the

liver and then

> the rebound effect maybe has the liver working better than before

and the

> patient might feel better. Do you think this has merit? I realize

many here

> cannot tolerate any alcohol at all so no need for you guys to

respond as I am in a

> different class with my alcohol tolerance (or so I thought up to

Sat night).

> Bottom line: could punishing the liver and showing it who's boss be

a good

> thing periodically for stimulating renewed detox?

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Yeah, but about 15 months ago is when I first began drinking a bit

more and during this time I made dramatic steps of improvement, so I

don't buy it. Following my drunken episode Sat night I feel so good

Mon Tue and now today that I stopped taking even my Boswellin. I

think I shocked my liver into responding. As for Adrienne's jocular

response, I am not actually a frequent drinker--just drank quite a

bit during Jan-Mar of 2003 during which time I got much more well

and was making big strides in being able to workout w/o crashing for

the first time in 3 years. I have never done worse after drinking

except for the one day hangover which I've only had 4 of in my

entire life (3 of which came from drinking too many different types

of drinks I think and none from staying with the same drink until

last Sat where all it took was beer).

> It's a good thing if you're tired of life and want to move on,

> otherwise it's not such a good idea to overtax your alread

> overburdened liver.

>

> We need to take care of ourselves.

>

> I've found that the road to recovery is to clean up your body by

> uncongesting your liver, doing a series of kidney cleanses and

> cleaning your colon, not by adding to the problem that already

> exists. Eating the proper foods, and using other methods of detox,

> such as the sweating you mentioned are also part of it.

>

> Both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda explain how our

body

> works, you can find links to the using google.

>

> Some may find this interesting...

> http://www.itmonline.org/5organs/liver.htm

>

> Rick

>

> > Bottom line: could punishing the liver and showing it who's boss

be

> a good

> > thing periodically for stimulating renewed detox?

> >

> >

> >

> >

[Guest guest]

Hi, .

Please forgive me for taking such a long time to respond to this

message, which started a thread that is by now pretty cold!

There's a lot that I don't understand about alcohol and CFS. You

may know that Simon Wesseley and coauthors recently published a

paper on this subject. They found that about two-thirds of people

who met the UK criteria for CFS reported that they decreased their

alcohol intake after becoming ill, the reasons given being increased

tiredness after drinking (67%), increased nausea (33%), exacerbated

hangovers (23%) and sleep disturbance (24%). One third said they

stopped drinking because " it seemed sensible. " I don't know of a

similar study using the Fukuda et al. criteria for CFS, but I

suspect that even more than two-thirds would report cutting back on

alcohol consumption, since I think these criteria are less inclusive

and focus more tightly on people with a physiological basis for

their illness, as opposed to including more of those with a more

psychological basis. I think that a large majority of people with

physiologically-based CFS are alcohol-intolerant, based on what I

have heard from them.

For those PWCs who find themselves negatively affected from drinking

alcoholic beverages, I have offered the hypothesis (discussed last

in message #62085) that it is shutting down their liver's ability to

perform gluconeogenesis (this is a known effect of alcohol), on

which PWCs depend more than other people, because their skeletal

muscles are not able to carry the metabolism of carbohydrates

completely to carbon dioxide and water, but instead produce lactate

and pyruvate, which must either be burned by other tissues, such as

heart muscle, or must be sent to the liver for processing back to

glucose, thus completing the Cori cycle. When gluconeogenesis is

blocked in these people, the results are hypoglycemia and lactic

acidosis, which produce very unpleasant symptoms.

For those PWCs who can tolerate alcoholic beverages, such as you

can, I suggest that their livers have greater capacity to metabolize

it. In some cases, this may result from their genetics. In other

cases, it may result from higher alcohol consumption prior to

becoming ill, which caused their livers to adapt. For example, one

case I studied involved a diplomat who had repeatedly attended

cocktail parties as part of his job prior to becoming ill. He was

still able to tolerate alcohol well after developing CFS, and I

think it was because he had developed greater capacity to break it

down.

You asked whether consumption of alcohol can boost the detox system

in the liver. It is known that chronic consumption of alcohol will

increase the activity of CYP2E1, one of the cytochrome P450 enzyme

family that is responsible for Phase I detox. While this increases

the ability of the liver to start the detox of alcohol, it can also

cause the liver to generate increased reactive intermediates from

drugs or environmental toxins that the person is exposed to, leading

to increased generation of oxidizing free radicals, lipid

peroxidation, and glutathione depletion.

So my take on all this is that it would be better to build the

liver's ability to cope with toxins by giving it the raw materials

it needs, rather than shocking it with a lot of a toxic substance,

such as alcohol. Things like milk thistle (or silymarin or

silibinin), selenium, alpha lipoic acid, B vitamins, and glutathione

precursors (or undenatured whey protein) seem to me to be better

things to give the liver.

I don't have an explanation for your experience. Perhaps you did

stimulate your detox system by drinking a lot of alcohol. It may be

that your liver also paid a price for this, though.

On a personal note, I don't think that getting drunk is a very good

idea for anyone for a host of reasons, some involving health, some

involving responsibility to others, some involving affects on the

judgment and the ability to think clearly, and some involving the

lowering of inhibitions that really are in one's best interest to

maintain. You probably recall that I'm a Christian, and my reading

of the Bible on this issue suggests that moderate use of alcohol is

permissible from God's point of view, and can even be beneficial

(for healthy people, at least), but getting drunk is ruled out.

So I can't explain what you experienced, but I also can't recommend

that you repeat it.

Cheers!

Rich

> Hey Rich or anyone else. I got drunk Sat night by drinking too

many beers

> and I was not really all that drunk at the time as I recall but

the next morning

> I really had the worst hangover in my life and was hating it.

Despite

> already having done sauna that morning I did have some pre-

existing CFS symptoms at

> the time I started drinking and so I was thinking that maybe I was

> over-toxified to begin with and shouldn't have drank that much

(maybe 8 beers is all I

> had) but boy did it throw me for a loop. Well, Mon morning I was

feeling very

> good and felt about as good as I ever do and it reminded me of

what Cheyenne

> was doing with Tylenol when he gives patient Tylenol to tax the

liver and then

> the rebound effect maybe has the liver working better than before

and the

> patient might feel better. Do you think this has merit? I

realize many here

> cannot tolerate any alcohol at all so no need for you guys to

respond as I am in a

> different class with my alcohol tolerance (or so I thought up to

Sat night).

> Bottom line: could punishing the liver and showing it who's boss

be a good

> thing periodically for stimulating renewed detox?

>

>

>

>