How's that hamburger doing for you? Juicy, thick slab of beef fried to perfection. Scrumptious, right? Go ahead, toss a few of those golden crispy grease drenched French Fries on your plate. Looking good. Can we get you a soda to go with those gallstones?

That's right. You have just added some of the top ingredients needed to form gallstones. Wait. You forgot to finish your meal off with a huge slice of chocolate cake, too. But, why dissect your eating patterns? You feel great. Until, two to three hours after you have overeaten and consumed red meat, greasy foods, and a few teaspoons of sugar, it hits you. The pain. The hard-fisted stab into your upper right side. Just below the rib cage into your lower back, ouch.

Can't stand up, right? This is because your gallbladder is battling the sludge and stones built up at the bottom of it. Like a reservoir, it stores the bile that our liver produces to assist in the breakdown of food. Resembling a beaver adding more wood to his dam, you are adding more stones to the gallbladder. Now, when the gallbladder is trying to eject the bile into the small intestine, it can't. It is being held up by multiple cholelithias that are blocking the duct.

This calls for a trip to the hospital. Lets face it; you don't want to live with this pain forever. The ER Doctor has you do an Ultra Sound that shows those pain-seeking calculi. He/she gives you something for the pain and sends you to see a General Surgeon. In the mean time, you are restricted to water, bland foods, grapes, apples, pears, prunes and artichokes. Leave the grapefruit, oranges and corn alone. Coffee, with those over easy eggs? Not if you want to walk upright.

If the Ultra Sound and sometimes, a C-T Scan, is unable to find stones, you may want to consider a test that will calculate the ejection fraction, or the percentage rate that bile is actually being secreted through the gallbladder. A low ejection fraction can also cause pain and may need medical intervention. An ejection fraction above thirty five percent is considered normal if pain is not present during the test.

So, if you are one of the lucky people who eat the good vegetables and drinks a lot of water, you may never have gallstones. But, for the rest of us, we may want to check into a little preventative damage. Do a wash, see a surgeon, and get it fixed. Because the pain, it will come back. Also, see your doctor for any questions or needs.

Learn more about this author, Doree Anderson.
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