Add new comment

Ask away! Really no more an imposition than me reading this blog for baseball info! It looks like the most common recs are 1-2 oz in ~16 oz of water or apple juice (lots of sugar with the juice, though) daily to several times a day. Will be pretty acidic. No scientific or even observational basis for dosage/use recs, it looks like. Taking something quite acidic routinely could have an effect on your GI bacteria balance which could explain your prior experience with ACV (or it could just as easily have been a coincidence). As far as efficacy, I have to say that if ACV were really dramatically effective, then self-insured groups like Kaiser-Permanente would be using it as a way to reduce their surgical and medicine costs. Maybe they just haven't gotten around to studying it yet, but GB surgery is one of the most common operations in the US and any easy cheap effective alternative would be highly, highly attractive. There are numerous precedents for medical treatments replacing surgical treatments- the introduction of PPI acid blockers dramatically reduced anti-reflux surgery and virtually eliminated stomach ulcer surgery, for example. On ACV, everything seems limited to single person testimonials and anecdotes… highly susceptible to selection bias. Even the Cochran Reviews Library returns zero results for ACV.
I have seen some testimonials where pts took AVC in the midst of an attack, and then experienced relief subsequently "within 15 min".  May have been coincidence.  15 min is too quick for the body to absorb and process ACV, get it to the GB, and then thin the bile or dissolve stones.  However, it is possible that something in the ACV either counteracts or blocks signals from the stomach to the GB that tell the GB to contract (presence of fats stimulate this signal) and therefore the GB relaxes.  No way to say... it's just unstudied.