How can gallstones be prevented

The body adjusts and you can function just fine. Health Home Conditions and Diseases. What Causes a Gallbladder Attack? A gallbladder attack can cause sudden and severe pain. What does the gallbladder do? Gallbladder Attack Symptoms When gallstones get stuck while traveling through the duct tube to the stomach, they block the outflow of bile, which causes the gallbladder to spasm.

Other common symptoms of a gallbladder attack include: Pain that lasts several hours Abdominal pain after eating Nausea or vomiting Fever or chills Light-colored stool Brownish-colored urine Yellowing of skin or whites of eyes Seek immediate medical care if you are having some of these symptoms. How long does a gallbladder attack last? Excessive bilirubin in your bile: Bilirubin is a chemical that helps your body break down red blood cells.

If conditions like liver cirrhosis or biliary tract infection are causing your liver to produce too much bilirubin, it can lead to gallstone formation. Signs and symptoms of gallbladder stones are: Sudden, intense pain in the upper right and centre of your abdomen Back pain, near the shoulder blades Nausea, vomiting, or high fever with chills Yellowing of skin and eyes Gallstone pain can last several minutes to a few hours. How Can You Prevent Gallstones?

Here are the 5 ways to prevent gallbladder stones: Maintain a healthy weight: Obesity is one of the top contributors to gallstone formations. Set a routine and gradually ease into it until you reach your desired weight. Stick to healthy fats: Fats found in olive oil, canola oil, omega-3 fatty acids from fish and flaxseed - all contribute to keeping your gallbladder healthy and preventing gallstones.

High levels of cholesterol can cause cholesterol gallstones. Choose low-fat alternatives to your meats and milk to keep cholesterol levels in check. Then if you have more attacks, your doctor may recommend surgery. Many doctors will suggest surgery to remove your gallbladder to prevent a future attack. If your gallbladder is irritated or inflamed, most doctors will want to take it out right away. The surgery is most often done with laparoscopic surgery.

This means that small tools are inserted into small incisions in your abdomen to remove your gallbladder. The surgery is safe and effective. It limits your hospital stay to about 1 day. Without surgery, the gallbladder can get infected. It might even burst, causing further problems. Are there other treatments? Other options include: Sound wave therapy. This can break up the stones so they can move into the intestine without problem.

But not everyone can receive this treatment. If you have more than 1 gallstone, if your gallstone is large, or if you have other medical conditions, you may not be able to receive sound wave therapy. You might be able to take a pill to dissolve the stones. It can take 2 years or longer to work, and gallstones could return after you finish treatment.

Living with gallstones. Questions to ask your doctor. Are there lifestyle changes I can make to prevent gallstones? Am I at risk of having another gallstone? What should I do if I have a gallbladder attack? Is there any kind of medicine that will make a gallbladder attack less painful?

Will I need surgery to remove my gallbladder? Are there other options? Is having a gallstone a sign of another condition?

Last Updated: September 21, This article was contributed by: familydoctor. Related Articles. Fortunately, for most people, gallstones are "silent" — they don't cause major symptoms.

When they do act up, there are effective ways to address the problem. Gallstones begin with bile, a substance that helps with the digestion of fats and the absorption of certain vitamins. Bile is made in the liver and carried to the gallbladder, a small, pear-shaped organ that concentrates and stores it. The fat in food triggers the release of a hormone that causes the gallbladder to contract and release bile into the intestine.

Gallstones are solid lumps that develop when the stored bile crystallizes. Most are less than an inch in diameter, but they can be as small as a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball.

Most gallstones are composed mainly of cholesterol. The rest — known as pigment stones — are made of calcium salts and bilirubin, a breakdown product of red blood cells. Cholesterol stones form when liquid bile in the gallbladder contains more cholesterol than the bile salts can dissolve. Cholesterol stones may also develop if the gallbladder doesn't contract and empty as it should. Pigment stones are associated with certain medical conditions, including liver disease, some types of anemia , and infection of the bile ducts.

Gallstones cause problems when they block any of the ducts carrying bile from the liver or gallbladder or digestive enzymes from the pancreas to the small intestine.

It's the effect of female hormones. Estrogen increases cholesterol in the bile, and progesterone slows the emptying of the gallbladder. That may explain why the risk for women, relative to men, decreases with age.

Before age 40, women are diagnosed with gallstones almost three times more often than men are pregnancy, for example, increases the risk , but by age 60, their risk is just slightly greater. Estrogen therapy increases the risk, especially when taken as a pill rather than a patch. Oral contraceptive pills also increase the risk slightly, but only in the first decade of use.

Obesity is another risk factor because bodies with more fat produce more estrogen. Paradoxically, rapid weight loss also increases the risk, because very low-calorie diets interfere with bile production and therefore cause more crystallization of cholesterol.

Gallstones are so common after weight-loss surgery that patients are often advised to have their gallbladders removed at the same time. Gallstones are also more likely to occur in people with diabetes or any condition that decreases gallbladder contractions or intestinal motility, such as a spinal cord injury.