gallbladder issues

[nald1]

Hi - I am 30 weeks pregnant and vegetarian (I have had some fish this pregnancy).  i have developed a weird gallbladder irritation and am looking for any advice I can get!  Everything I find says to eat the way I do (lots of produce/organic, whole grains, tons of h2o, low fat protein sources, and healthy fats)  I cant figure out 'why me?"  - any suggestions welcome :)

[catnip]

Getting all the animal fat out of my diet and being very sparing in my consumption of plant fats helps a lot. As long as I stay away from coconut oil, palm oil, hydrogenated oil and fried foods, I avoid gall-bladder flareups.

[nald1]

does that include eggs?  That's pretty much the only animal fat i can think of that I consume...

[mumkimum]

For me, making sure that I'm really being moderate with what I eat (no eggs every day or anything else everyday, skipping or cutting back on coffee, no lots of pizza or pasta several days in a row and esp. limiting overeating) and especially with anything that seems to be a trigger helps.  I personally find I need to limit water too.  Small meals more often.

Keeping notes on what you eat/when/etc. is really helpful for these types of problems.

This site has been helpful to me for finding some new foods to add in or make sure I include (flaxseed seems to really help me when I take it regularly, for example). 

[catnip]

I don't eat eggs, no. I literally was discussing surgery scheduling, cut out eggs, dairy and fried foods and have gone from incapacitated with pain 3-4 nights a week to flare ups once in a great while, usually when I indulge in something that I shouldn't. I've been doing well as long as I'm careful what I eat, for 5 years now.

[nald1]

good to know- I tried so hard to ADD eggs this pregnancy since id read so much about the benefits- eating can get so confusing!!!!  Im doing great adding beets and a beet-based supplement to my diet.  I am hoping to try adding flax seed oil as well..

[sunnygir1]

I had gallbladder trouble during both my pregnancies.  A fasting ultrasound my first pregnancy showed no stones, enlargement, thickening of the wall, or any other issues with my gallbladder.  My pain went away immediately after the births of my children.

The best success I had controlling the pain was to follow the blood type diet -- I'm type A.  A sister of a friend recommended it -- she is a naturopath or something along those lines.  The diet didn't completely fix the problem during pregnancy, but it helped a lot.

Although I don't have pain (maybe a twinge here or there) when I'm not pregnant, I plat to do some gallbladder cleansing diets as soon as my son is finished breastfeeding.  I'm not vegetarian, but I try to limit my meat and fried food intake so as not to exacerbate any imbalance I have.

[sunnygir1]

I also found that drinking plenty of water, lemon water in the morning, and drinking a tonic of apple cider vinegar and honey (if you do honey) in water throughout the day helped a lot.

The vinegar and honey drink is very refreshing, just mix a little honey in warm water and add cider vinegar and refrigerate it -- I used equal amounts of honey and cider vinegar and watered it down until it tasted good to me; I didn't like it too strong.  It won't help if you don't drink it because it doesn't taste good!

[nald1]

I looked into my blood type- O pos- and it looks like i should be a meat eater!!!!  Im not up for that

[sunnygir1]

Originally Posted by nald1 

I looked into my blood type- O pos- and it looks like i should be a meat eater!!!!  Im not up for that

Yeah, the type A blood type diet is great for gallbladder, but it seems like type O might make it worse.

You could check out the book Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pichford.  He has a gallbladder cleansing diet, which I wouldn't do while pregnant or breastfeeding, but it could give you some good guidelines about which foods to avoid and which foods to increase/add in.

Here's a tea that also really helped me.  It was most helpful when I could harvest fresh herbs to make it every few days, but it still helped with dried herbs.  I drank several cups a day (these are all pretty mild herbs).

burdock root -- slice and simmer, then add to a brewed tea of:

chamomile flowers

red raspberry leaf

wild catnip

[Comtessa]

Originally Posted by sunnygir1 

I had gallbladder trouble during both my pregnancies.  A fasting ultrasound my first pregnancy showed no stones, enlargement, thickening of the wall, or any other issues with my gallbladder.  My pain went away immediately after the births of my children.

 

Me too, exactly, with both pregnancies.  Didn't diagnose it 'til my second -- would have saved myself a lot of pain the first time around if I'd realized what it was!  IT seems to be linked to pregnancy, exclusively, for me. 

MDC helped me a TON with diet suggestions and ideas -- I don't think I'd have made it otherwise!!! 

Here are some things that helped me:

- green vegetables were the only food that didn't cause a reaction, for a while.  Spinach, dandelion, parsley, and beet greens were the best.  I cut out almost everything BUT lots of green veggies and whole grains for a couple of weeks.  This made a BIG difference in how I felt, and cleansed my system enough that I was able to add a few things back in afterwards. 

- Sparing amounts of olive oil were OK for me, but other fats were off-limits, especially butter.  Dairy fats in general were really problematic. 

- I ate TONS of avocado.  The raw choco-nana pudding recipe in a recent issue of Mothering was particularly fabulous while I was struggling with gallbladder stuff.  Avocado seemed to be one of the few fatty foods that my body could handle.  Some people can do nut butters, but those caused problems for me, too.

- lots of whole grains

- I had to go off caffeine altogether.  I could have decaf coffee, and even an occasional cup of "real" coffee, once I had the gallbladder reactions more or less under control.  I couldn't do more than one cup every few days, though, without problems.

- I cut out all dairy for a while; after a couple of weeks I was able to add back in sparing amounts of skim milk and nonfat yogurt. 

- Grated raw beets with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  Tons of them.  I really like beets, so this was OK with me. 

- Spoonfuls of horseradish seemed to help calm flare-ups.  I don't recommend this unless you really, really like horseradish (I do, so it was great). 

- I cut way down on my sugar consumption.  This was depressing, but it helped a lot. 

- I went completely off fried foods -- they caused me absolute misery.

- I had eggs maybe once a week.  More than that was too much.  Egg whites were OK, though; you may want to consider that if you want to eat eggs for the protein.  It's really the fat in the yolks that seems to trigger gallbladder reactions for most folks. 

- spicy food, though it's a trigger for lots of people, was mostly OK for me, thank heaven (we eat REALLY spicy around here), but tomatoes caused a bad reaction -- so I eliminated tomatoes, especially sauces and salsas. 

I was totally depressed by some of the things I had to give up, but it did make a really big difference in my energy levels and overall feeling of well-being.  I was astonished by how much better I felt when I was really strict with my diet.  And, thank heaven, once the baby was born the gallbladder trouble seems to have gone away again. 

The surprising good news in all of this?  The low-fat gallbladder diet meant I gained a really minimal amount of pregnancy weight, so it was very easy to lose the weight after DS was born.  :-)