Natural remedies for gallstones

The gallbladder is a small, pear-shaped sac located under your liver and is connected to the liver by the bile duct.

Bile is made by your liver cells and secreted into tiny bile ducts which then form into bigger ducts and join the common bile duct which carries the bile to the intestines. The gall bladder stores extra bile to be pumped into the small intestine for digestion when you eat a meal.

Bile is made up of a mixture of cholesterol, bile acids, bile pigments, phospholipids, electrolytes and water.  Bile provides the brown/greenish  colour to your bowel actions (feces). If your bowel actions are very pale then this can be a sign of inadequate bile production. Gallstones can either be made of cholesterol and/or bilirubin; cholesterol stones are far more common.  It is not surprising that bile contains a lot of cholesterol because this is the major way excess cholesterol is excreted from the body.  The cholesterol in bile then gets excreted from the body in the stool.

Stones can form inside the gallbladder or inside bile ducts. Gallstones vary in size and number.  The gallbladder can also contain sludge, which is bile and cholesterol that has thickened and is more likely to develop into gallstones. If gallstones move out of the gallbladder they can block the common bile duct that carries bile from the liver to the small intestines.  This can cause pain in the upper right abdominal area, and/or pain in the right shoulder, nausea, vomiting and indigestion.  The gallbladder can become blocked and infected and if this is left to progress emergency surgery will be needed. If a gallstone lodges in the pancreatic duct, the pancreas can become acutely inflamed causing pancreatitis and severe abdominal pain.

Why do gallstones develop?

The health of your gallbladder is determined by the health of your liver and the quality of bile it manufactures.  If your liver is not functioning well it will produce poor quality bile that is likely to form sludge and stones.  People with a liver condition such as fatty liver, cirrhosis, liver fluke infection are more likely to get gallstones.

Other risk factors for gallstones include:

• Obesity.  Even being slightly overweight increases your chances of having gallstones.  Overweight people usually have high levels of blood fats such as cholesterol and triglycerides.  These fats end up in the gallbladder and are more likely to form stones.

• Being female.  Women are at double the risk of gallstones than men.  The hormone estrogen, whether naturally produced in excess, as during pregnancy, or in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or oral contraceptive pills, increases the risk of gallstones.

• Poor diet.  Diets high in carbohydrates (especially sugar) increase the risk of gallstones because the liver converts high carbohydrate foods into fat.  Diets high in processed cheap vegetable oils, deep fried foods and margarine increase the risk of gallstones.

• Diabetes.  Diabetics are at increased risk of gallstones.

• Rapid weight loss.  Going on a crash diet and losing weight extremely quickly increases the risk of gallstones because the body attempts to excrete a lot of fat in a short amount of time.

• Cholesterol lowering drugs.  These drugs increase cholesterol excretion into bile, therefore increase the risk of stone formation.

What to do if you have gallstones

Many people have some gallstones in their gallbladder that are detected during an examination for another condition.  They can remain there for life and not cause any health problems.

However, if you do not take good care of your health, and particularly your liver, you run the risk of these stones growing and multiplying, and causing pain and discomfort.  If gallstones are causing you a great deal of discomfort, it is advisable to see a surgeon.  It may be too late to try and dissolve the stones naturally.  Ignoring the pain increases the risk of infection and inflammation in your gallbladder and surrounding organs.

If you have gallstones that are not yet causing a great deal of discomfort, it is possible to shrink them and eventually dissolve them.
To achieve that we recommend the following:

• Look at the risk factors above and try not to fall into any of those categories (apart from being female of course!).

• Base your diet on vegetables, salads, fruit, protein (fish, chicken, eggs, meat), legumes, nuts and seeds.  Avoid consuming large quantities of sugar, flour based products, grains and cereals, as the liver converts these foods into fat. Reduce alcohol consumption to one standard drink daily or less.

• Avoid deep fried foods, margarine and large quantities of very fatty foods such as cheese, ice cream and cream.

• Lose weight if you are overweight but do so gradually.  Don’t try and lose weight as fast as you can; make the goal keeping the weight off for the rest of your life.

• Follow the healthy eating principles in our book called “The Liver Cleansing Diet” and “Save Your Gallbladder Naturally and What to do if you have lost it”.  You will find more detailed information about gallstones in these excellent books.

• Before breakfast drink a cup of warm water with the juice of one lemon.  This is an excellent way to stimulate bile flow and cleanse the gallbladder.  The spice turmeric is also excellent for cleansing the gallbladder. Another strategy is to drink 2 tablespoons of organic apple cider vinegar in the middle of your meal to help dissolve the stones; dilute it with 3 tablespoons of water.

• Take a good liver tonic such as Livatone that will increase the production and flow of bile through your liver and bile ducts.  The herbs Milk Thistle, Dandelion and Globe Artichoke, found in Livatone help to achieve this. Increase antioxidant activity in the liver by including N-Acetyl-Cysteine daily to improve liver function and thereby, bile production.
• Liver and gallbladder flush is discussed in our book, ‘Save Your Gallbladder Naturally, and what to do if your have already lost it‘ but a warning of warning is that if your stones are larger then 3 mm in size, they often get stuck in the common bile duct and may cause such severe pain that you need emergency surgery. The liver and gallbladder flush is safer for gallbladder sludge only.

If you have had your gallbladder removed it is vitally important that you take good care of your liver.  Your liver must work harder now that your gallbladder is gone, and you are more prone to a fatty liver if you don’t look after yourself. After the gallbladder is removed you can still form stones in the bile ducts and these can cause disease. This is another good reason to take care of your diet and take Livatone long term. You may also find that taking Ox bile capsules in a dose of one to two capsules in the middle of meals greatly improves your digestion and bowel actions.