What Does Your Gallbladder Do In The Digestive System – While the liver is hard at work making bile to help with digestion, the gallbladder stores bile until you actually need it. Shutterstock

Your pear-shaped hollow gallbladder hangs below the right lobe of your liver. When full of bile waiting to help digest food, the organ can grow up to 8 to 10 centimeters (cm) long and up to 4 cm wide.

What Does Your Gallbladder Do In The Digestive System

Unless you’ve had gallstones or had your gallbladder surgically removed, you probably don’t think about it. And that’s fine. But if it’s causing you serious pain or other problems, you may need to discard this tiny organ.

Topic Of The Week: Gallbladder

While the liver is hard at work making dark green bile to help with digestion, the gallbladder stores bile until you actually need it, says Erin Gilbert, MD, assistant professor of surgery at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. “It concentrates bile into a form that is best used for digestion,” says Dr. Gilbert. “When you eat, bile is pushed out of the gallbladder and into the first part of the small intestine, the duodenum, through the common bile duct.”

The liver produces 500 to 1,000 milliliters (ml) of bile per day, but the gallbladder can concentrate that bile up to ten times and store 30 to 50 ml of thicker bile.

Gallstones form when one of two substances – cholesterol or bilirubin – becomes oversaturated in the bile and crystallizes, much like sugar crystallizes when someone makes candy. Bilirubin is a brown-yellow substance found in bile that is produced when old red blood cells are broken down in the liver. Your body normally eliminates bilirubin through the intestines (this is the reason for the color of the stool). Gallstones caused by bilirubin are less common than those caused by hardened cholesterol and are more common in people with blood disorders, such as sickle cell anemia.

What is the best diet for a healthy gallbladder? “Most gallstones are formed from cholesterol, so a diet low in cholesterol and fat is best for gallbladder health,” says Cathleen Khandelwal, MD, a general surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic.

Is Your Gallbladder Preventing You From Digesting Fat???

Any diet that would qualify as “heart healthy” is also “gallbladder healthy”. This means eating a diet with some healthy monounsaturated fats, such as those found in nuts, avocados, seeds, olives, peanut butter, and oils from these products. Polyunsaturated fats should also be part of that balanced diet, and are found in fatty fish, walnuts, flaxseeds, and vegetable oils. Avoiding foods that raise cholesterol levels also reduces the risk of gallstones.

However, almost as important as what you eat is how often you eat it. “If you eat one large meal a day, that increases the likelihood of stones, because the bile sits in the gallbladder for a long time before it is excreted,” says Gilbert. The longer the bile sits, the more time the cholesterol in the bile becomes oversaturated and crystallizes into gallstones.

In addition to a healthy diet, a healthy body weight keeps the gallbladder functioning well. Obese individuals have a higher risk of gallstones, but that doesn’t mean you should go on a crash diet to lose weight: Sudden weight loss can also cause stones, Gilbert says. It’s okay to lose weight, but “you wouldn’t want to lose it all at once,” she says.

Another way to prevent stones is to keep your cholesterol under control, including taking a statin if you have high cholesterol, she says. Some evidence supports regular vitamin C supplements to prevent gallstones, and surprisingly, drinking coffee also offers some protection against cholesterol-forming gallstones.

Gallstones: Should I Get Gallbladder Surgery?

In addition to those with obesity and those who eat a low- or high-fat diet or have high cholesterol levels, pregnant women are also more likely to develop gallstones, which means they may need to pay extra attention to fatty foods during pregnancy. People with certain blood disorders, such as sickle cell anemia, may have a higher risk of bilirubin-related stones.

Older adults and people of certain ethnic groups, such as Native Americans, also have a higher risk of gallstones, and a family history of such stones can double the risk of developing them. Certain medications, such as oral contraceptives, can increase the risk of gallstones, but the increased risk is small and should not prevent someone from taking necessary medications.

In fact, up to 12 percent of the population has gallstones, Gilbert says, but only a minority of them cause problems.

Up to 80 percent of people will never have symptoms of their gallstones, and nothing needs to be done about it, Gilbert says. But if there’s a problem, you’ll usually know it: the pain can be intense. “The pain is generally described as sharp, stabbing, and very excruciating—a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10,” says Gilbert. Pain most often occurs after eating a fatty meal because “fat is the strongest trigger for emptying the gallbladder,” she says.

Risk Factors For Gallbladder Disease

Where your gallbladder is, under the breastbone, and it can spread toward the back, says Dr. Khandelwal. It can last for several hours and can be accompanied by nausea, he adds.

But the pain can also be a dull ache on the right side, like stomach upset or heartburn with bloating, Gilbert says.

The best test for gallstones is an ultrasound. “It’s fast and safe and gives us a lot of information about what the gallbladder looks like, and it’s pretty accurate,” says Gilbert. The ultrasound technician will be able to see gallstones or gallbladder irritation, such as a thickened wall or fluid around the gallbladder.

Some patients may be referred for another type of test called a HIDA (hepatobiliary) scan, in which a radioactive chemical is injected into your arm and the technician watches what happens when it reaches your gallbladder. Generally, a HIDA scan is only performed on patients who have other underlying conditions or symptoms of gallbladder pain, but no stones on ultrasound.

Introduction To Gastrointestinal System

If it doesn’t cause symptoms, or if you pass it like a few lucky people, nothing. “But if they’re causing problems,” says Gilbert, the gallbladder may need to be removed. If a person experiences pain, called biliary colic, or develops a gallbladder infection, called cholecystitis, gallbladder surgery is probably a good idea.

“If stones get outside your gallbladder and travel down the duct, they can cause some pretty serious complications, so it’s important to take care of them if you’re having problems,” says Khandelwal.

Dislodged stones can cause blockages in the ducts, leading to jaundice or pancreatitis, Gilbert says. Each of these symptoms requires gallbladder surgery, called a cholecystectomy.

If you need a cholecystectomy or surgery to remove your gallbladder, this will usually mean a week or two off work. The laparoscopic surgery involves one incision next to the belly button and two or three below the ribs on the right side, Gilbert says. Although this is usually an outpatient operation, general anesthesia is required because the surgeon will fill the abdomen with carbon dioxide to expand it and make it easier to operate.

Symptoms Of A Gallbladder Attack

Expect three to five days of pain, which may require narcotic pain medication, and avoid strenuous activity for at least two weeks, Gilbert says. People usually recover completely within four to six weeks and may experience short-term diarrhea.

Perhaps one to two percent of people will have loose stools whenever they eat particularly greasy or fatty foods, Gilbert says. But removing the gallbladder should not cause weight loss or weight gain, nor will it cause vitamin deficiencies.

Most people without a gallbladder should not expect any other long-term changes. “They’ll actually be able to eat things they couldn’t before,” says Khandelwal. “The liver continues to produce bile and drip it into the stomach and intestines. It might take a little longer to digest a roast chicken, but it might not.”

The gallbladder stores bile, which helps the body break down and digest the fats you eat. Disorders such as gallstones can cause problems with the functioning of the gallbladder…

Gallbladder, Fat Digestion & Hashimoto’s

Like any surgery, gallbladder removal comes with the risk of certain complications. These include bile leaks, blood clots and potential digestive changes…

Gallstones form when one or more substances that make up bile become too concentrated and form a hard stone. Other gallbladder problems…

Some people need to maintain a modified diet after gallbladder surgery. Follow this diet for effective gallbladder surgery recovery.

Gallbladder cancer is very rare, but people with gallstones have a higher risk of developing this form of cancer.

Understanding Our Digestive System

There is no surefire way to prevent gallstones, but there are things you can do to reduce your risk. Get tips on how to prevent gallstones.

Additional estrogen exposes pregnant women to a higher risk of developing gallstones. Read more to find out how to prevent gallstones during pregnancy. In vertebrates, the gallbladder, also known as the cholecyst, is a small hollow organ where bile is stored and concentrated before being released into the small intestine. In humans, the pear-shaped gallbladder lies below the liver, although the structure and position of the gallbladder can vary

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