Gallstones

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Gallstones

Get a “seed” of sand inside an oyster shell, and you can wind up with a pearl. When the same thing happens in your gallbladder, you can wind up with a gem of an ache.

Gallstones form when there’s too much cholesterol in your bile. This excess forms tiny “seeds” that start out the size of a grain of sand but can grow to the size of a marble or even an egg. Pain in the upper abdomen or near the shoulder blades, along with vomiting and nausea, occurs when the stone gets stuck in the gallbladder’s duct. The pain usually lasts a few hours, until the stone drops back into the gallbladder. If it stays stuck in the duct, a stone can block the flow of bile and cause damage to the liver, pancreas or gallbladder.

Women are three times more likely than men to develop gallstones, and stones seem to run in families. Being overweight and having high cholesterol or insulin levels are also risk factors. By age 60, nearly one in three people will have a gallstone. The natural remedies in this chapter—in conjunction with medical care and used with the approval of your doctor—may help prevent gallstones, according to some health professionals.

See Your Medical Doctor When... You are experiencing sharp, unexplained pain in your upper abdomen, between your shoulder blades or in your right shoulder that lasts more than 20 minutes. Your skin and the whites of your eyes turn yellow.

Food Therapy

“It’s easier to prevent gallstones than to treat them, and one of the best ways to prevent them is with a high-fiber diet,” says Julian Whitaker, M.D., founder and president of the Whitaker Wellness Center in Newport Beach, California. To add more fiber to your diet, Dr. Whitaker suggests eating more beans and no fewer than five servings of fresh fruits and vegetables each day. He also says to add oat bran to recipes or sprinkle it on your cereal.

Hydrotherapy

Drinking plenty of water flushes the liver and dilutes the bile secretions that lead to gallstones, says Agatha Thrash, M.D., a medical pathologist and co-founder and co-director of Uchee Pines Institute, a natural healing center in Seale, Alabama. She suggests drinking 8 to 12 eight-ounce glasses of water a day.

Juice Therapy

“Green juices are great for preventing a recurrence in anyone who has had gallstones,” says Elaine Gillaspie, N.D., a naturopathic physician in Portland, Oregon. Juices with spinach and parsley are rich in chlorophyll, a pigment that has a natural cleansing effect, according to Dr. Gillaspie. She suggests an eight-ounce blend of two ounces of green juice and two ounces of carrot juice, diluted with an equal amount of water. “Even one eight-ounce glass a day has a preventive effect,” she says.

For information on juicing techniques, see page 93.

Reflexology

To help relieve gallbladder problems, says New York City reflexologist Laura Norman, author of Feet First: A Guide to Foot Reflexology, try working these reflexes on your feet: solar plexus, diaphragm, thyroid and helper to thyroid, thoracic spine, liver and gallbladder.

To help you locate these points, consult the foot reflex chart on page 592. For instructions on how to work the points, see “Your Reflexology Session” on page 110.

Vitamin and Mineral Therapy

Use the food sensitivity diet (see “Food Sensitivity: How to Discover the ‘Healthy’ Foods That Can Cause Disease” on page 52) to eliminate any foods that might have a role in causing gallstones, suggests David Edelberg, M.D., an internist and medical director of the American Holistic Center/Chicago. He also says people with gallstones may want to use the following nutritional regimen: 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C three times a day; 1,200 milligrams of lecithin twice a day; one tablespoon of flaxseed oil a day; and 1 gram of taurine twice a day. Lecithin, flaxseed oil and taurine are available in most health food stores.