If you have gall bladder problems
Every year nearly a million gall bladders are removed in the U.S. Most of these surgeries occur needlessly. Treated early most gall bladder problems can easily be corrected with dietary changes.
The gall bladder is tucked under the liver in your upper right abdomen. When it functions normally, you never know it is there. It is one of the simplest organs we have, with the job of releasing bile onto fatty food in the small intestine, so that the fat in the food we eat can be broken down and used in the body. The fat in your food has many essential uses, including the following:
- To make cholesterol. Cholesterol is not the villain that it is usually portrayed to be but rather something we all need in order to live - see last month's newsletter.
- Cholesterol is in turn used to make Vitamin D, hormones, prostaglandins and bile salts.
- Fat is a major component of the membranes surrounding all the cells in the body.
- The brain is 60% fat. High quality fats like fish oil are pure brain food.
Gall bladder problems strike anyone of almost any age, but have higher risk among people with some of the six F's:
- Female
- Fertile
- Fat deposits
- Flatulent
- Family history
- Forty or older
When the risk factors include four of the six, that is, fertile fat female in her forties, it involves a person who is likely to have high estrogen levels. Fat tissue retains more estrogen in the body, and it is known that higher estrogen slows gall bladder emptying [1] and slows down the sphincter responsible for releasing bile from the gall bladder [2]. When the gall bladder is slow to release bile, biliary sludge, gravel and gallstones tend to develop [3,4]. By the time a woman reaches 40, she has had plenty of years of estrogen in her body.
Not only high estrogen leads to gall bladder problems. Such problems as insulin resistance and diabetes also predispose a person to gall bladder sluggishness, slow emptying and sphincter dysfunction. In turn the presence of the biliary sludge, gravel and gallstones lead to irritation and inflammation of the gall bladder, which will try to expel this material. But the excess material in the gall bladder, and the slow ineffective emptying just keep the problem going. Now there are gallstones or sludge, and the gall bladder is trying but cannot get them out. This tends to be most painful several hours after a heavy or fatty meal, and often wakes you up in the middle of the night, with pain under your right rib cage, which may radiate to the right shoulder blade area.
Possible complications are acute cholecystitis, which is an inflammation of the gall bladder, pancreatitis and common bile duct obstruction, all of which can be life-threatening emergencies.
On the other hand, most people who have gallstones never have any symptoms at all. These silent gallstones often remain with a person throughout most of their adult lives and never cause any health problems.
So if your gall bladder has begun the vicious cycle described above, several steps are needed in order to prevent the possible complications or resulting surgery:
- Eliminate sugars and breads from your diet. You are going to have to do this or seriously risk undergoing abdominal surgery to get rid of a diseased gall bladder. Chromium drops will help with cravings. Other ways to get sugars and wheat out of your diet can be found in previous articles [5].
- Thin the bile. The best nutrient for this is N-Acetyl Cysteine, or NAC. Vitamin C has had mixed results in research regarding improvement of gall bladder emptying. However, I do find this to be very helpful for my gall bladder patients. Also, glycine and taurine are necessary to change your bile acids to a more useful form. These are all available in health food stores.
- Calm inflammation and promote motility. Fish oil is necessary for this [6]. Most people take too little fish oil to achieve this effect. Two tablespoons per day is an example of a dose that may be effective.
- It would also be helpful to have a specifically spasmolytic herbal formula for the biliary tract. Your naturopathic physician can prepare this for you.
Work with your naturopathic physician on these items. It is much safer to have professional help to overcome your gall bladder problems than to try to troubleshoot on your own. The complications are just too risky.
On the other hand, if these measures don't bring relief within a few weeks, you may still need gall bladder surgery. The risks of allowing a bad gall bladder to continue on its course could be pancreatitis or cholecystitis. Gall bladder and pancreatic cancer are less likely but still possible outcomes.
So get to work on your gall bladder now if you have been diagnosed with gall bladder disease. If you have the symptoms described above, see your naturopathic physician for physical exams and labs. Because of possible confusion with pancreatitis, duodenal ulcer, dysfunctional rib, or other problems, you don't want a wrong diagnosis.
Gall bladder problems are easiest to address early on, and are usually completely turned around with symptoms eliminated, when there is proper naturopathic care. So don't ignore this problem, and don't allow your loved ones to ignore the problem.
Next month: What to do if you have had your gall bladder removed.
Herb of the Month: Camellia sinensis
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This exotic sounding herb is none other than green or black tea, a hot cup of which would do nicely to take the edge off of this January cold.
To make green tea, the leaves of the tea plant are cured and roasted. To make black tea, the leaves are then fermented and dried after producing green tea.
The infusion that is commonly made of this dried herb is the standard cup of tea, which in small doses acts as a stimulant, and like other caffeinated beverages, may be used to relieve certain types of headache. On the other hand, excessive intake may result in insomnia and nervous tension.
Green tea, and to a certain extent black tea, is a concentrated source of catechins, which are phenolic compounds that are good anti-oxidants. This means that they protect the cells of your body from the free radicals that come to us mostly from environmental pollutants. Free radicals are a major cause of cancer and premature aging. Fighting these free radicals off with green tea is quite effective according to the medical research [7, 8, 9].
The other side of ADHD: When it happens to girls
AD(H)D stands for Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder, and has parentheses because sometimes there is hyperactivity, but there is always inattentiveness as a hallmark feature.
This is usually thought of as a boy's malady. It's the ants-in-the-pants that keep the little guys wiggly in their desk chairs and/or very easily distracted from tasks that require continued focus. We wrote about this a while ago: Natural alternatives to Ritalin and Adderall, and tried to see both perspectives: that of the frustrated parents and teachers who will go to such extremes as medicating the child, as well as the child's perspective: how did a healthy, active descendant of hunter-gatherers who were always on the move and always responding to stimuli now have to find himself sedentary and quiet and focused on paper and ink for so many of his waking hours? Who decided to put him through that torture, and was it justifiable?
We criticized the stifling environment of the traditional classroom as a main cause of the problem. We then looked at alternative learning environments, such as Montessori education, where the child chooses his own "work" and focuses on it for as long or short a time as he wishes. As lenient as that sounds, Montessori students have excellent academic performance by all standard measures.
So whereas boys are often too active (hence the H for hyperactivity), for girls it's often just ADD: attention deficit disorder. The inattention is just as much a problem, but in girls this more often leads her to inhibition, lack of movement, an inability to get started on tasks. Being more sedentary in general than their male counterparts, these girls will tend to daydream and to be shy and introspective.
Because of the inhibition of action, girls with ADD will tend to be messy and disorganized. Whereas societal expectations hold girls to a higher standard of neatness than boys, the ADD girl will often stand out for being especially disorganized or sloppy.
Girls with ADD are not particularly a problem in the classroom. Daydreaming has never been nearly as annoying to teachers as restless behavior. So traditionally the boys have usually gotten in more trouble. This has generally led to underdiagnosis of girls with ADD.
Yet the word "underdiagnosis" implies that more people should be judged or evaluated in some way than is currently the case. And that is not our purpose here. The only valid purpose of diagnosis is to work toward treatment that is acceptable and nourishing, and ultimately a cure. Recognition of the problem of female ADD is necessary to establish first a bridge to these girls, instead of leaving them alone in their introspective bubbles to feel misunderstood by the world.
Girls with ADD who don't disturb classroom order may be suffering under the radar. These girls may frequently zone out while politely pretending to listen. Listening and reading are skills that become progressively worse as there is little self-discipline to focus continued attention on a topic. The child may be misdiagnosed with depression, which may contribute to the self-fulfilling prophecy of leading these girls to become depressed.
However, here again, as with boys, we have to ask: where is the pathology, and who has the real sickness? Never in human history have we had so much information as we do now, most of it abstract and hearsay, bombarding us constantly. So we must ask: is it really in the best interests of our brains to be always alert and open to all the trivial and extraneous information that constantly comes at us? Should we be paying attention to all the extra information at the expense of more personally important considerations, principles, values and reflection? Maybe these girls are on to something by zoning out through all the excessive information.
In fact, those children who have gotten in the habit of doing their homework while TV is on or music lyrics are being played or while family members are conversing, have actually taught themselves to "tune out" their aural stimuli. And this is constant training in how not to listen. When not doing homework, the adolescent tunes out her sibling's music lyrics to listen to her friends' conversation. Or she tunes out her siblings' conversations to listen to her preferred music lyrics. Or she'll randomly tune back and forth, sometimes deliberately, sometimes in an undisciplined, easily distracted way. This is more training in how not to listen to aural stimuli and how not to stay focused.
Yet our empathy with these children won't especially help them in the traditional classroom. A treatment option that has proven very effective for the long-term as well as completely non-toxic is neurofeedback. This is a therapy where the patient is trained by computer to keep certain types of brain waves maximized while keeping others minimized in order to enhance focus and to minimize distractibility.
Neurofeedback has had wonderful results for both boys and girls with ADD, and is a very welcome relief to the kinds of drugs usually prescribed for this condition. Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta and other drugs in this class are a type of methamphetamine, which is a very common and available addictive street drug. Rather than starting your child on such gateway drugs as these, consider neurofeedback. For a bit more information on neurofeedback please see the this article on Dr. John Dye and neurofeedback.
Nutritional therapies have also been very effective for ADD. But these therapies work best when specifically formulated for the individual. See your naturopathic physician for help with these problems.
references
- Dhiman RK, et al. "Alterations in gallbladder emptying and bile retention in the absence of changes in bile lithogenicity in postmenopausal women on hormone replacement therapy." Dig Dis Sci. 2004 Aug;49(7-8):1335-41.
- Tierney S, et al. "Estrogen inhibits sphincter of Oddi motility." J Surg Res. 1994 Jul;57(1):69-73.
- Jonkers IJ, et al. "Gall bladder dysmotility: a risk factor for gall stone formation in hypertriglyceridaemia and reversal on triglyceride lowering therapy by bezafibrate and fish oil." Gut. 2003 Jan;52(1):109-15.
- Velanovich C. "Biliary dyskinesia and biliary crystals: a prospective study." Am Surg. 1997 Jan;63(1):69-74.
- Huber C. "The Sweet Tooth," Part I and "The Sweet Tooth," Part II
- Jonkers ibid.
- Seeram NP et al. "Catechin and caffeine content of green tea dietary supplements and correlation with antioxidant capacity." J Agric Food Chem. 2006 Mar 8;54(5):1599-603.
- Rechner AR, et al. "Black tea represents a major source of dietary phenolics among regular tea drinkers." Free Radic Res. 2002 Oct;36(10):1127-35.
- Ohmori R, et al. "Antioxidant activity of various teas against free radicals and LDL oxidation." Lipids. 2005 Aug;40(8):849-53.