Why do we even have a gall bladder?

It’s not necessary at all, sort of like an appendix. My biology teacher had gall-stones and currently is without a gallbladder as well. According to wikipedia, it is used for the digestion of fats.

LOTS of people are sans gall bladders (do a search on Fluther!)

So surgeons can make money.

The bile produced by the gall bladder aids in the digestion of fats. Yes, we can do just fine without it, but that doesn’t mean that it serves no function. We are just slightly less efficient without it.

Likely a now-unneeded relic leftover from prehistoric times. However, while it seems to have no purpose and probably doesn’t, it may be discovered one day that it actually does.

I hope your daughter’s surgery goes well.

Flamebait! lol! Sorry!

I wonder about that..and about the appendix and tonsils, too @Pachyderm_In_The_Room.

I just thought of something, guys….the Dr. told her that, according to the test results, her gall bladder was “flat not working.” So they’re going to take it out and she has to really restrict her fat and sugar intake after that.
Now, what is the difference between it “flat not working” when it’s still in her, and definitely not working after they take it out? Why can’t she just restrict her diet and skip the surgery, and get the same results?

Thanks for that info, @syz. I didn’t know that.

What @syz said.
Some people don’t do well without their gallbladder, and I’m one of them. I just posted a question not terribly long ago searching for oil options because there are so many fats that make me downright sick now.
I’ve read that as many as 40% of people who have their gallbladders removed experience problems after surgery. Common as the surgery is, that’s a huge percentage of people to have complications (I also know that a LOT of people feel a million times better with it out.) Either way, I’d say it’s probably more useful than we give it credit for.

Actually, not having one increases your chances of getting pancreatic cancer. It is a calculated trade off.

@josie I’ve never heard that before. Where did you get that information?

I sure miss mine. Living without a gall bladder has been a constant source of difficulty for me. I can’t digest stuff I used to be able to, etc. What amazes me is that people seem to assume that just because it’s possible to exist without one, that we don’t need one.

But gall bladder surgery is a money maker for the medical establishment, and that’s important!

@Dutchess_III I am not a doctor, so I have no idea if keeping a “sick” gallbladder is a good idea. I don’t know what the alternatives are. I do know that if I could go back in time and try to regulate my issues with dietary changes (I was on an extremely restrictive long term diet when mine went haywire, but g/b disease is rampant in my family) – I would prefer that infinitely over the guessing games I have to play with my digestion now. Gladly.

The fact is, when I was a child, they routinely removed the tonsils. So they took mine out. When I was 19, docs removed my gall bladder, and just because they were in there anyway, they took out my appendix too. It turns out ALL these organs provide vital services for the body. Now, at 58, I’m playing catch up, trying to help my body restore what’s been missing for so long.

There are alternatives to having gall bladder surgery. A gall bladder cleanse is not only possible, it works. I know people who have done it, and not only that, this information was out there 35 years ago when I had mine out, although of course my doctor would not tell me about it! After all, why would anyone send away a paying customer?

I don’t miss mine.

Sure, spicy food is a bit of an issue now, but I’ve never really been a big fan anyway.

I fought with gallstones and inflammation for three years before the surgery. Going months without being able to digest food utterly sucks. The only thing worse than that was the agonizing pain. I used to go weeks eating only plain lettuce, and tuna on saltine crackers. Anything with any kind of fat would bring on gallbladder spasms that felt like a frickin’ knife was being drilled into my back.

Anyhoo, the gallbladder’s purpose is to store bile produced by the liver, and distribute it as necessary to the rest of the digestive system. We just cut out the middleman.

Good for you, Seek. Let me know how it goes for you in 20 years. From about the first day I could not, and still cannot digest fats of any kind without the use of digestive enzymes. I have to take some with every meal now. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I’m sorry that happened to you, @snowberry.

My procedure was medically necessary. It appears yours was not.

However, I have to wonder whether you have an unrelated issue. The gallbladder does not produce bile. It simply stores and distributes it. Without the gallbladder, the material simply moves from the liver directly to the duodenum. Thus, the loss of your gallbladder should not prevent your body from producing bile.

@Seek_Kolinahr Oh my doctor at the time told me it was necessary. At one point I couldn’t eat at all. I remember the pain very well, but even though my agony was only a few months, my gall bladder still could have been cleansed. Knowing what I know now, I would have been happy to go through a few more months of pain- even many more months(!)- if I could have cleaned out my gall bladder. That’s my point.

Sure. You might be able to “cleanse” it. But if you’re prone to painful stones, THEY COME BACK.

OK, now I’m getting concerned. I had previously asked Is the gall bladder the new appendix? and the consensus seemed that high-fat diets, less invasive surgical options, and the aging social demographic are why I’m hearing more about gall bladder surgery than appendectomies.

I am curious whether anyone has knowledge of studies about different types of dietary fats: saturated, unsaturated (poly- and mono-) and trans fats and their impact on the gall bladder. My diet is not low-fat, but we buy most of our produce, dairy, and proteins from local farmers, preferring free-range and organic whenever possible. I rarely eat processed foods and we’ve even started making our own breads and pastas. Does Tge type of fat seem to have an effect?

@hearkat

I wonder if it’s more natural selection. Once upon a time, if you had a gallbladder that didn’t function properly, and got inflamed and infected, you’d just die.

Now we can remove a bad gallbladder, and you can go on to live and bear children who bear the gene for bum gallbladders. It seems to follow the X chromosome. Every woman in my family for at least five generations has had a cholecystectomy in her 20s or 30s. If I have a daughter, she’ll probably have hers out too.

And by the way, cleansing out giant gallstones is incredibly painful, and may lead to a bile duct obstruction. Which can kill you.

@Seek_Kolinahr Yep, they can, but that’s why you keep doing it. I have a friend who does, and his gall bladder and liver were in terrible shape. You can heal from it. I have learned not to believe everything my doctors tell me. Actually I have learned to QUESTION everything they tell me.

As for having stones stuck in the bile duct, I’ve been there too.

Three years of fighting was more than enough for me. No desire to do another 20.

Spent Friday, December 7th in the hospital, four tiny scars, I was back to work on Monday, and was fully able to partake in dinner and eggnog by Christmas.

Cleanse, schmeanse.

OFF WITH HER GALL BLADDER!

Thanks guys. I swear, both of my girls have had more medical “problems” in their short life than I’ve had in all of mine.

You are still young, seek. I’ll check in with you in 20 or 30 years to see if you still think the same way. To each his own.

Ah, the rearing, ugly head of ageism. Amazing that I still have to deal with it at nearly 30 years old.

Ha!

@Seek_Kolinahr the problem is that if you have nowhere to store bile and your liver produces too much there is nowhere for it to go and often just spills into the digestive system. The results aren’t pretty. ;)
Again, I know people who have felt much better without their gallbladder, and I know (and am someone) who have had a rough time without it. I’m not suggesting one is right and one is wrong, perhaps only that it’s not a cookie cutter solution. Not that I think you were saying that, I just wanted to clarify that although my gallbladder wasn’t making my bile, it has had a significant effect on my ability to properly digest food since it was taken out. (I’m 31.)

Because we used to be hunters and gathers alternating between porkfests and starvation.

So what did the gall bladder do?

I think this article will help

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile

”... aids the process of digestion of lipids in the small intestine. In many species, bile is stored in the gallbladder and upon eating is discharged into the duodenum.”

BTW..we’re still hunter gatherers. And some people face feast and famine.

You mean gathering packed food from grocery stores…

Yes. Most of us don’t actively hunt, or gather, but we have the same diet as our ancestors did, so we should still have the same physiology.

@Dutchess_III – No, we don’t have the same diet. Agriculture isn’t used by hunters and gathers. This means more fat and fewer carbs. And it also means days of starvation and days of porkfests.

What do you think they gathered when they were gathering, @mattbrowne? Fruits and veggies. They may not have cultivated them, but it’s basically the same foods that we cultivate today.
And I understand the feast and famine….and there are still nations in the world that have to go through that horrible cycle.

No, not the same diet over the course of months and years. First, food became less diverse (like mainly corn). Second, agriculture involves selective breeding. This changes plants and animals.

I understand, but they are still plants and animals with the same nutritional properties that they’ve always had. And I disagree that it became less diverse. We have access to foods indigenous to other countries, like bananas and chocolate, that we didn’t have earlier in our history.

Not to mention the 80 different kinds of cabbage we’ve unnaturally selected over the last several thousand years.

That chart missed one type of Kale Cabbage. I fixed it.

OMG!! It’s been GM’d!

Haha, it also leaves out brussels sprouts and bok choy, and a bunch of others.

So many people don’t understand that the “natural” food that they insist is so good for you isn’t the kind of “natural” foods they think. Even if they grow their own gardens, the seeds they use have been modified far from it’s original plant.

Confession time!

I hang out with some real crunchy granola chicks in a local parenting group sometimes. We all get our kids together to play, and we all bring snacks.

If anyone ever asks “Is that organic?” my brain goes: “Apple slices? Cheese? Crackers? Yep, all carbon-based.” and my mouth says “Yes, 100% organic. All of it.”

Ha ha ha ha ha… Hasn’t killed any of ‘em yet.

Ha ha! A friend was telling me how she uses a hand sanitizer that’s “all natural”
I said, “Hm. Thyme Oil?”
“Yes! All natural. Doesn’t have any chemicals in it!”
So I posted this from Wiki: “Thymol (also known as 2-isopropyl-5-methylphenol, IPMP) is a natural monoterpene phenol derivative of cymene, C10H14O, isomeric with carvacrol, found in oil of thyme, and extracted from Thymus vulgaris (common thyme) and various other kinds of plants as a white crystalline substance of a pleasant aromatic odor and strong antiseptic properties.”

She said…“WHAT????”

We were just talking about this and I’m sure you already saw this, but it just….I just shake my head over the fads.

@Dutchess_III – Take a look at this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet and then compare the nutritional properties to today’s diets.

So far I’m seeing that they ate the same things that we do with the exception of dairy prducts and processed sugar and oils: ”Centered on commonly available modern foods, the “contemporary” Paleolithic diet consists mainly of fish, grass-fed pasture raised meats, eggs, vegetables, fruit, fungi, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, refined salt, refined sugar, and processed oils.[1][3][4]*

Wait…we ate nuts but not legumes? I thought nuts were legumes. Am I missing something?

Also, I don’t see why grains wouldn’t be a part of their diet.

For what its worth, my first gallbladder attack happened while I had when test-driving the paleo-diet for a month. Just one more reason I’m glad to live in this century. I’d have been naturally selected right out of the gene pool.

@Dutchess_III – grains as we know them didn’t exist in hunter-gatherer times. We artificially selected corn, barley, rice and wheat and the like. Cereals don’t “want” to be eaten, like fruit does.

LOL @Seek_Kolinahr—now we just go to Fluther to determine if we’re worthy to exisit. :)

Yes, I know that grains as we know them today didn’t exist. But the original grains / grasses that we started with did. Why wouldn’t they have eaten them? Why would we have even selected them to modify if they weren’t eating them to begin with? Other animals, deer, gazelle, etc. ate them. Good stuff, Maynard.

Why wouldn’t they have eaten them? Because all these high-carb grains were hard to find and also much smaller, while berries and nuts were more plentiful. Only agriculture and the selective breeding approach made high-carb grains more common.

Hard to find? Grass was hard to find? Maybe we need a geographical point and a time here. If you’re talking 10,000 years ago, on the North American continent, grass was / is uber plentiful. It’s taken over my yard, in fact. :)

Yes, hard to find. There are numerous grass species. Cereal (corn, wheat, oats) etc. come from a particular sort of grass, called poaceae. Only through cultivation did these become widespread and high in carbohydrates. Grass was present on the North American continent during the hunter gatherer time, but not the right one. Grass as such is plentiful, yes. Cows eat it. You and I don’t.

‘The first cereal grains were domesticated about 12,000 years ago by ancient farming communities in the Fertile Crescent region. Emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley were three of the so-called Neolithic founder crops in the development of agriculture. The name comes from the word “Ceres”, the Roman goddess of the harvest.’

There’s more evidence from archeological findings. Human teeth dating back 12,000 years and more show less dental caries, than younger ones.

That’s because they only lived to be about 25, 30 years old 12,000 years ago! Could also be due to the lack of abundant sugar. I wouldn’t think that grindage would cause less cavities.

Again, I ask, why would they domesticate something they weren’t already eating? Also, corn grew wild in the Americas. The meso Americans domesticated that starting about 7000 years ago.

@Dutchess_III Desperation, mostly. Do you know how long it takes to grow a fruit tree, as opposed to a field of wheat?

Well, I think the discussion turned to pre-domestic times. So, if they even had fruit, it can be assumed the trees were mature and they just came upon it. Perhaps they camped there for a while until all the fruit was gone and went back there the following year.