People usually don’t like to talk about their bathroom issues, but for some it is an enormous problem. These days up to two billion people have diarrhea in one year – a colossal number. Diarrhea usually is not a sickness itself; it is a symptom of many harmful processes in our digestive system. Some people may experience a chronic diarrhea, which happens when diarrhea persists for more than two weeks, and there are more than 3 watery bowel movements daily.
This article focuses on chronic diarrhea after gallbladder removal. Why do many folks suffer from it? Is there non-drug, alternative medicine approach for this nasty condition?
The medical expression for the gallbladder removal surgery is cholecystectomy. This type of diarrhea is a symptom of the postcholecystectomy syndrome; disorder that often includes pain, gas, bloating, bile reflux, etc.
First let’s focus on unpleasant things. Even brilliant operation technique and surgical experience cannot prevent this complication after the gallbladder removal surgery. Statistically, approximately 10% of people without gallbladder sooner or later will have chronic diarrhea. In the US 700,000 gallbladders are removed annually, so we have a large number of sufferers with that issue after the surgery.
According to medical literature there is no cure for this disorder, there are just medications to control diarrhea. Even professionals recognize that cause of diarrhea after gallbladder removal is unknown. Anyhow, doctors call chronic diarrhea after gallbladder removal as “bile acids” diarrhea because bile acids are the culprit. Bile acids are essential parts of the bile.
Bile is produced by the liver and goes into the gallbladder for storage. When semi digested foods, come from the stomach into the first part of the small intestine-duodenum, gallbladder contracts. It pushes the bile through the bile duct and sphincter of Oddi into the duodenum to digest fatty foods.
Our body uses bile acids from the bile as detergent to make fat droplets smaller. It helps pancreatic enzyme lipase split up the fats on glycerol and fatty acids, which can be absorbed throughout the gut wall. This is a little complicated, but without understanding, it is difficult to realize how to get help.
In the normal situation, when bile is alkaline, bile acids are soluble. Any abnormal acidic changes in bile pH lead to precipitation of the bile acids. The insoluble bile acids are highly aggressive substances, which corrode and irritate gallbladder, bile ducts, sphincter of Oddi, duodenum causing inflammation, ulcers, and eventually cancer. The doctors found more incidence of the colon cancer in humans after gallbladder removal. Acidity of bile and precipitation of the bile acids is the main reason for the development of inflammation and gallbladder stones. There is a lot more medical information about this issue, in my eBook: healthy pancreas, healthy you.
By the way, people lose their gallbladders due to acidic bile causing inflammation and gallbladder stones. Gallbladder keeps bile for a long time; therefore, acidic, aggressive bile acids have more time to cause damage and inflammation. No wonder, gallbladder becomes first and …