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Gallbladder: did you have issues with it during your CFS journey?

Did you need your gallbladder out within your illness journey?

  • I have mild CFS and needed it removed

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    38

muffin

Senior Member
Messages
940
At year 14 after CFIDS onset, my Gallbladder started to give me problems. Tests showed NO stones but also a non-functioning Gall Bladder. I had it removed via lap in November of 2008 and the symptoms were gone by the time I got in the car and was driven home. Why did my Gal Bladder go "bad" without any stones, gravel or other issues? They don't know. I'm just glad it was an easy situation: symptoms, diagnosis, removal - FIXED! If only CFIDS could be this easy.
 

Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
Muffin, that is why I ran the poll, because a lot of us had gallbladder issues, mine was 3 month after the start of my illness, without stones, and it was necrotic. And the surgeon said it was not EBV related??? ???
 

gracenote

All shall be well . . .
Messages
1,537
Location
Santa Rosa, CA
other digestive issues

At year 14 after CFIDS onset, my Gallbladder started to give me problems. Tests showed NO stones but also a non-functioning Gall Bladder. I had it removed via lap in November of 2008 and the symptoms were gone by the time I got in the car and was driven home. Why did my Gal Bladder go "bad" without any stones, gravel or other issues? They don't know. I'm just glad it was an easy situation: symptoms, diagnosis, removal - FIXED! If only CFIDS could be this easy.

Thanks muffin for sharing this. Did you have other digestive issues besides your gallbladder? I have other GI problems so can't always tell what is or is not gallbladder, though sometimes it's very clear. And how are things now? I've heard so many people talk about problems after removal. I hope you are one of the success stories and that you continue to be bad-gallbladder symptom free.

Isn't it great when something gets FIXED like this? It's almost like a miracle! :Retro smile: Yes, if only CFIDS could be this easy.
 

gracenote

All shall be well . . .
Messages
1,537
Location
Santa Rosa, CA

InvertedTree

Senior Member
Messages
166
I'm having gallbladder issues but can't get the doctor to run a HIDA scan. I had a normal ultrasound.

does anyone know if systemic enzymes can cause gallbladder pain?

I'm trying to add them to my treatment but I had some pain about 45 minutes after taking them. I'm going to try again today as I really feel I'm needing enzymes.
 

fresh_eyes

happy to be here
Messages
900
Location
mountains of north carolina
Hi Gracenote. Looks like that purple link is basically the same flush, with some extra supplements added. I think the epsom salts and the oil are the only two really, truly essential ingredients - the idea is the epsom salts clear all the food out of your system and dilate the ducts, and the oil causes your gall bladder to purge out all its bile, taking stones with it. Here's the one I use:

http://curezone.com/cleanse/liver/huldas_recipe.asp
 
Messages
41
I just started getting galbladder attacks and they first told me I needed to have it removed, after 4 ER visits with galbladder attacks they ended up telling me that they won't remove it since I don't have stones. (still my gallbladder in non-functional) every radiologist and doctor told me that, then why don't they just take it out?

I have started getting nausea along with dozens of ME/CFS symptoms.

I have to make an appointment soon with my GI and hopefully he will take it more seriously. I am house bound, trouble with balance, bad body/head pain, brain fog etc for the 3rd time since summer 2012. All went downhill after I caught chicken pox in 2012 and was bedridden 3 months. (my health issues and full blown CFS was in 2004.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,820
Gallbladder removal is pretty common. 60,000 gallbladder removal operations are performed in the UK each year, and by my rough calculation, that means around 8% of the population have had their gallbladder removed. That's the UK national average.

Currently, according to this poll, around 36% of ME/CFS patients have had their gallbladders removed, which is much higher than the national average of 8%. However this poll may be biased to an extent by self-selecting (naturally those already with gallbladder issues may have been more attracted to reading and voting on this thread).



It would be very interesting to have the inflamed gallbladders taken out from ME/CFS patients tested for the presence of enterovirus infection in the tissues, using Dr Chia's stomach biopsy VP1 immunoperoxidase stain test.

Here is one of Dr Chia's stomach biopsies from an ME/CFS patient:
Dr Chia Stomach biopsy enterovirus staining.jpg

The brown stain in the left picture shows the presence of enterovirus VP1 protein, and the brown stain in the right picture shows enteroviral dsRNA (the latter is evidence of a non-cytolytic enterovirus infection). Source: Invest in ME London 2011 ME/CFS Conference DVD.

It's possible that the lining of the gallbladders removed from ME/CFS patients might be similarly infected with enterovirus, and that such an infection may be causing the inflammation and gallbladder attack symptoms.
 
Messages
41
I didn't have it inflammed.

They found it with malformations that are common in many people. These malformations are since birth and seemingly something else triggered the attacks. I suppose that the Fluconazole along with other antifungals that I used in the past two months. Im now off all antimicrobials, off gluten and off refined sugars. Battling candida only with diet (I still eat fruit, or I get into hypoglicemia which is not fun)
 
Messages
36
My story is almost the same as yours gracenote. I've had some gallstones. I'd read some reports that this was a fairly typical ME/CFS problem and that surgery was not always a solution. (wish I could find it all now). Also, I had some articles on aneasthetic being difficult for pwmecfs and that it could take a long time for pwmecfs to recover from surgery and/or that the surgery with or without anaesthetic could cause a relapse.

There is a gallbladder, pancreas thread with some great info that I've been wanting to read for sometime. Maybe they participants will do the poll and update us.
HI. I too have had since I first got ill years ago multiple HIDA scans showing 15% function. No stones or sludge or thickening of the gallbladder walls on ct scan. My personal feeling is that since I had such severe neurological symptoms with what I now think was an enterovirus the gallbladder just does not contract that well any more.
My surgeon who does want to take it out feels that my other me/cfs symptoms such as muscle twitching, bad headaches, joint pain, sensitivity to light and sound, weakness in my legs, tinnitus, post exertional malaise would not be helped by a gallbladder removal. I do have severe irritable bowel but I have found that taking a good quality refridgerated pro-biotic 10 billion various types of good gut bacteria makes a dramatic difference. If I forget to take it with me for just one weekend I am back to bad diarrhea again.
 

Mary

Moderator Resource
Messages
17,321
Location
Southern California
I had trouble with my gallbladder when my health first started going south. My digestion and appetite were off, sometimes had pain (not severe) etc. My chiropractor who does muscle testing found that my gallbladder was inflamed, I didn't really have stones. In any event, he gave me AF Betafood by Standard Process and it was a godsend. I had to take a rather high dose - it helps with bile production. Eventually I learned I had low stomach acid and since adding in HCL, especially with high protein meals, and doing a liver detox (my liver got very toxic, another story), my digestion is really good, and I still have my gallbladder.

I think doctors sometimes remove gallbladders because they don't know how to get them working properly, and I think mine probably would have been removed if not for my chiropractor.

Here's a blurb I found about AF Betafood:

AF Betafood
If you have gall bladder problems then AF Betafood may be your one way trip to health, vitality and keeping your gall bladder. If, after consuming consuming a meal heavy in fats, you begin to burp almost immediately, this means you have gall bladder malfunction and your metabolism is more than likely deficient.
Today, doctors are recommending people have their gall bladders removed when the people who signs of gall bladder stress or disease. Here is what really happens. People have metabolism problems. As a result the bodily functions begin to mis-function. When certain foods are consumed that require adequate gall bladder function, we can have signs that the gall bladder is not in a position to do its job accurately. Let us consider this mis-firing of the gall bladder function. Do we destroy the symptom of the metabolism or do we correct the metabolism problem that caused the gall bladder to mis-fire in the first place. Do you think removal of the gall bladder corrects the metabolism problem? Of course not! but correcting the metabolism problem provides us with sick gall bladder relief.
Let us observe the function of bile. Bile has a number of functions. Bile breaks down the fat in food. Bile emulsifies the fat in the digestive system. Bile works to help eliminate toxins from the body. Here is an example of how bile helps: Say you are painting and breath the fumes and the chemicals associated with paint and fumes. The fumes and associated chemicals are drawn into your lungs as you breath. From the lungs, the chemicals are picked up by the blood and carried to the liver. As we all know, the liver works as a filter just like the filter used in keep oil clean in the automobile. The liver proceeds to dump the chemicals from the paint into the bile from the gall bladder. The gall bladder then dumps the bile containing the chemicals into the intestines for elimination.
The most important thing to understand is that the bile is your aid in removal of toxins from the body. But when the bile gets thick like cream this means the fat metabolism is malfunctioning. Bile must be thin to do it's job correctly. Cataplex F and Cataplex A thin the bile and Betafood flushes the bile route.
Standard Process puts together the three complexes to make AF Betafood. Therefore, you need one instead of three bottles of product to help keep your bile flowing properly and possibly forego the serious problems related to malfunctioning fat metabolism.
As you may have already guessed, AF Betafood also takes a serious stress from the liver as well as the gall bladder. The gall bladder functions properly and the liver is able to continue doing its job in relation to it's relationship to the gall bladder correctly as well .
Indredients: Carrot powder, vacuum dried beet leaf juice, beet powder, honey, oat flour, calcium lactate, defatted wheat germ, magnesium citrate, vacuum dried bovine prostate, nutritional yeast, bovine liver powder, vacuum dried bovine kidney, alfalfa meal, vitamin A esters, arabic and cellulose gum, bovine orchic glandular extract, calcium stearate, bovine liver fat extract, flaxseed oil extract, prolamine iodine, ascorbic acid, pyridoxal 5-phosphate, mixed tocopherols, and soy bean lecithin.
Two tablets supply 170 mg Vacuum Dried Beet Leaf Juice and Beet Powder and 130 mg Carrot Powder.
 

Sherlock

Boswellia for lungs and MC stabllizing
Messages
1,287
Location
k8518704 USA
Acalculous cholecysytitis (no stones) is possibly from destruction by the immune system. It might very well involve eosinophils, which lead to remodeling and so the gallbladder gets leathery.
 

acer2000

Senior Member
Messages
818
I have had right upper quadrant abdominal pain that preceded the onset of my "CFS" illness for about a year and continues to this day. I had a negative ultrasound.
 

jerrymcfadyen

Senior Member
Messages
123
Location
East Bend, NC USA
My wife is an ultrasound technician and has checked my gallbladder a couple of times and it's just barely working. I don't want any surgery I don't have to have so I'm waiting as long as I can. It only causes pain once in a while but the doctor says it will get worse. Right now I just try to avoid the foods that give me trouble.
 

Sherlock

Boswellia for lungs and MC stabllizing
Messages
1,287
Location
k8518704 USA
My wife is an ultrasound technician and has checked my gallbladder a couple of times and it's just barely working. I don't want any surgery I don't have to have so I'm waiting as long as I can. It only causes pain once in a while but the doctor says it will get worse. Right now I just try to avoid the foods that give me trouble.
Which is the best approach to eosinophilic disorders of various kinds, such as eosinophilic esophagitis. Even more radical is "elemental nutrition", which replaces all food with predigested formulas... or feeding tubes to bypass the esophagus.
 

Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
My wife is an ultrasound technician and has checked my gallbladder a couple of times and it's just barely working. I don't want any surgery I don't have to have so I'm waiting as long as I can. It only causes pain once in a while but the doctor says it will get worse. Right now I just try to avoid the foods that give me trouble.

The problem with wating it out is that when your gallbladder will give you major troubles, it will be difficult to remove it due to adhesions and inflammed tissues. So a simple laparoscopic procedures becomes a few hours long open surgery with major gallbladder attacks beforehand, not to mention the risk of perforation.

Mine was necrotic. I spent 2 weeks in the hospital, and dit wasn't fun at all.
 

jerrymcfadyen

Senior Member
Messages
123
Location
East Bend, NC USA
The problem with wating it out is that when your gallbladder will give you major troubles, it will be difficult to remove it due to adhesions and inflammed tissues. So a simple laparoscopic procedures becomes a few hours long open surgery with major gallbladder attacks beforehand, not to mention the risk of perforation.

Mine was necrotic. I spent 2 weeks in the hospital, and dit wasn't fun at all.

I know, I know! I keep hearing that from the wife. What can I say? I'm hard headed.