Your gallbladder, a small sac nestled under your liver, stores bile, which is essential for digesting fats. If a bile duct gets blocked or infected, it can cause painful inflammation. This is often due to gallstones, which are hard deposits made of cholesterol, bilirubin, and calcium.
These gallstones can form in the cystic duct, which connects your gallbladder to the bile duct leading to your small intestine. While gallstones might not always cause symptoms, they can cause pain during an attack. Sometimes, bile gets clogged, leading to similar issues, and inflammation can even occur without gallstones! The sudden, severe pain from a gallbladder attack might require immediate hospital care.
In this article, we’ll explore what your gallbladder does, what causes gallbladder attacks, what the symptoms are, what the key risk factors are, and how your diet might be linked to your gallbladder health.
Abdominal Pain
Imagine a sudden, intense pain in your upper abdomen, just below your breastbone, often on the right side. That’s a classic sign of a gallbladder attack. This pain, known as biliary colic, can last for hours and feels constant, unaffected by things like urinating or passing gas. Fatty foods often trigger it, and it can strike at any time, even when you’re sleeping. While these episodes might be infrequent, with months between them, it’s a warning sign you shouldn’t ignore. If you experience this, a blood test might reveal elevated liver enzymes, hinting at a possible blockage.
Indigestion
Gallstones can disrupt your digestion by reducing the amount of bile reaching your digestive tract. This often leads to indigestion, with complaints of gas and discomfort after meals. You might also experience biliary pain around your rib cage, sometimes radiating to your shoulder and upper back. It’s easy to mistake this for heartburn, which is why it’s crucial to get checked out if you’re experiencing this type of pain.
