By-golly it’s your gallbladder!

Posted by Dr. Della Parker     on October 6, 2015

By-golly it’s your gallbladder!

So you are burping, farting, and feeling nauseous. Wondering what you ever did to deserve this torture? Let’s talk about the most common cause, gallbladder dysfunction. What’s a gallbladder do anyway? Well, it stores and secretes bile. Bile is made in the liver and stored in the gallbladder. It gets released to emulsify (fancy for break down) fats and ship em off for elimination. No bile release equals no fat break down. This means you have unbroken down fats torturing your digestive system all the way down.

No gallbladder? Yeah, I know, they remove those things willy-nilly all the time! This just means you need even more gallbladder support cause now your cystic duct, which used to connect to the gallbladder, has to do the job. And it’s only a duct so it’s gonna need some help.

This has been going on a long time, no big deal, right? Wrong! Imagine your gallbladder working properly; It releases bile in response to all fats in the diet. Those fats are broken down, rendered harmless to upset your digestion and eliminated as waste. Now think about your gallbladder not working. It’s just letting the bile chill, not urging it to move out and do its job. Sounds a little like attachments parenting eh?! So this bile just sits there, eventually getting thicker and thicker until it actually can’t move. Now every time your gallbladder tries to push that thick ass bile out, it aggrevates the tissues. You end up with colicky pain in the right upper quadrant of your abdomen or in your shoulder or back between your shoulder blades. More time passes and that thick bile turns into stones. Now we have a real big problem! OUCH!

This is why it is so important to seek treatment for that nausea and bloating. To prevent stones down the line. Get it? Naturopathic medicine… prevention of disease… getting close? So what am I gonna do about it? Well, I’m not going to remove your gallbladder that’s for sure! But we have to clean up the diet. Many people just stop eating fats, but this is a bad idea! Fats are good! We need the fats, but just need the gallbladder to respond appropriately when we eat them. So let’s first have you stop eating the most common gallbladder aggravating foods.

Pork, onions, and eggs. Why those foods? I dunno! Cause they were in my notes from med school and one or all of these foods seem to always correlate with gallbladder dysfunction. Next, we gotta make sure that you have enough stomach acid to stimulate gallbladder movement. Try out some good ol apple cider vinegar. 1 tablespoon before meals. This means stop your damn acid blocking medication unless you want your gallbladder removed!

I use the amazing art of muscle testing to figure out what nutritional support might be needed to restore function to all areas of the body. Beet leaves are high in betaine, which thins the bile, don’t worry, I have it in a pill. Bile salts can also help restore gallbladder function. Heck, your liver may need support in forming more bile in the first place. Dried blood cell analysis is another amazing tool. It allows me to visualize your blood and see what areas of the body might be under stress.

Point of the story is that frequent burping is not normal unless you are downing some serious Dr. Pepper. Frequent nausea is not normal unless you are in your first trimester of pregnancy. And abdominal pain, well that’s never normal. So go figure out what is up with your body and prevent diseases down the road. Find a good Naturopath, like me :) and go get your disease prevention on!

FYI I am now located in Clackamas folks! Check out drdellaparker.com for all by updated contact info.