Bile can serve as a reservoir for funghi, making them harder to treat

[yerrag]

@Mauritio Dandelion root, one of the bitters, helped restore my liver's ability to conjugate or make bile. But I was also taking vco and taurine to help restore that ability.

I noticed my bowels were pale, and during that time, my skin was experiencing allergy. The pale color meant I don't have enough bile production to allow effective secretion of toxins fecally. And my skin became the alternative path for toxin clearance.

[Mauritio]

@yerrag Interestingly I can't find a single study showing cholagogue or choleretic effects of dandelion.

I took dandelion extract for the first time yesterday and it seems to be quite stimulating. Not sure if that was a one time only effect, but I found a study showing that it increases dopamine, noradrenaline and adrenaline.

"T. officinale extract exerts it effects by significantly (p<0.05) decreasing the levels of corticosterone and increasing the concentrations of dopamine, noradrenaline, and adrenaline. "
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6340315/

[yerrag]

@Mauritio

I am quoting Deepseek AI on the choleretic effects. I haven't been quite doing personal deep research lately ao here goes:

Yes, dandelion root (Taraxacum officinale) is widely recognized as having choleretic effects.

Here’s a breakdown of what that means in practice:

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How it works

Research, primarily in animal models, indicates that dandelion root extract can stimulate the liver to increase bile production. The effect is attributed to its bitter sesquiterpene lactones (like taraxacin) and other compounds. By increasing bile flow, it may help:

· Improve digestion of fats
· Gently relieve constipation linked to poor bile output
· Support the liver's natural detoxification pathways

The distinction you need to know

· Choleretic: Dandelion root is a choleretic — it increases bile production by the liver.
· Cholagogue: It is often also described as having mild cholagogue action — meaning it may also help stimulate the release of bile from the gallbladder.

Evidence and traditional use

· Traditional herbalism: It’s a classic "bitter" digestive tonic and liver herb, approved by the German Commission E (a respected herbal regulatory body) for dyspeptic complaints and disturbances in bile flow.
· Clinical research: Human clinical trials are limited, but animal studies and pharmacological reviews consistently support its choleretic activity.
· Caveat: Because it stimulates bile flow, it is contraindicated for people with blocked bile ducts, active gallstones causing symptoms, or acute gallbladder inflammation unless under professional supervision.

So, if you were connecting your previous queries — yes, the jump from the slang "cholalogic" to the real medical term "choleretic" leads directly here: dandelion root is one of the classic, evidence-backed examples.

[Mauritio]

@yerrag I am not doubting that it has these effects, I was just surprised that there isnt any studies on it (as opposed to gentian for example)

BTW I took it again today and the stimulating effects seem to be a lot less pronounced already.

[yerrag]

@Mauritio It's admirable that you have caught on to Ray's method of feel when using substances. I slowly become more sensitized such as when I make a connection between feeling skin allergies when I observe a pattern emerge that my skin allergy would coincide with pale stools signifying the lack of bile production. But it's notable that I only make that connection because skin allergy is not a common experience with me that when it happens it stands out for me to be able to make a cause and effect relationship to it. Yet, my pattern recognition ability fails me when I take dandelion root, as I dont feel any palpable effect from taking it. I would only get confirmation that it is working after 2 weeks of taking it when I see my stools look darker followed up by the loss of skin allergy. Still, knowing the skin is a secondary mechanism of detox helps me connect the dots in being able to identify loss of bile production with my liver and gallbladder.

I am not as sensitive as you and Ray when it comes to directly feel the effect of taking aubstances and I have to rely on observing outward effects after a given amount of time to allow for the delay for effects to be observed. I even have to shy away from outright using stacks as opposed to a gradual addition of substances, just to be able to identify which substance has an outsize effect, and which can be removed from the stack because it gives diminishing returns or even has unintended effects that confound rather than elucidate. Still, I rely on feel as much as I can.

Although I am more tech ( personal devices such as bp, spO2, and ECG) and test (blood test as the most common example) oriented, as feel isn't enough for me when I can't rely on it when it is absent.

As to you noting the absence of studies for various herbs in the apothecary of herbal medicine, there are many studies that have yet to be made given the richness that abounds in flora. But for those where studies have been made, many are not searchable despite the efforts of Google to make them aearchable, and many are even intentionally siloed and disappeared. Thus, we are able only to benefit from a small subset of herbs that mankind has discovered if we were to rely on the limited scope modern and commercial medical science and its curators limit us to.

[CrumblingCookie]

Hesperitin, as in the aglycone flavonol with CAS # 520-33-2, is said to be super-potent against fungal biofilms,
in contrast to the Hesperidin glycoside CAS # 520-26-3.
The latter is actually a precursor whose rutenoside group must first be hydrolyzed for it to become active hesperitin. Practically, this means for anyone suspecting/targeting fungal biofilm in the (distal) colon, hesperidin is a sound option. It's available as consumer-targeted dietary supplements extracted from citrus fruit.
But for anything more proximal, all along the small intestine, direct hesperitin is needed. No domestic OTC-products are available, but raw powders can be obtained with extra costs and efforts.

I'm not done with this fungal topic yet. I've looked into every side avenue of why fluconazole past a certain dosage thresold was so effective on me for the short time I had taken it.
And none of the alternative explanations via potassium efflux pumps (IRk specifically) or its cytochrome inhibition profile make any sense as to why it would alleviate diarrhea. It likely really is a C. glabrata-dominated fungal biofilm background to it all.

Taking the flucotysin by itself btw was really stupid of me. Since I reckon nobody who had been reading here had the experience of being a clinical fungal disease expert who could have told me before I will stress it from the lay level:
5-FC was/is idiotic to take by itself because resistance/tolerance to it arises essentially immediately.
So that's why it had no significant effect at all.
Among the echinocandins group of antifungals, rezafungin is the latest and most hydrophilic / hygroscopic and also provides a very long half-life in-vivo allowing for once-weekly i.v. administration schedules.

[sunsunsun]

@CrumblingCookie so did you stack stuff with fluconazole to lower its MIC and MFC?
are you gonna get brexafemme?

[CrumblingCookie]

@sunsunsun Yes, a bulb of garlic/d, oregano oil 4-5 drops/d, borax water, propolis extract. Maybe, maybe it will take even more than 300mg/d to show effects without such a stack.

It's also quite certain from studies that (flucon)azole is really pretty useless against C. glabrata biofilms as it simply doesn't penetrate nor dissolve it. Probably that's why some treatments call for weeks of really high dosage (800mg/d) followed by months or forever of a lower maintenance dosage. With the latter probably just keeping whatever's already established itself under check yet without further removing any of it.
If going with azoles, maybe superdosing hesperitin could be of intestinal and systemic complementary merit and maybe superdosing nystatin (20M IU/d) for the intestinal lumen could be, too.

The brexafemme in the patient studies doesn't even look as exceptional but more or less equally successful, empirically, as fluconazole when treatment groups aren't separated according to prior susceptibility testing.
It should be distinctly more promising wrt biofilms, however, because fungal biofilms can sustain themselves with almost no ergosterol (azoles) whereas the β-(1,3)-glucan (ibrexafungerp or echinacandins) is much more essential to their structure and survival.

At this point there is so little data on the brexafemme, though. I'd prefer an echinocandin. Mica- or rezafungin are reported to be efficacious against biofilms yet their mucocutaneous use, albeit highly promising, is still on the fringe side. Maybe the reza even therapeutically reaches the bile? Its distribution pattern and volume suggests it pretty much goes everywhere and its excretion is mostly fecal (not biliary but by passive diffusion) and still in its active drug form.