http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=93

"Experimentation revealed that mixing equal volumes of oleic acid (the major component of olive oil) and lemon juice produced several semi solid white balls after the addition of a small volume of a potassium hydroxide solution. On air drying at room temperature, these balls became quite solid and hard.

We conclude, therefore, that these green “stones” resulted from the action of gastric lipases on the simple and mixed triacylglycerols that make up olive oil, yielding long chain carboxylic acids (mainly oleic acid). This process was followed by saponification into large insoluble micelles of potassium carboxylates (lemon juice contains a high concentration of potassium) or “soap stones”.

In other words, the “stones” that liver cleansers are so proud of and go to such effort to strain their poo for after doing their flushes are not gallstones and were almost certainly the product of the actual flush itself! (Cue the con men tipping their hats in appreciation.)

It makes perfect sense, if you think about it. These protocols usually involve fasting and then consuming up to a half liter or more of olive oil at one time. That could easily provide the conditions for this sort of reaction to take place. Neat, isn’t it? The very sign of “success” of the liver flush is something that has nothing to do with gallstones and everything to do with the results of the flush itself.

Indeed, it’s quite clear that, even if you don’t have gallstones, if you do a liver flush and then look closely enough, you’ll find things in your stool that very much look like gallstones that are really due to saponified oil.

Now I know (and you do too) why virtually every liver flush protocol includes large amounts of olive oil or similar oils plus epsom salts or orthophophoric acid and fruit juices. Unfortunately, I have not seen any more recent studies, and I’m not sure if any are really needed after the investigators discussed above conclusively showed that they could mimic these “stones” chemically."