Gallstones can be found anywhere in the bile ducts in the gallbladder, cystic duct, hepatic ducts (hepatic stones), or common bile duct …
Table of Contents
Life 47 _ Gallstones _ Prevent and Treat
THE GALLBLADDER
In our body, the gallbladder is a large organ similar to a small pear located under the liver on the right side of the abdomen.
The gallbladder is connected to the liver and intestines by canals, including hepatic ducts, cystic duct and common bile duct.
The function of the gallbladder is to store and supply bile for digestion.
Bile is a transparent liquid, green or yellow, with a slightly alkaline pH, produced by the liver and composed of many substances, including important components such as bile pigment (bilirubin), bile acid (bile salts) that has an important ingredient called cholesterol and, the cholesterol is emulsified by the bile acid itself and lecithin.
GALLSTONE FORMATION
Normally, bile with the main ingredients mentioned above is secreted from the gallbladder in the small intestine to dissolve fat in food, then excreted in the stool during digestion.
In particular, bile acids are reabsorbed in the intestinal-liver cycle.
So you can easily imagine that cholesterol is also an essential ingredient in bile as a raw material to create bile acids.
However, if the body has excess cholesterol, the liver will also have to excrete too much cholesterol with the function of removing excess cholesterol from the body and then the cholesterol in the bile will become unbalanced.
Because the amount of bile acids and lecithin produced is not sufficient to dissolve them and so, these excess cholesterol fats clump together and form different large and small crystals of cholesterol (gallstones).
TYPES OF GALLSTONES
There are 3 main types of gallstones:
Cholesterol stones, pigment stones and mixed stones.
In which, 80% of the cases are cholesterol stones.
They are solid or muddy masses formed by the aggregation of components in the bile, including the aforementioned cholesterol with different sizes depending on the case, as small as a grain of sand or several cm as large as an egg.
Gallstones can be found anywhere in the bile ducts in the gallbladder, cystic duct, hepatic ducts (hepatic stones), or common bile duct …
SYMPTOMS
When a “pebble” is trapped inside the bile duct, it can cause pain in the upper right abdomen or around the right shoulder blade, accompanied by vomiting and nausea.
Pain usually lasts up to a few hours and only disappears when the “pebble” falls back into the gallbladder.
Sometimes the patient does not even know he has gallstones until it is blocked in the bile duct, then it hurts and requires immediate treatment.
When a “pebble” is trapped in the bile duct, it can block the flow of bile, cause cholecystitis
and damage the liver and pancreas, resulting in recognizable symptoms such as: the skin and the whites of the eyes turn yellow, while the stools lose their usual yellow color, but white like the stork, dark yellow urine …
CAUSES
There are many causes of gallstones, as an imbalance in the composition of bile for many different reasons, which may also be due to the physical factors of each person; or prolonged biliary stasis for many reasons; and, due to cholangitis and biliary infections.
FACTORS THAT CAN CAUSE GALLSTONES
Some specific factors, direct or indirect, causing gallstones:
- Women have a higher risk of developing gallstones than men and, the older, the higher their risk.
- Pregnant women are susceptible to gallstones because during this period, the gallbladder does not contract as usual,
- bile accumulates more cholesterol.
- Women use long-term oral contraceptives, increasing the hormone estrogen, thus increasing the excretion of cholesterol from the liver into the bile.
- The use of cholesterol-lowering drugs (lowering the fat in the blood) increases the excretion of cholesterol in the bile.
- Overweight and obese people with dyslipidemia, increase triglycerides in the blood, increase cholesterol in the bile.
- People who take steps to lose weight too quickly can also promote the excretion of cholesterol in the bile.
Crohn’s disease makes the patient’s body unable to reabsorb bile acids (bile salts), causing a lack of bile acids to dissolve cholesterol in the bile. - Impaired liver function (fatty liver, hepatitis, cirrhosis, elevated liver enzymes, etc.) reduces the quality of bile
- A diet low in calories, high in saturated fat, low in fiber and green vegetables.
- A sedentary lifestyle causes stagnation of bile fluid, promoting the precipitation of cholesterol, turning into gallstones.
PREVENT AND TREAT GALLSTONES
Prevention is always easier to do than treatment:
- To drink a lot of water. The average person needs about 2 liters of water per day. If you are at risk for gallstones or are currently suffering from gallstones, you should drink more than that and drink several times a day.
Green juice is great for preventing recurrence in people who have had gallstones in the past. Fruit juices containing spinach and parsley are rich in chlorophyll, a pigment with natural cleansing effects.
You can drink at least 1 240 mL cup of green vegetable juice usually with carrot per day and dilute with water to prevent and help treat gallstones very effectively.
Speaking of diet, one of the best gallstone prevention measures is a high fiber diet. Eat more green beans, fresh fruits and vegetables like avocado, cranberries, strawberries, grapes, cucumbers, beets, cauliflower, peppers, oranges, apples. Eat whole grains and find the right way to add oatmeal to your recipes. - Eat less fat such as fat, do not eat animal skin, poultry, fish skin, as well as animal organs. Cut down on fast foods, processed snacks, and fried fatty foods even though they can be very tasty in terms of cooking.
- Eat healthier fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, tuna, etc.
- Should use skim milk instead of using fatty milk
- Limit foods from refined sugar, canned foods
- Limit the use of endocrine drugs, blood lipids …
Avoid large meals which should eat less but more often to allow the gallbladder to flush out unwanted substances faster.
In addition, you can also consult your doctor so that you can take vitamins and supplements as needed, such as:
Vitamin C, lecithin, amino acid taurine, flaxseed oil. These products can be found in your local health food stores as well as on their websites.
By fighting overweight, you have eliminated the # 1 cause of gallstones. - Increase exercise, physical activity. Exercising for 30 minutes a day will help increase the bile ducts, reduce stagnation of bile, combine with diet to improve the effectiveness of the treatment of gallstones.
- In addition, essential oil therapies applied directly to the right abdomen i.e. the liver area also have very effective pain relief effects caused by gallstones.
- Or measure massage, acupressure, acupuncture to improve liver function
- Or some specific yoga exercises that improve liver function, prevent and treat gallbladder disorders are also very effective …
The aforementioned articles and therapies will be broadcast in turn on the various youtube channels of VIKUDO in the near future.
