One Sunday night several years ago I was sitting alone in my home in Atlanta studying for a portion of my National Board of Chiropractic Examiners’ exam and had an excruciating pain under my rib cage on the right side. I literally doubled over the back of the loveseat as I was trying to get up to get to the telephone to call a friend, and thought I was going to die right there. At first I thought I was having a heart attack because the pain was so intense, but soon I realized that the pain was in the wrong place. It took me a few minutes, but I finally self-diagnosed a gallbladder attack. I had been to Mellow Mushroom earlier and had white pizza, which was loaded with oil and four kinds of cheese, for dinner. I had also eaten a Haagen-Dazs bar for dessert, so I sent my gallbladder into overdrive.
The pain eventually became bearable enough for me to move again and I called my naturopath to ask for advice. I felt certain surgery was going to be her suggestion at this point, but decided to give her a call anyway. She gave me some pointers for relieving the immediate pain and scheduled me for an office visit the next morning. When I got to her office and we discussed the food choices I had made that night and for several days leading up to that night (I was, after all, feeding my study stress!) we decided that the problem was, indeed, my gallbladder, and I was given two choices. The first choice was to go to a medical doctor, have the situation evaluated and ultimately have my gallbladder removed. Since I was a poor student with no health insurance, this option was not really open to me. The second choice was for me to take a chance that an unconventional but often effective gallbladder cleanse would work for me. The fact that the ingredients for the cleanse would cost me less than $10 and offered at least some hope of relieving the situation made my decision for me. The upshot of this story is that I followed the advice of my naturopath on the cleansing of my gallbladder and it worked for me. I still have my gallbladder, and I do the cleanse once a year as a prophylactic measure against another gallbladder attack. Many medical professionals think the gallbladder cleanse is all hogwash, but there are multitudes of alternative practitioners who regularly prescribe it for the patients who seek their care. The people who use it for the most part sing its praises.
The gallbladder is a small pouch-like organ that is situated under the liver, which is under your ribs on the right side of your body. The purpose of the gallbladder is to store bile until it is needed by the body. Bile is a substance which is produced by the liver and pushes fat molecules apart in order for enzymes from the pancreas to break down fats before the body absorbs them. Some of the foods which need bile in order to be digested are fats, fatty meats, fried foods, whole grains, and seeds. Bile sits in the gallbladder until a meal is eaten and it is needed to aid in the process of digestion. Sometimes stones form as a result of interaction of cholesterol and bile in the gallbladder. They can also be formed by an increase in calcium in the bile itself, poor mobility of the gallbladder, and infection. When stones form, they can cause obstructions in a number of places and result in severe pain, nausea and vomiting, jaundice, and even pancreatitis.
The medical route to easing gallbladder disease is most often surgical removal of it. This involves a procedure under general anesthesia using a laparoscope, and usually results in only one night, if any, in the hospital. This replaces the older surgical procedure which could have landed you in the hospital for a week or more to recover from the at least 6-inch long incision. People can live without a gallbladder because the gallbladder is merely a storage vessel for bile. The liver still produces it and it can be routed directly into the small intestine where it still serves its purpose. I often wonder, though, what happens if you eat a meal that is heavily laden with fat and requires a lot of bile for digestion. If you are missing your storage tank for bile, is enough of it present at one time if a large amount of it is needed? Once the gallbladder is removed, bile is produced and is constantly being deposited into the intestines, rather than being excreted only when it is needed.
I am a rare individual in that I still have all of my pieces and parts. When tonsillectomy was the surgery du jour, my mom didn’t allow me to have it. My gallbladder is working and intact, and thankfully my appendix is still lubricating what it needs to lubricate. The instant I feel even a hint of vague discomfort in the area where my gallbladder resides, I reach for the ingredients of the gallbladder cleanse. Is it all hogwash? Maybe so, but I still have mine. Treat your body well.