How To Maintain Digestive Health After Your Gallbladder Removal Surgery
Experiencing pain after gallbladder surgery? This article will tell you how to minimize your symptoms.
Gallbladder removal surgery or, Cholecystectomy is one of the most common surgical procedures performed in the USA. Over 5 billion is spent on hospital visits due to gallbladder disease. Typically, doctors tell laparoscopic gallbladder patients that they will continue to digest their food normally and that gallbladder pain and symptoms will be relieved with its removal. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Although we can live without the gallbladder, its role of careful storage and concentration of bile is missed when afterward, bile flows in a steady trickle from the liver and isn’t calibrated to specific meal contents any longer. The gallbladder releases customized volume and concentration of bile in response to the fat content in the meals that we eat. Fat globules are broken down into fine particles and fat-soluble vitamins are converted to be absorbable by our small intestine. Without the gallbladder’s regulation, digestion of fats and fat-soluble vitamins suffers.
Uncomfortable digestive symptoms and pain after gallbladder surgery may include:
Bloating
Gas
Diarrhea
Digestive pain
If you were not able to avoid surgical gallbladder removal, there are steps you can take to balance your digestion, stay healthy and avoid uncomfortable symptoms.
Take care of your liver health. The liver produces bile and cleans the blood of toxins, processes hormones, secretes bile, aids digestion and strengthens immunity.
The toxicity level of bile will increase in direct proportion to the toxins that we take in. These in turn are dumped into the small intestine. Stress also has a negative effect on the liver and stomach. Take steps to reduce stress and your digestion will improve.
Ditch The Bad Fats
Consider fat sources. Fats require large amounts of concentrated bile to break down and digest properly. After gallbladder removal, you should take care to avoid dumping high fat content into your stomach because symptoms of indigestion will result. Significant protein can be consumed from plant sources and high fat cream, milk, butter, etc. should be avoided if you want to avoid pain after gallbladder surgery.
Eat More Veggies
If at least 80% of your diet consists of fruit and vegetables, the demand on bile for digestion will not be as high. Do not eat large meals or eat until you feel, “full”. The stomach becomes sluggish and uncomfortable without adequate room to digest.
Fermented Vegetables
Cultured veggies, fermented foods can greatly improve digestion. They clean the intestines of toxins so that other organs and cells stay clean too. Beneficial microflora, are the good bacteria and yeast which we need in our guts for strong immunity and efficient digestion.
Omega 3 Fats
Choose unrefined, extra virgin olive oil, cod liver oil, flax oil, hemp or coconut oil, in very small amounts to represent the healthy, omega 3 fats in your diet. You need these for healthy brain function and tissue health however, however, most fat and all refined or purified fats should not be consumed.
Digestive Enzymes
Lastly, choline, and digestive enzymes such as lipase and pancreatin are essential. Digestive enzymes will help to reduce gas and bloating, reducing the negative symptoms you may expect post cholecystectomy. They will mimic the effects of bile. For non-vegetarians Ox bile can be very helpful to supply what your body is not providing adequately. Ox bile can be obtained from health stores and allows you to source the additional bile ingredients that you need to emulsify fats and absorb fat-soluble vitamins well.
