Gallbladder: Digesting Fats

Intro to Your Gallbladder

The next action stage in the digestive process, as the well-chewed food particles wind their way into the small intestine, is to get a “squirt” from your gallbladder.

The gallbladder stores the digestive enzymes (produced by the liver) that digest the fats you eat. These bile acids dissolve the fats from food into the watery contents of the intestine, much like detergents that dissolve grease in a frying pan.

After the fat is dissolved, enzymes from your pancreas and the lining of your small intestine continue the further break down of fat particles.

The gallbladder is a small, pear shaped storage sac tucked behind and under the liver. The liver fills the gallbladder with a greenish-yellow fluid called bile. The bile is secreted by cells in the liver and stored in the gallbladder between meals.

The presence of fat in food signals the gallbladder to squirt its contents to further break down what you have eaten. The bile travels through a small tube called the bile duct, which joins another small tube (the pancreatic duct) to create the “common bile” duct. From there the bile empties into the small intestine where it mixes with and digests the fat in food.

Why the Digestive Awareness Diet Doesn’t Worry About the Liver

In many diet books, the attention is focused on the liver as the major digestive organ that detoxifies and defends your body against your body against the many drugs, toxins and environmental insults that we face. Many experts consider the liver to be the primary defensive organ in fighting disease, and the organ that is most likely to cause serious health problems when it begins to fail.

Although this may be true on the surface, in terms of The Digestive Awareness Diet, the liver is a second stage digester because the actions of the liver take place on the digested particles of food after they have been pre-processed in the small intestine.

The cleansing action of the liver occurs on the particles of food that have already been absorbed through the walls of the small intestine. These microscopic particles are carried to the liver via a special blood vessel and only then does the liver do its job of further breakdown actions and straining out impurities.

The liver is crucial to life, but the primary function of the liver as pertains to the Digestive Awareness Diet is to produce bile, which is secreted directly into the digestive tube.

We need to make sure the gallbladder can to do its job properly; thus ensuring that the liver will be able to do its critical and important functions.

What Are Some Symptoms Associated with the Gall Bladder?

Gallbladder problems usually begin as a generalized discomfort with digestion. The symptoms are typically on the right side of the body, under the rib cage, or in the right side neck and mid-back. These can be similar in style to the pancreas symptoms, only on the right side.

Gallbladder symptoms usually take place soon after finishing a meal, especially if there is a high fat content or takeaway (or toxic) food involved. These are the typical gallbladder symptoms in the way a patient might describe them:

• Right side discomfort after eating, usually within the first 15 minutes, but can occur later and linger for hours
• Right shoulder pain, sometimes affecting the back of the upper arm
• Right rib pain, chest pain, reflux, gas, wind, etc
• Bloated feeling after meals, especially with fatty food, pizza, sausages, etc
• A metallic taste in your mouth after eating
• Difficulty sleeping due to “stomach” (patient’s words)

If you notice anything close to these symptoms, you can be reasonably assured your Gallbladder is involved.

Brain Management For Your Gallbladder

Chewing properly and drinking diluted apple cider helps the function of the gallbladder immensely. This is because the work it must do will be much easier if the food particles aren’t too big, and the proteins are already partially digested from the actions of the stomach and pancreas.

The contents of the gallbladder will do an excellent job digesting the chyme if the preconditions are met.

This means that many people can clear up their gallbladder symptoms by simply chewing their food properly and drinking diluted apple cider vinegar before each protein meal.All the classic dietary advice, such as “don’t eat pizza, don’t eat ice cream and don’t drink alcohol,” was invented to help the gallbladder and liver survive to digest another day.

I stopped giving that advice about two years into my practice, basically because I was ignored. I can tell you with conviction however, that once you have completed a Gallbladder Flush and have consciously experienced the effects of what you typically eat, you will make better dietary adjustments than even I could recommend.

Being a witness to many of these dietary transformations by patients, without any further effort from me, became one of the founding principles of the Digestive Awareness Diet. It was obvious to me that clearing up even one station of the digestive system would give patients the necessary awareness to decide more clearly, which foods work best for themselves.

Moreover, when patients made these positive dietary changes on their own, without additional prodding from me, this became a significant milestone in their accountability.