29 Aug You’ll Never Be The Same Again – Life Without a Gallbladder
About one in five adults over age 65 will have a gallstone, and gallbladder removal is one of the most common surgeries for adults. In medical schools, we are taught a jingle to remind us of the common risk factors being “Female-Fat-Fertile-Forty” years old.
How Does It Work? The gallbladder is a tiny pear-shaped organ that collects the digestive juices (bile) made by your liver and makes it more concentrated. When you eat, bile is released into your intestines to digest your food. The liver makes two litres of bile every single day! Bile is made of calcium, cholesterol, proteins, and minerals and if it sits there too long, or the bile quality is poor, you can make gallstones. Gallstones can be as small as sand, or as big as golf balls. They can hide in your body without symptoms for decades, or cause various digestive complaints, especially after eating greasy foods. If the stones start to move they can block the tubes and it could cause a medical emergency and lead to surgery to remove the gallbladder.
As a naturopathic doctor, we focus on treating the cause of the gallstone. Removing the organ and the stones does not address the cause.
It was never the gallbladder’s fault! It was the liver! Your liver is the organ that determines the quality of your bile. The gallbladder was just the organ that held the bile until it was time to eat and digest your fats. Therefore, even if your gallbladder is removed, your liver makes the same type of bile that caused the original problem! In addition to this, the “pump” is gone, so you leak bile all day. When you eat, you only get a drop of bile and when you are not eating, the bile is still dripping. This can lead to chronic digestive dysfunctions after gallbladder removal.
The root causes of gallbladder disease are low-fibre diets, incomplete emptying (sedentary lifestyle and spinal misalignments), obesity, liver congestion or toxicity, birth control pills (doubles your chance of stones), stress (always lol), and IGG food sensitivities.
What To Do About It?
Prevention is always the best medicine for those readers who just read the paragraph above about root causes.
However, for readers who are dealing with life without a gallbladder, there is hope for you in naturopathic protocols.
- Liver cleansing once or twice a year to detoxify and decongest the liver.
- Test Hair Mineral Analysis for Zinc status, because zinc is required for over 300 enzyme reactions in the liver, and primarily affects the quality of the bile.
- Enzymes at meals. On our microscope, Live Cell Analysis can show us how well various foods are digested. Most patients would show a need to take digestive enzymes.
- Probiotics: great to calm lower digestive symptoms, gas and bloating.
- Eat more often, “to give your leaky bile something to do”.
- Check PH – acidity can lead to calcium leaving your bones, and calcifications elsewhere (sand and stones)
- Food combining: the art of which foods to eat separately or together.
- Check for IGG Food Sensitivities: usually causing symptoms that start 30 minutes after meals.
- Castor oil packs: These is great for calming organ pain, and digestive discomfort.
- Lemon & Olive Oil? Yes, this recipe really does work to “lubricate the tubes” and pump out the stones …. BUT this would not be a good idea if you had large, sharp gallstones that don’t “fit” through the tube. See your doctor first to assess the size, number, shape and location of your stones.
Bronte Natural Health Clinic is the 2023 Top Choice Award Winner for Alternative Health in Oakville. Our team of four naturopathic doctors, live cell microscopists, nutritionists and homeopaths are passionate about helping you discover the root cause of your health conditions. They treat patients with a variety of digestive problems and help them find their personalized root causes and subsequent treatment plans to maximize their health.
Contact us today at 905-825-8787 or bnhc@rogers.com to schedule an appointment at 3495 Rebecca Street, Unit 105 in Oakville.
We qualify for private health insurance coverage.
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