Hepatic encephalopathy treatment

Just when everyone was having fun talking about the booze buster pills, along came buzzkill IVnick8or with the gloom and doom of hepatic encephalopathy. Those folks are in a bad way. There is no good dialysis equivalent for livers, so if you have used yours up, you can't just hook on to the machine like the renal failure folks do. Even if you quit the booze, if your liver is shot you could still get hepatic encephalopathy from time to time. The only cure is a liver transplants, but folks seem to want to save the available livers for kids and those who came by liver failure by accident, rather than prolonged effort.

What to do for the folks with hepatic encephalopathy? As Nick8's link describes, the reason for this trouble is thought to be accumulation of ammonia, which normally the liver can get rid of. When this stuff builds up it stuns the brain. Zeolite is a natural mineral widely used to adsorb ammonia in applications such as wastewater treatment and aquarium maintenance. I propose that a slurry be devised for the liver impaired, consisting of zeolite slurry. This stuff will adsorb ammonia on the way thru the gut and eventually be pooped out. Possibly, if has not been exhausted, it will go on to aid with municipal wastewater treatment. The "Z-slurry" will buttress what is left of the liver, allowing the person to cloud his mind only with the chemicals of his choosing.