Liver Support
I took milk thistle supplements for some period of time as liver support. It is a pre-cursor for glutathione which the liver uses in large quantities.
My understanding is that you cannot supplement glutathione directly. The body cannot use it if you take glutathione. You have to take something that lets the body make it in house and milk thistle is one of those things.
In the CF community, some people use a supplement called NAC (N-acetyl cysteine) which also is supposed to be a glutathione precursor. I have no firsthand experience with this.
There may be at least one other glutathione precursor, but I'm not readily finding it in my notes.
The more important thing you need to do is reduce the workload on the liver. It filters toxic substances out of your blood, so the more toxic crud you are running through your system, the harder it has to work.
There are at least three big categories of things I removed from my life as best I could to give my liver a break:
You aren't supposed to EVER take Advil (ibuprofen) and Aleve (naproxen sodium) together because they are both hard on the liver and combining them can cause liver failure. I was prescribed HIGH doses of both for a time and it took me a while to get off of them. It's incredible I'm still alive given medical details of that sort.
The liver filters toxic stuff out of the blood stream and then you pee it out, basically. You may also find it helpful to consume watermelon as kidney support in addition to milk thistle.
If you are very sick, you ALSO need to pace yourself in removing toxic stuff from your life so as to not put too much stress on your body. Think of it as a form of tapering off instead of going cold turkey.
When I had a corporate job, I would throw stuff out on a Friday night so I had the weekend to recover before having to return to work on Monday. It was a routine thing to throw things out on Friday and recover all weekend. I gradually got healthier.
IF you actually have cystic fibrosis in specific:
My understanding is that people with CF have too little glutathione on the cell surface and too much inside the cell. Some people with CF use inhaled NAC to add glutathione to the lung surface on the theory that they are "deficient" on the surface of their tissues.
I corrected chemical imbalances within the cell using diet and lifestyle. I believe that people with CF hoard glutathione and calcium inside our cells as a desperate attempt to survive extreme acidity and other chemical derangement.
As I got healthier, I sometimes went through periods where my armpits and bowel movements smelled very sour and skunk-like. Dr. Andrew Hall Cutler, who had a Phd in Chemistry and worked as a consultant for people doing chelation, told me that sour, skunk-like smell was glutathione.
So I believe I dumped glutathione as my cells became less chemically deranged. If so, this would support my hypothesis that people with CF hoard glutathione to try like hell to offset chemical derangement.
My understanding is that you cannot supplement glutathione directly. The body cannot use it if you take glutathione. You have to take something that lets the body make it in house and milk thistle is one of those things.
In the CF community, some people use a supplement called NAC (N-acetyl cysteine) which also is supposed to be a glutathione precursor. I have no firsthand experience with this.
There may be at least one other glutathione precursor, but I'm not readily finding it in my notes.
The more important thing you need to do is reduce the workload on the liver. It filters toxic substances out of your blood, so the more toxic crud you are running through your system, the harder it has to work.
There are at least three big categories of things I removed from my life as best I could to give my liver a break:
- Drugs known to be hard on the liver. (This includes Advil and Aleve.)
- ALL particle board furniture.
- Anything that off-gasses, such as soft plastics.
You aren't supposed to EVER take Advil (ibuprofen) and Aleve (naproxen sodium) together because they are both hard on the liver and combining them can cause liver failure. I was prescribed HIGH doses of both for a time and it took me a while to get off of them. It's incredible I'm still alive given medical details of that sort.
The liver filters toxic stuff out of the blood stream and then you pee it out, basically. You may also find it helpful to consume watermelon as kidney support in addition to milk thistle.
If you are very sick, you ALSO need to pace yourself in removing toxic stuff from your life so as to not put too much stress on your body. Think of it as a form of tapering off instead of going cold turkey.
When I had a corporate job, I would throw stuff out on a Friday night so I had the weekend to recover before having to return to work on Monday. It was a routine thing to throw things out on Friday and recover all weekend. I gradually got healthier.
IF you actually have cystic fibrosis in specific:
My understanding is that people with CF have too little glutathione on the cell surface and too much inside the cell. Some people with CF use inhaled NAC to add glutathione to the lung surface on the theory that they are "deficient" on the surface of their tissues.
I corrected chemical imbalances within the cell using diet and lifestyle. I believe that people with CF hoard glutathione and calcium inside our cells as a desperate attempt to survive extreme acidity and other chemical derangement.
As I got healthier, I sometimes went through periods where my armpits and bowel movements smelled very sour and skunk-like. Dr. Andrew Hall Cutler, who had a Phd in Chemistry and worked as a consultant for people doing chelation, told me that sour, skunk-like smell was glutathione.
So I believe I dumped glutathione as my cells became less chemically deranged. If so, this would support my hypothesis that people with CF hoard glutathione to try like hell to offset chemical derangement.
