SA Healthy Choices Facebook ad: “What Your Liver Has Been Missing All This Time”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

4470507043202792

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads

Relaunches

0

Niche

Supplements & Wellness

How we count

Ad text

My husband stopped drinking in July 2024. Poured every single bottle down the sink. Started the Mediterranean diet. Walked 5 kilometres every day. Started juicing vegetables — kale, of all things. He did everything the doctor told him to do. He passed away from liver failure on 19 October at 04:17. He was 61 years old. Quit drinking on 8 July. Ate nothing that wasn’t approved. Lost almost 10 kilos. Walked 5 kilometres every day, rain or shine. The hospital bill was R1 150 000. The funeral was R200 000. His favourite whisky glass is still sitting on the shelf above the sink. I can't bring myself to move it. If I put it away, he's truly gone. I have to tell you what happened to Robert. Because I keep seeing the exact same posts on Facebook that I was making myself just a few months before he died — "the GP says my husband's liver enzymes are too high, does anyone have tips?" — and it makes me physically sick. If you’re over 50 and you drink, or someone you love does, please read this all the way through. I know it’s long. I know you’re scrolling. I know you’ve got other things to do. Fifteen months ago, I would have given everything — absolutely everything — if someone had told me what I’m about to tell you. Robert went for a routine check-up on 28 June 2024. He felt fine. Better than fine. He had just turned 60. He was still chopping his own firewood. Still riding his motorbike every Saturday. He thought he was indestructible — and honestly, so did I. Two days later, his GP called. ALT of 198. AST of 187. "Your liver levels are severely elevated, Robert. We need to talk about your drinking." Robert was quiet on the phone. I was standing in the kitchen pretending not to listen in. "How much are you drinking?" "A couple of whiskies a few nights a week. A beer or two during the Rugby on Sunday. Maybe a drink at a birthday party." "That’s enough to cause this. You need to stop. Completely. No exceptions. We’ll retest in three months." Robert hung up and sat at the kitchen table for forty minutes without saying a word. Then he stood up, walked over to the liquor cabinet, and pulled everything out. I watched him pour out a bottle of R3 200 Glenfiddich. An R1 600 bottle of Jameson Select Reserve. An R800 bottle of Bain's. Two crates of Windhoek down the sink. The whole whisky collection — gone in less than an hour. "That’s it," he said. "I’m done." And he was. For 103 days, he didn't touch a drop. No whisky. No beer. Absolute zero. Not at his nephew’s wedding in August. Not at the Springbok match in September. Not at his own birthday dinner in October, where his brother ordered a whisky right across from him while Robert sat there drinking soda water with lemon. He gave up his weekly braai and poker night because he couldn't sit there sober while everyone else was knocking them back. He lost his friend Marc, who said "you're no fun anymore" and stopped calling. He lost Friday afternoons at the golf club. He lost a piece of himself that he had carried for 35 years. And he did it anyway. Because the doctor said so. He dropped almost 10 kilos in those three months. He bought a juicer — Robert, with a juicer, I still can’t picture it. He started walking 5 kilometres every morning before work. He took the milk thistle his GP said was "fine to take." He took a multivitamin. He ate a salad every day — the man who used to call it "rabbit food." He did everything right. The follow-up results came back on 7 October. ALT: 184. AST: 176. He had spent 90 days completely sober, and the numbers had barely budged. The GP said: "Give it more time. The liver recovers slowly. We’ll test again in 6 months. Keep doing what you're doing." Robert came home that evening and sat at the kitchen table again. The exact same table as after that first phone call. He didn't say anything for a long time. Then he said: "Caroline, I gave up everything. Everything. And it didn't do a damn thing." I told him to give it time. That the doctor had said six months. That he had to trust the process. He nodded. He kept walking. He kept juicing. He kept taking the milk thistle. Five days later — five days — he woke up at 2:00 AM with a sharp pain in his right side that doubled him over in agony. I rushed him to the casualty ward. By the time they admitted him at half past four in the morning, the whites of his eyes were yellow. Not "a bit pale." Yellow. Like a highlighter. As if someone had switched off a light behind them. The casualty doctor — a young guy, couldn't have been more than 35 — looked at Robert's blood results and his face completely changed. "Mr Bakker, your bilirubin is 8.2. Your ALT is now 847. Your liver is in acute decompensation. We are moving you to ICU immediately." "But I stopped drinking three months ago," Robert said. The doctor just looked at him. "I know, Mr Bakker. I'm so sorry." Robert spent 11 days in ICU. I learned things about the liver that I never wanted to know. I learned that when a liver gives up, the toxins your body creates every day — mostly ammonia — build up in your blood and travel to your brain. They call it hepatic encephalopathy. It means your husband stops being your husband. He looks at you like he’s trying to remember who you are. He says things that make no sense. On day 6, Robert asked me three times in twenty minutes if I had fed the dog. We don't have a dog. We haven't had a dog since 2009. I learned that they administer an IV compound called NAC when a liver fails. The nurse told me it’s the same compound they use for paracetamol overdoses. She said it forces the liver to rebuild the master antioxidant it uses to protect itself — glutathione. She said it was the only thing they had, and at this stage, they were just hoping it could buy him some time. It bought him 11 days. On day 8, his kidneys started failing. The specialists talked about a transplant. Then they said he wasn't a candidate because of how fast he was deteriorating. Then they stopped mentioning transplants altogether. On day 10, his stomach swelled up as if he were full-term pregnant. They drained 4 litres of fluid from his abdomen. Four litres. The nurse called it ascites. I called my daughter. Day 11 — 19 October — I was sitting in the family room down the hall. They had asked me to step out while they intubated him. At 04:09, I heard the continuous beep. At 04:17, a doctor I had never seen before walked into the room. I already knew. "I am so very sorry. We did everything we could." I drove home at 6:00 AM. The juicer was still sitting on the counter. His running shoes were by the back door. The milk thistle was on the windowsill above the sink, next to the multivitamins. His favourite glass — the one he had left out because it was his favourite — was still on the shelf above the sink. Where it still stands today. I sat down in his armchair. I didn't move for six hours. The house was so quiet I could hear the fridge humming. 38 years. And now the only sound in my home was the fridge. The funeral was on 19 January. Robert's brother flew in from overseas. Our daughter drove up from Cape Town. The grandkids were wearing suits that were too big for them. My five-year-old granddaughter asked me: "Ouma, when is Oupa coming back home?" I told her Oupa was in heaven now. She said: "Can we call him there?" I had to walk out of the room. After the funeral, I tried to get back to normal life. I couldn't. Because every time I opened my phone, I saw people my age, men Robert's age, posting things like "GP says my enzymes are a bit high, has anyone tried milk thistle?" or "Annual check-up, mild fatty liver, nothing to worry about." And I knew — I KNEW — that some of them were doing the exact same thing Robert did. Quitting. Eating clean. Walking. Juicing. Taking milk thistle. And dying anyway. I couldn't just sit back and watch it happen. So I started researching. Not because I wanted to. Because I had to. Because if Robert gave up everything for nothing — if I can't save even one single person from going through what he went through — I can't live with that. I spent weeks reading. Medical journals I could barely understand. Hepatology forums. Studies from Japan and Germany. And one thing kept coming up, over and over again, that not a single doctor had ever mentioned to us: The reason Robert's levels didn't drop is because quitting drinking only stops the ongoing damage. It does not repair what has already been lost. Specifically: glutathione. Glutathione is the master antioxidant the liver uses to filter out everything that passes through your body — every medication, every toxin, every drink, every greasy meal, every breath of polluted air. Every single liver cell depends on it. And here is what nobody told us. After age 40, your body produces about 10% less glutathione every single year. Modern life — processed foods, meds, environmental toxins — burns through what's left even faster. By age 55, most of us have lost nearly half our production capacity without even realizing it. And this is the part that made me sit bolt upright: When your glutathione levels are depleted, a drink that would normally be harmlessly neutralized starts causing liver damage. Robert's liver wasn't damaged because he drank too much. It was damaged because he didn't have enough glutathione left to process what he was drinking. Read that again. His liver wasn't ruined by the whisky. It was ruined by the empty tank the whisky was passing through. And this is why quitting alone didn't save him: stopping drinking stops the drain. It doesn't refill the tank. That tank was already empty the moment the doctor told him to stop. The damage was already cascading. Eating healthy, exercising, juicing vegetables — those things only slow down how fast you burn through what's left. They don't replace what is already gone. THAT is why his levels didn't move. He gave up everything he loved to stop the bleeding from a wound that was already internal. I sat with that thought for three days. And then I started looking at what I was doing. I had thrown Robert's milk thistle in the bin the week after the funeral. But I bought a new tub for myself. Because I’m 59. Because my levels were "borderline" at my last check-up. Because I was terrified. I took it for three weeks. My GP — a different one from Robert’s, whom I called because I trusted her — gave a sad smile when I told her. "Caroline, milk thistle protects the liver cells that are still functioning well. But you can't protect cells that are running on an empty tank. It works on the outside. It doesn't replenish anything." Then she said something I will never forget: "If Robert had taken something that actually rebuilt his glutathione reserves, things might have turned out very differently." I stopped breathing for a second. "Then why didn't his doctor prescribe it?" She was silent for a long time. "Because we don't prescribe supplements. And the version that actually works isn't a prescription drug." The next day, I went to Clicks. I stood in that aisle for 40 minutes. Milk thistle. Liver detox teas. Dandelion capsules. 30-day "Liver Cleanse" packs. Multivitamins with "liver support." Generic NAC capsules — R250, 600mg, the cheap stuff. I bought the cheap NAC. Took it for two weeks. No change in my bloodwork. I started digging deeper, and what I found made me throw the bottle straight into the rubbish bin. A compromised liver cannot properly absorb a capsule. The capsule passes straight through an organ that is already failing before the active ingredients can reach the bloodstream. Most of what you pay for never gets to where it needs to go. You are literally flushing your money down the toilet. Liquid bypasses this completely. Liquid enters the bloodstream directly. I had been doing the right thing, the wrong way. I was furious. I am STILL furious. About a week later, I read a post on Facebook — one of those liver health groups, full of people just like Robert was, people with "elevated enzyme levels", people with "borderline NAFLD" — and a woman posted something that stopped me in my tracks. She said her husband was told to quit drinking at 58. He quit. His levels barely moved for 6 months — sound familiar? — and then he found a liquid formula that combined NAC with actual glutathione, plus two bitter herbs to clear the drainage pathways. His ALT went from 191 down to 41 in 10 weeks. Without cutting out drinks entirely. Without changing anything else. I read that post six times. I started searching for the formula she mentioned. And what I discovered is that there are five specific things a serious liver support supplement has to do at the exact same time, otherwise it’s a waste of money: It has to rebuild glutathione production from the inside out. That’s NAC — the exact same compound the ICU put into Robert's IV at the end. Not a vitamin. The actual building block. It has to directly replenish glutathione that is already depleted while that production is ramping up. That’s L-glutathione itself. NAC restarts the factory. L-glutathione restocks the shelves at the same time. It has to package and flush out the fat that has already built up inside your liver cells. That’s choline. Choline is the fuel for the export pump. Without choline, the fat just sits there and hardens into scar tissue — no matter how much weight you lose. It has to open the drainage pathways so that whatever the liver processes actually leaves the body instead of recirculating. That’s a blend of bitter herbs — artichoke extract and dandelion, working in sequence. One stimulates bile production, the other clears the exit path. And it MUST be in liquid form. Because a compromised liver cannot absorb a capsule effectively. Five things. All five. At the same time. In liquid form. I checked every product I had seen at the pharmacy. Not a single one did all five. Most did one. The expensive ones did two. None of them were liquid. Then I found Puralivix. It was the only formula I could find that hit all five targets. NAC. L-glutathione. Choline. Artichoke. Dandelion. Liquid dropper, two drops in the morning. A 60-day money-back guarantee tied to your actual blood results — if your levels don't improve, you get every cent back, no questions asked. I almost didn't order it. After the pharmacy aisle. After the milk thistle. After Robert. After everything. But I had a brother who was still drinking like Robert used to. A son-in-law with "borderline" fatty liver. And myself. I ordered it. My brother came back from a routine check-up with an ALT of 168. He had no idea what to do. I sent him a bottle. Didn't even ask. Just sent it. With a note: "If you don't take this every single day, I am never speaking to you again, Frank, I mean it." He took it. He kept having his drinks — he refuses to stop, he's headstrong like Robert was — but he took it every morning. Four weeks ago, he went back to his GP for a follow-up. ALT: 32. Down from 168. In 10 weeks. He hadn't stopped drinking. He hadn't changed his diet. He hadn't started gymming. The only thing he changed was the liquid drops he took every morning. He called me crying. My brother. 57 years old. Sobbing on the phone like a child. He said: "Caroline, I think Robert died because nobody told him about this." I had to put the phone down. Then my son-in-law. 44, two kids, "borderline fatty liver" at his last check-up. Started taking it 6 weeks ago. He says his afternoon energy is back. He says the dull ache under his right ribs that he had for 2 years — the pain his doctor called "probably nothing" — is completely gone. My neighbour Karen. Her husband died of liver cirrhosis 4 months before Robert. Two widows on the same street. She started taking it two days after I told her my story. She says it’s the first time since his death that she doesn't feel like she's just waiting for a bad phone call. I told my sister. I told Robert’s brother. I told the women at my book club. I told the guys from Robert’s old poker group when I dropped off a meal. I am not a doctor. I am not a scientist. I am not selling anything, and I don't make a single cent from any of this. I am a 59-year-old widow sitting in her late husband's armchair at two in the morning because I can't sleep, and I can't stop thinking about my brother and whether he would have ended up where Robert did. Here is what I know because I lived through it: Quitting drinking stops further damage. It does not replenish what is already depleted. It does not reverse the damage. Milk thistle protects cells. It does not refill the tank those cells run on. A liver running on empty cannot properly absorb a capsule. Liquid bypasses this entirely. Robert gave up everything he loved for 103 days and it didn't save him because nobody told him what was actually broken inside. I wish someone had told us before 28 June 2024. Before the routine check-up. Before pouring the whisky down the drain. Before 103 days of soda water with lemon. Before 19 October at 04:17. I can’t go back. Robert isn't coming back. His glass is still on the shelf, and it's staying there. But you can still move forward. Your husband can. Your brother can. You can. The page that explains all of this — the glutathione mechanism, why your levels don't move when you quit, what your doctor doesn't tell you about liquid absorption, and what Puralivix actually contains — it’s the page I found at 3:00 AM. Don't just protect. Replenish. That was the line that finally made it click for me. I want you to read it. Not for me. For the people you love. 👇 https://www.belunya.com/sa/puralivix Robert used to say: "You can't unring a bell, but you can stop ringing it." You can stop ringing it. — Caroline Bakker, 59, Johannesburg P.S. The glass is still on the shelf. I still can't bring myself to move it. Every morning I walk past it and forget for just one second. For one second, I think he’s about to come downstairs and tell me he’s going for his walk before work. He isn't. R1 150 000 in hospital bills. R200 000 for the funeral. 103 days of giving up everything he enjoyed — for nothing. And a liquid formula that costs less than his weekly poker buy-in — something his own doctor told me could have changed everything if we had only known. Please. Don't end up here. Don't let anyone you love end up here. 👇 https://www.belunya.com/sa/puralivix P.P.S. I don't work for Puralivix. I don't earn a cent from this. I’m writing this at 02:14 AM because I can't sleep, Robert’s side of the bed is cold, my brother is 57 and stubborn, and I’m terrified every time my phone rings. Please share this with anyone you love who drinks. Even if it’s just a little bit. Even if it’s "responsible." Even if they’ve already quit. Please.

Where the ad sends people

belunya.com

What Your Liver Has Been Missing All This Time

"I've tried plenty of liver supplements before, but this is the first one that actually feels different. I wake up feeling refreshed, have more energy throughout the day, and don't feel as sluggish anymore. I'll definitely keep using it."