Gall Bladder – Attack, causes and precautions.

Gall Bladder – Attack, causes and precautions.

Hello friends Welcome to my blog.

So, today I'm going to talk about the gallbladder and exactly what is a gallbladder attack?

   Let's start from the beginning and just talk about the purpose of the gallbladder. The gallbladder is a sac that hangs underneath your right ribcage and the purpose of the gallbladder is to store in concentrate bile. Bile salts are detergents they basically help you break down fats and they help in the extraction of essential fatty acids like omega-3 fatty acids which we need to build body tissue especially your brain DHA, EPA they're anti-inflammatory as well as fat soluble vitamins so when you eat food you have water soluble vitamins and you have fats I have vitamins, vitamin A d, k1, k2 those need to be extracted from the food so if you don't have bile they don't get extracted so bile helps to pull those out and then you also have help from the pancreas.

The pancreas releases an enzyme called lipase that also helps in breaking down this fat to the smallest particles so you can absorb it. so what happens with a gallbladder attack usually you have a stone that gets stuck in this little tube because the liver actually makes the bile and it comes down through these tubes and it's supposed to be stored in this little sac. so if you get a stone stuck either in the liver you can have a liver stone or somewhere down or right at the opening the back pressure is going to cause a lot of pain.

So the symptom would be stomach pain severe cramping in your stomach pain underneath the right ribcage couldn't wrap around the back you can feel nauseous like you're gonna vomit, right shoulder pain why because there's a little nerve that connects with the diaphragm on both sides and that nerve is called the phrenic nerve, and if there's pressure on the diaphragm it could refer up to your neck on the right side so it can cause headaches on the right side you can create any problem with your right your trap muscle and even the muscles around your neck which could he thing cause though spasm to pull the vertebra out of alignment and pinch the nerve and cause pain on the right side I've seen that many times what's interesting is you make a lot of bile every day well you're supposed to anyway you make between 27 and 34 ounces every single day that's 400 to 800 milliliters. For those people in Europe we're still not at the metric system in the US but we try to be now the color of bile is a yellowish brown sometimes kind of an olive green now another interesting thing about this bile is that it takes cholesterol to make bile takes a lot every day it takes 500 milligrams of cholesterol to actually make bile and one of the purposes of bile in addition to extracting the fat type of vitamins from the food that you eat is to also eliminate excess amount of cholesterol

So, if you have high cholesterol for example one of the reasons could be you don't have enough bile now if there's liver damage okay if you have a fatty liver or you have hepatitis or cirrhosis of the liver that scar tissue that alone could decrease the production of bile but the big question is what causes these little stones that can then lodge and cause this gall bladder attack. Right well the gall stone is mostly made of cholesterol, it's a super concentrated cholesterol stone now based on that information you might think oh my gosh I better stop eating cholesterol foods right because I don't want to get a stone but remember it actually takes cholesterol to make bile and also our bodies make 75% of all the cholesterol in other words only 25% comes from your diet so our body makes a lot we need it to make hormones to support the nervous system to support the immune system to support the lining the membrane around all the cells so cholesterol is a good thing.

A supersaturated amount of cholesterol is a bad thing now the problem is if you go on a extreme low-fat diet your risk for getting gall stones go. Now that's weird how can that be because one of the triggers for the release of bile is saturated fats. So if you cut out fats you dry up this bile reserve that you have it's the lack of bile that forms this super concentrated cholesterol stone so it's not the cholesterol it's the lack of bile if you have enough bile and you have a lot of cholesterol you don't have any problems. it's when you don't have enough oil to be able to keep the cholesterol thinned sort of speak and not develop into stones that's where the problem is.

So, of course the next question is how do we maintain this bile how do we make sure we have enough and what causes a deficiency of bile because if you research gall stones one of the treatments is taking bile salts, to help dissolve the stones so that's interesting but there are three main causes of gall stones there's other causes but it's just three main ones one is this if you have too much insulin because you have a high carbohydrate diet or you're diabetic or you're pre-diabetic or you have insulin resistance that right there can deplete your bile reserve tank causing stones because if you look at diabetics they have a higher risk of getting gall stones so that's why.

Next one is increasing cortisol if you're on a medication called prednisone which is an anti-inflammatory or you're under a massive stress that can also shut down the bile production as well causing a stone and lastly increase estrogen and this explains why women who are pregnant have a higher risk of getting a stone because the spike in estrogen it also explains the side effect for birth control pills which is increased risk of bile salts as well as hormone replacement therapy so I think it's really important to understand all these factors because by knowing this first of all you can know if potentially have a stone number two you can do things to prevent a stone and it also tells us if we have a deficiency of either a fat soluble vitamin or some omega-3 fatty acid and we can look at this being one of the major causes because maybe we just don't have enough file and we need to actually take a little more bile also the microbes in your gut are very very important in the recycling of bile in fact 95% of all the bile in your body gets recycled by the microbes so if you've been on antibiotics or you have certain key jested issues it could be that you just need to increase your flora of good bacteria to help recycle this bile now let's say for example you don't have a stone but you still have gall bladder symptoms it could be the gallbladder is sluggish because maybe the bile is too thick not necessarily enough to create a stone but let's say that could be one situation well if you don't have enough bile this will get thicker and it can create a lot of issues with the gall bladder and actually create some congestion some swelling some pain even though there's not a stone and because bile salts act as a lubricant you can get constipation is one of the big side effects also you'll get bloating belching and burping so you can see this bile is just so important.