Gallbladder Disease and Natural Progesterone

The gallbladder is a small pear-shaped organ on the underside of the liver that is used to store bile. Bile is made in the liver and is stored in the gallbladder until it is needed to help the digestion of fat.

Gallbladder disease is a common condition that affects mainly women, although men can suffer too. The symptoms vary widely from discomfort to severe pain which mainly begins after food. In severe cases the patient can suffer from jaundice, nausea and fever. The most common reason for gallbladder disease is gallstones.

What are the symptoms of gallstones?

It is thought that approximately two thirds of patients will have no trouble at all from their gallstones and only one third of patients will at some time experience symptoms. These symptoms can be extremely variable but usually present in one of three ways.

Chronic cholecystitis (biliary colic)

This is a chronic inflammation of the gallbladder and causes:

• sporadic pains in the middle of the upper abdomen, or just below the ribs on the right side.
• pain which becomes worse over an hour and then stays the same.
• the pain may spread to the right shoulder or between the shoulder blades.
• the pain can be accompanied by nausea and vomiting and sometimes excessive wind.
• the attack can last from a few minutes to two to three hours before getting better.
• the frequency and severity of attacks is very variable.
• attacks can be triggered by eating fatty foods such as chocolate, cheese or pastry.
• it can be difficult to distinguish the pain from other diseases, such as: gastric ulcer, back problems, heart pains, pneumonia and kidney stones.

Acute cholecystitis (acute inflammation or infection of the gallbladder)

This condition results in:

• persistent pain and a temperature lasting more than 12 hours.
• pain and tenderness under the ribs on the right side.
• the pain is made worse by movement or coughing.
• patients with acute cholecystitis may not always have gallstones but usually do.
• the condition must be treated by a doctor and usually requires admission to hospital.
• the treatment consists of a course of antibiotics but if this is not effective emergency surgery may be required to remove the gallbladder.

Jaundice (yellow discolouration of the skin and whites of eyes)

This is caused when there is an obstruction to the flow of bile from the liver. Jaundice is not always caused by gallstones. The symptoms are:

• increasingly yellow eyes and skin.
• the skin can become itchy.
• pale bowel motions and dark urine.
• the condition is often preceded by symptoms similar to those of cholecystitis.
• fever and shaking chills are serious symptoms and must be treated by a doctor - they are suggestive of infection travelling through the bile duct system.

Gallstone disease is the most common digestive disease in the United States. It affects over 20 million Americans, with a million new cases diagnosed each year. Half of those go on to have surgery to remove gallstones or the gallbladder.

Women are twice as likely as men to develop gallstones, probably largely due to unidentified estrogen dominance and the excessive estrogen used in hormonre replacement therapy (HRT).

Researchers in Britain are now saying that women on synthetic HRT are 3 times more likely to develop gallbladder problems. Gallstones being composed primarily of cholesterol, the use of estrogen possibly promotes an increase in cholesterol in bile, which leads to gallstone formation.

Women have slower gallbladder emptying than men normally. This effect is exaggerated during pregnancy and may be one reason why many women develop gallstones after having a baby.

Hold on to your gallbladder

Your gallbladder performs some important functions in your body that make it well worth keeping. Possibly the most important is to regulate bile flow to optimize fat, oil, and fat-soluble nutrient absorption. Without your gallbladder, mechanically, thisjust can’t happen properly.

"How to prevent gallbladder attacks" was actually published back in the 1960s and ’70s by Dr James C. Breneman, who, at the time, was chairman of the Food Allergy Committee of the American College of Allergists, or ACA (now called the American College of Allergy and Immunology, or ACAI). Dr Breneman’s secret for preventing attacks of gallbladder pain? Simple. Don’t eat or consume anything you’re allergic to.

Dr Jonathan Wright, in his October 2004 ‘Nutrition & Healing‘ newsletter tells us that,

"this approach is so simple, and yet no medical school to this day teaches how to prevent gallbladder attacks by avoiding your food allergies and (in some cases) other allergies. Instead, they continue to recommend unnecessary gallstone removal surgery. But the truth is, gallstones don’t even cause 99.9 percent of gallbladder "attacks": allergies do. Avoid allergies, stop "attacks" of pain, and keep your gallbladder! That’s it - that’s all there is to it."