Anyone who has had a gallbladder “attack” knows how uncomfortable it is. They would also like to know how to prevent having another gallstone, avoiding the pain and discomfort.
A new study, just presented at the Digestive Disease Week annual meeting, has found that moderate alcohol intake reduces the cholesterol in bile and may decrease the chances of developing gallstones by as much as one third.
Gallstones are small stones that develop in the gallbladder, which is a small pear-shaped organ in what is called your right upper abdomen. Bile, which is made in the liver, helps your body digest …read more

After my daughter’s brush with gall stones a couple of weeks ago, I now appreciate how painful they are. I think this is why this particular article caught my eye.
According to the HealthDay article, Hormone Replacement May Raise Women’s Gallbladder Risk, hormone therapy taken by mouth, as opposed to patches or gels, increases a woman’s chance of gall bladder disease if she is post-menopausal. What makes this important is that the risk of gall bladder disease is already higher as a woman ages, so this would make that risk even higher.
Gels and patches don’t appear to have the same effect …read more

Who’d have thought that my 19-year-old daughter could get knocked flat on her back with a gallstone. but she did. And from the pain I saw she had, I never imagined that gallstones were that painful.
My kids like to bug me, saying that I ignore them or don’t take them seriously when they complain of pain. What they don’t realize is that I take them very seriously and I watch them like a hawk when they complain – they just don’t see it. When my daughter showed me where the pain was, I suspected gallbladder right away, but it’s not …read more