What are the symptoms of gallstones?

     Approximately 1 in 12 Americans have gallstones, even though many do not feel them and are unaware they have them.  Symptoms usually come in the form of severe pain the upper right abdomen as well as nausea and indigestion. When you have a gallbladder attack, you will probably experience intense pain from 15 minutes up to a few hours. Most people who experience this severe pain find it debilitating and have difficulty leading normal lives.  

What are gallstones?

     Gallstones can be as small as a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball and may be smooth and round or irregular with a number of edges. You can have just one stone or hundreds of them. Gallstones, often yellow in color, are composed mainly of undissolved cholesterol, although they can also have other components, such as calcium and bilirubin, the residue from the breakdown of red blood cells.

What causes gallstones?

     Millions of people suffer from gallstones, but are completely baffled by what causes them.  As a result, almost all of them continue to do, on a daily basis, the exact things that make their condition worse.  The first thing you need to know is that your condition was not caused by genetics. You are creating gallstones in your gallbladder... you are NOT a victim of it... it is your actions throughout the day for a number of years that have caused this condition.  And what are those actions? Very simply, gallstones are a direct result of your diet.

    The root of the problem is your diet. Why?  Because gallstones are cholesterol deposits.  Allow us to explain...  We have to start with the liver, because it works hand in hand with the gallbladder. You do NOT need ANY cholesterol from your diet.  Your liver produces all the cholesterol you will ever need.  Your liver also produces bile, a greenish-brown fluid charged with the very significant responsibility of digesting fats. The bile is sent to the gallbladder where it is concentrated and stored. When you eat, your gallbladder contracts and releases stored bile where it begins to help break down the fat in your food. But if the bile within your gallbladder becomes chemically unbalanced, it can form into hardened particles that eventually grow into gallstones. This chemical imbalance, very simply, is an overload of cholesterol which hardens with the bile to form gallstones. 

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