Folks,

An interesting piece of data I collected when I was looking for alternatives to cholecystomy nearly a month back:

From a village in south India, a village doctor - the sort who diagnose ailments by holding the hand and feeling the 'pulse' sent me a bottle of olive oil, the lemon juice recipe and some packets of some herbs.
And I discovered this site at almost the same time. The same treatment, from two orthogonal sources and distant cultures was too hard to be brushed off as a mere co-incidence.
Without too much speculation, I took the chance and ran out of surgery, to get out of the attack with a flush.

Indian forms of ayurvedic medicine are well known as alternative paradigms. But olives don't grow in India and it was too hard for me to believe that this was an authentic form of Indian medicine. After some inquiries I have gathered that ancient India had trade with Greece and ships from the mediterranean often brought in olive oil which was well known to the ancients. Also, I gathered that the lemon juice-olive oil flush was a recipe associated with an Indian king who learnt of it as a way to push out "bile stones"

-Anuradha