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Liver, Kidney & Urinary
Safe, Natural Alternatives to Gallbladder Surgery
Date: 22/03/10
If you already have gallstones and suffer from ‘gall bladder attacks’ — severe cramping pain accompanied by nausea — your doctor will probably advise you to have your gall bladder removed.
The other week I got a call from my sister who told me she’s about to have her gallbladder removed.
There is a saying that people who are ‘fair, fat and forty’ are most likely to develop gallstones. If you take ‘fair’ to mean ‘the fairer sex’, then it’s true – the incidence of gallstones increases with age and strikes women, especially obese women, three times as often as men.
My sister is neither of the above. She is a radiant, normal- weight 30 year-old woman who’s had two children in the past 24 months – which may very well explain why she is suffering with gallbladder attacks and gallstones.
It is thought that women are more prone to this condition because of hormonal changes associated with pregnancy, birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Increased oestrogen levels encourage your gall bladder to relax — meaning that it can’t contract properly and expel gallstones as they begin to form.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if invasive surgery really is her only option?
If you can live without it, why do you need it?
I remember reading a brilliant e-alert from Dr. Jonathan V. Wright about why the gallbladder is crucial in the digestive process.
He explained how the gallbladder plays a critical role in generating the bile your body needs to break down and absorb many essential nutrients:
To understand the delicate relationship between the liver and the gallbladder, you need to know a bit about how your gallbladder works.
When your liver secretes bile, a relatively large quantity is stored by your gallbladder for later use. When you eat certain fatty or oily meals — a fish dinner with heart- healthy omega-3 fatty acids — and all the incompletely digested oils and fats are passed from your stomach into your duodenum (the uppermost portion of your small intestine), the fats and oils trigger the release of the hormone "cholecystokinin" (CCK).
CCK travels to your gallbladder, telling it "oil's coming, fat's coming!" Your gallbladder then contracts, pushing out just the right amount of stored bile. The bile arrives in your intestines at the exact time it's needed, in the exact amount needed. Working with your pancreatic fat-and-oil- digesting enzymes, the bile digests and emulsifies those oils, making them "just right" to be absorbed.
Without your gallbladder, this coordination is lost. The small, steady trickle of bile from the liver is still there, but it's no longer regulated to the amount of fat or oil you've eaten in either quantity or timing. This mismatch inevitably affects your digestion and absorption and puts your fat-soluble nutrient status at risk.
Gallbladder removal surgery can also involve other risks, the most common complication being injury to your bile ducts, which can leak bile and cause a potentially painful and dangerous infection that may require further surgery. Once your gallbladder is removed, bile flows into the small intestine more frequently, which can cause diarrhoea.
Making surgery a last option
If you already have gallstones and suffer from ‘gall bladder attacks’ — severe cramping pain accompanied by nausea — your doctor will probably advise you to have your gall bladder removed. But before you consider surgery, there are ways to reduce your risk of another attack or more gallstones forming:
* Lose weight: Your chance of developing gallstones doubles if you are just ten pounds overweight and increases up to six times if you are obese. A low carbohydrate diet (not a low-fat diet recommended by many doctors) is a safe and effective way of achieving your ideal weight and the risk of gallstones forming again. However, regulate your weight loss because rapid weight loss itself increases the risk of gallstones. Include plenty of fibre from fresh green vegetables and salads. Also include some vegetable protein, for instance from soya beans.
* Food Allergies: Eliminating ‘offending foods’ can be an effective precaution to prevent gallbladder attacks. In one study, all sixty-nine subjects with gall bladder problems became symptom-free when the problem foods were identified and removed from their diets. Typical symptom-inducing foods include eggs, pork, milk and coffee. It has been suggested that in susceptible people the body reacts to these foods by causing the ducts carrying bile to swell, impeding the flow of bile from the gall bladder.
* Herbal remedies: The most powerful herbal remedies for gallbladder problems are dandelion and milk thistle. Dried and roasted dandelion root (pick a ‘standardised extract’) can be used as a healthy substitute for coffee. The standard dose of milk thistle is also based on its main active ingredient, silymarin. Most herbalists recommend a dose of between 75 and 200 mg of silymarin, taken three times a day.
* Essential plant oils: A combination of natural chemicals called terpenes, found in the essential oils of plants, has also been found to dissolve gallstones and offer a safe alternative to surgery. A combination of the terpenes: pinene, camphene, cineol, menthone and menthol, dissolved in olive oil, is marketed as ‘Rowachol’ by a company called Rowex Ltd in Ireland.
* Lecithin: The phospholipid lecithin, and its active ingredient phosphatidyl choline, is an ingredient of bile that helps to protect against gallstone formation. A supplement of around 1,200 mg a day of lecithin helps prevent gallstones and may also be active in dissolving existing stones.
Following these natural and effective measures for the prevention and treatment of gallstones, can protect you from suffering painful and debilitating gall bladder attacks. They also offer a safe way of avoiding the potential risks of surgery, such as infection, bleeding, blood clots or reaction to anaesthetics.
Sources:
‘The role of the gallbladder’ Dr. Jonathan V. Wright’s Nutrition and Healing e-Alert published online 04.01.10
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 55: 652-8, 1992
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 37:802-4, 1983
Ann. Allerg. 26: 83, 1968
British Medical Journal 282: 611, 1981
The American Journal of Gastroenterology. 165: 231-5, 1976
Back to topThere is a saying that people who are ‘fair, fat and forty’ are most likely to develop gallstones. If you take ‘fair’ to mean ‘the fairer sex’, then it’s true – the incidence of gallstones increases with age and strikes women, especially obese women, three times as often as men.
My sister is neither of the above. She is a radiant, normal- weight 30 year-old woman who’s had two children in the past 24 months – which may very well explain why she is suffering with gallbladder attacks and gallstones.
It is thought that women are more prone to this condition because of hormonal changes associated with pregnancy, birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Increased oestrogen levels encourage your gall bladder to relax — meaning that it can’t contract properly and expel gallstones as they begin to form.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if invasive surgery really is her only option?
If you can live without it, why do you need it?
I remember reading a brilliant e-alert from Dr. Jonathan V. Wright about why the gallbladder is crucial in the digestive process.
He explained how the gallbladder plays a critical role in generating the bile your body needs to break down and absorb many essential nutrients:
To understand the delicate relationship between the liver and the gallbladder, you need to know a bit about how your gallbladder works.
When your liver secretes bile, a relatively large quantity is stored by your gallbladder for later use. When you eat certain fatty or oily meals — a fish dinner with heart- healthy omega-3 fatty acids — and all the incompletely digested oils and fats are passed from your stomach into your duodenum (the uppermost portion of your small intestine), the fats and oils trigger the release of the hormone "cholecystokinin" (CCK).
CCK travels to your gallbladder, telling it "oil's coming, fat's coming!" Your gallbladder then contracts, pushing out just the right amount of stored bile. The bile arrives in your intestines at the exact time it's needed, in the exact amount needed. Working with your pancreatic fat-and-oil- digesting enzymes, the bile digests and emulsifies those oils, making them "just right" to be absorbed.
Without your gallbladder, this coordination is lost. The small, steady trickle of bile from the liver is still there, but it's no longer regulated to the amount of fat or oil you've eaten in either quantity or timing. This mismatch inevitably affects your digestion and absorption and puts your fat-soluble nutrient status at risk.
Gallbladder removal surgery can also involve other risks, the most common complication being injury to your bile ducts, which can leak bile and cause a potentially painful and dangerous infection that may require further surgery. Once your gallbladder is removed, bile flows into the small intestine more frequently, which can cause diarrhoea.
Making surgery a last option
If you already have gallstones and suffer from ‘gall bladder attacks’ — severe cramping pain accompanied by nausea — your doctor will probably advise you to have your gall bladder removed. But before you consider surgery, there are ways to reduce your risk of another attack or more gallstones forming:
* Lose weight: Your chance of developing gallstones doubles if you are just ten pounds overweight and increases up to six times if you are obese. A low carbohydrate diet (not a low-fat diet recommended by many doctors) is a safe and effective way of achieving your ideal weight and the risk of gallstones forming again. However, regulate your weight loss because rapid weight loss itself increases the risk of gallstones. Include plenty of fibre from fresh green vegetables and salads. Also include some vegetable protein, for instance from soya beans.
* Food Allergies: Eliminating ‘offending foods’ can be an effective precaution to prevent gallbladder attacks. In one study, all sixty-nine subjects with gall bladder problems became symptom-free when the problem foods were identified and removed from their diets. Typical symptom-inducing foods include eggs, pork, milk and coffee. It has been suggested that in susceptible people the body reacts to these foods by causing the ducts carrying bile to swell, impeding the flow of bile from the gall bladder.
* Herbal remedies: The most powerful herbal remedies for gallbladder problems are dandelion and milk thistle. Dried and roasted dandelion root (pick a ‘standardised extract’) can be used as a healthy substitute for coffee. The standard dose of milk thistle is also based on its main active ingredient, silymarin. Most herbalists recommend a dose of between 75 and 200 mg of silymarin, taken three times a day.
* Essential plant oils: A combination of natural chemicals called terpenes, found in the essential oils of plants, has also been found to dissolve gallstones and offer a safe alternative to surgery. A combination of the terpenes: pinene, camphene, cineol, menthone and menthol, dissolved in olive oil, is marketed as ‘Rowachol’ by a company called Rowex Ltd in Ireland.
* Lecithin: The phospholipid lecithin, and its active ingredient phosphatidyl choline, is an ingredient of bile that helps to protect against gallstone formation. A supplement of around 1,200 mg a day of lecithin helps prevent gallstones and may also be active in dissolving existing stones.
Following these natural and effective measures for the prevention and treatment of gallstones, can protect you from suffering painful and debilitating gall bladder attacks. They also offer a safe way of avoiding the potential risks of surgery, such as infection, bleeding, blood clots or reaction to anaesthetics.
Sources:
‘The role of the gallbladder’ Dr. Jonathan V. Wright’s Nutrition and Healing e-Alert published online 04.01.10
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 55: 652-8, 1992
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 37:802-4, 1983
Ann. Allerg. 26: 83, 1968
British Medical Journal 282: 611, 1981
The American Journal of Gastroenterology. 165: 231-5, 1976
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