Common Gallbladder Symptoms Associated With A Western Diet
One of the most frequently heard complaints in people with gallbladder symptoms is upper right side pain underneath the rib cage. Often times they are having other problems that indicate biliary colic is occurring but they do not associate the digestive problems they are experiencing with everyday gallbladder attack symptoms. Digestive problems such as indigestion, and nausea, and bloating in your digestive tract are all commonly associated with biliary colic. Whenever you have frequent abdominal pain accompanied by these other symptoms you can be almost one hundred percent certain that you are experiencing complications with your gallbladder and you should consider looking into alternative forms of treatment that will not warrant the removal of your gallbladder, a very necessary organ in your digestive system. Generally this condition is not life threatening but there are instances where infection or severe blockage that causes the organ to swell.
There are many people who suffer from the presence of gallbladder stones without ever knowing they have them. It is possible for you to have the condition and not have any pain, nor bloating, nausea episodes, or problems with indigestion. So what causes these hardened little formations of cholesterol and bile salts to start causing pain? The pain is created when the small hard piece is moved into the bile duct or presses against the walls of the gallbladder. Bile is required for the emulsification of fat in the small intestine. The bile is not supposed to be very thick and flows easily through these narrow little channels that carry it to the small intestine but a tiny hard deposit that is no larger than a grain of sand can actually get stuck trying to go through the passage. When this happens then the person feels pain or commonly associated symptoms of gallstones.
If someone is suffering from gallstones, there are various treatments that a doctor can consider to treat the patient according to the severity of the symptoms. If the surgery is not recommended by the doctor, the patient can be required to take oral ursodeoxycholic acid to dissolve the stones. The patient can be required to take the medicine up to two years. The problem is that the gallstones can return when such medicines have been stopped. When there is an obstruction of the bile duct, the doctor can use the endoscopic retrograde sphincterotomy to break down the gallstones without the operation. The extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy can also be used to break down the stones. After the stones are broken down in small pieces, they will move with the bile without any problem. However, this method is only suitable if there are a small number of the gallstones in the gallbladder and it cannot be localized to work in the gallbladder only so other organs are affected by the treatment.