Sara...The sludge that you have in your gallbladder is pretty much what can become gallstones in the future. It's that simple.

To avoid pain you should try to stay away from onion, apple, too much fatty foods in general. It's very confusing in the beginning since we all have different tolerance for fatty foods and what will cause pain.

As for removing the gallbladder....Well, if you can avoid it, do so. Talk to your doctor and ask if you can reduce the amount of sludge with a change in your diet instead. It might be possible. Unfortunately they are way too keen on solving this problem by removing the bladder, and at the same time refer to it as a "simple and standard procedure".
However, it's not all that simple and mistakes can easily be made, which will make things worse afterwards than what they are today.

When I had my gallstone I ate a lot of veggies, exchanged red meat and pork for chicken and fish. I have some recipes in my food blog in my swedish kitchen if you want some tips on what to eat. There's a category there called "low fat" that have some recipes that are good for you. The change can be frustrating to start with, but it's better to do something about it before it gone too far.

Also, skip all fastfood if you tend to eat that. Otherwise you will end up at some point with a big mac in your tummy and pains that are beyond your wildest imagination.

I hope this helps a bit

take care,

christa

*waves*

hi sara,

i had my gall bladder out about 7 years ago but by then it had multiple stones in it and I was in constant pain. Don't be like me and not hear good advice until after the fact. Limit your fat intake (butterfat seems to be the worst) as it adds significantly to how hard your gall bladder works to get the bile out to break it down. Same with red meat and pork. If you don't take care now, you will form stones and your gall bladder will seize up on them when trying to function to break down fats. Ouch.

The post above me is very good advice. Follow it, talk to doctors until you find one who isn't going for the quick fix by removing it, and trust you are doing the right thing by asking questions now instead of just "letting them take it". Once you have your gall bladder removed, you then have other dietary problems which, in my opinion, can be far worse.


Silly me, I thought I had heart burn and milk made it feel better for a little while so I made it far worse than it needed to be until finally I couldn't eat and couldn't sit up most of the time from pain. I ignored it far too long. Get help now and maybe you won't need any surgery later.


As for money, if it does come down to an emergancy situation, there should be a program in place where you live to get temporary aid if you need it.

Hi sara,

if you're asymptomatic - that is, you aren't having acute or chronic gall pain - then you're fine. Once you start having either chronic gall pain or acute attacks, you'll want to figure out how to have the surgery done as soon as possible.

The medical facts are that even a single acute attack can be life-threatening. You could have a stone travel out of the gall bladder and lodge itself in a duct. When this happens, the surgery is necessary immediately and more complicated. Chronic inflammation can lead to infection. Either way, the best treatment option if you're healthy enough to survive surgery is to have the organ removed. Once it acts up, it won't get better on its own. Life will be extremely unpleasant and there will be no end in sight.

If you have acute attacks, they will increase in frequency. If you have chronic pain, then your search to find a diet that doesn't trigger it will eventually reduce you to eating the blandest diet (vegetables, yogurt, fruit, repeat thrice daily) imaginable - and it may eventually still not matter.



There's a lot of "controversy" stirred up among people who proffer natural solutions, but very little controversy in the realm of medical science. The "gall bladder" flushes have been demonstrated to be nonsense. The vast majority of people who have a cholecystectomy have no digestive trouble following the surgery. Regarding the woman who said it isn't a simple procedure - you can actually find an outline of the procedure on the internet and it's about 20 steps from initial cut to final suturing! It's also the first operation that surgical students learn to perform, owing to its relative ease of execution. After my diagnosis, I talked to several doctors from different fields and different parts of the world, including a man who'd built a long and distinguished career on the diseases of the upper gi tract, and the concensus view was, "the risks to health and happiness of keeping a diseased gall bladder far outweigh the risks of having it removed."


(anecdotally, no one I know of directly or indirectly had any digestive trouble following their removal - that's five or six people, not including me, who were improved with no ill effects.)

I was significantly improved after having my gallbladder removed also. I had such bad pain it woke me up in the middle of the night, before I got it removed. The only way I could be painfree was to eat a totally no fat diet which was pretty darn boring. I got absurdly thin also. There canbe such a thing as "too thin".
http://rdoctor.com/symptoms_disease/conten t/view/122/2/