What was claimed
Gallbladder stones can be flushed out of your body, often with a diet of apples and olive oil.
Our verdict
This is not a proven treatment. The stones “flushed” out of a person’s body are unlikely to be gallstones, and research has demonstrated that they’re probably created by the “flush” diet itself.
Claims about a popular alternative therapy known as a ‘liver and gallbladder flush’ are circulating on Facebook as well as Instagram. It involves drinking olive oil and eating apples—or similar variations—and there are claims it can “flush out” gallbladder stones.
Some social media posts show pictures of the “stones”. While it’s impossible for us to say for certain what such pictures show, these are unlikely to be gallstones—and are in fact probably created in the body by the diet specifically intended to flush them out.
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The gallbladder is a small organ found underneath the liver, whose main purpose is to store bile to help with digestion. Gallstones are small stones that can form in the gallbladder and are usually made of cholesterol.
Though they typically don’t cause symptoms—nor do they need to be treated—in some cases they can cause pain or complications, and surgery or other treatments may be recommended.
This is a popular alternative therapy that promotes a diet intended to help someone “pass” gallstones, but there’s no reliable evidence that a “flush” is an effective treatment for gallstones.
The social media posts typically see a person explain their diet—a variation on apples, olive oil, lemon juice or Epsom salts—accompanied by a picture of green coloured stones they’ve passed. It’s true the oils in the flush can have a laxative effect—this is referred to as a gallbladder or liver flush.
Proponents of the diet make various claims about its benefits and ability to alleviate generic symptoms—such as unblocking the liver, removing “eye floaters” and soothing shoulder pain. But gallstones are generally symptomless, and when they do cause symptoms, they don’t typically include all the symptoms described in the social media posts. Typical symptoms of gallstones include abdominal pain, jaundice, diarrhoea, a temperature and shivers.
What’s more, according to older research, the stones these patients are passing probably aren’t gallstones at all. In 2005, the medical journal The Lancet published a small study on one patient’s supposed gallstones.
Similar to what we see in these social media posts, one patient had followed a “liver cleansing” regime consisting of “free intake of apple and vegetable juice until 1800 h, but no food, followed by the consumption of 600 mL of olive oil and 300 mL of lemon juice over several hours”, resulting in the “painless passage of multiple semisolid green ‘stones’”.
Researchers examined these stones and found they lacked any crystalline structure and contained no cholesterol, bilirubin, or calcium, all of which are typical of gallstones.
The researchers then mixed oleic acid (the major component of olive oil) and lemon juice and were able to produce semi-solid balls that became solid at room temperature, leading them to believe it is likely the diet itself that created these green stones.
It’s not actually possible for us to tell what is or isn’t a gallstone by eye, so we can’t say for certain what social media users are sharing. But we can say the evidence we have suggests a “gallbladder flush” diet won’t help you pass gallstones, and may in fact cause problems.
Gallbladder cleansing is “not without risk”, according to Brent Bauer M.D., director of the Department of Internal Medicine’s Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program at Mayo Clinic.
In a 2024 article, he stated: “Some people have nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain during the flushing or cleansing period. The ingredients used in a gallbladder cleanse can present their own health hazards.”
For gallstones that do cause symptoms, patients should contact their doctor and pursue “proven treatment options … such as surgical removal, bile salt tablets or sound wave therapy,” he added.
Dr Bauer confirmed to Full Fact that this is still accurate, a year after the article’s publication.
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