You might already know that an expanding waistline has a strong connection to heart disease, but did you also know that it ups your risk for gallstones, too? Well, it’s true!
The gallbladder sits below your liver. This often unappreciated organ has an important role in digestion. Let’s review: The liver manufactures bile — a substance required for digestion — which is then stored in the gallbladder. When the body needs to digest fat, the gallbladder pushes the bile into a duct that carries it to the small intestine, where it goes to work.
One of the components of bile is cholesterol; too much of this and the gallbladder will develop one type of gallstone: the cholesterol stone. These hardened pieces of cholesterol can vary greatly in size and number and, therefore, they might either be harmless or they could do a lot of damage.
Gallstones can clog up the organ’s ducts, thus impeding the flow of bile. This blocked bile can cause the ducts, the gallbladder, or the liver to become inflamed. This situation could also have a ripple effect on the pancreas, leading to gallstone pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas caused by a migrating gallstone). It’s important to know that if the gallstones block these areas for a long period of time, the aforementioned organs can be badly damaged or become infected. If you experience these symptoms, see a doctor immediately: fever, jaundice (yellowish tint to your eyes or skin), and clay-colored stool.
Less urgent warning signs of problematic gallstones include nausea, persistent pain in the upper abdomen, pain between your shoulder blades or under your right shoulder, gas, and frequent intolerance to fatty foods. I may say “less urgent,” but you should still see a doctor as soon as you can if you are experiencing any of these symptoms. The most common treatment for problematic gallstones is surgery, or, more specifically, a cholecystectomy.
But wouldn’t it be better just to prevent the whole situation in the first place? Well, that’s where a recent study comes in.
The study, published on-line by the journal Gut, was based on data taken from more than 42,000 women who were part of the famous Nurses’ Health Study. The gallstone study looked at women who were aged 39 to 66 at its outset, in 1986, and who did not have gallstones at the time. Information evaluated included waist and hip measurements, and detailed food habit information. The women were monitored until the year 2000.
The results were conclusive: The women with larger waistlines — 36 inches or over — faced twice the risk of developing gallstones that required surgical removal than women with waistlines at or under 26 inches did. When the researchers looked at hip-to-waist ratio (waist size divided by hip size), they found that women with the higher numbers (ratio of 0.86 versus 0.70) had a 40% greater chance of developing the same problem.
Okay, so the bigger a woman’s middle section the more likely she is to suffer from gallstones. But why is this? The researchers theorize that it’s because the fat in this area of your body is more involved in the process of metabolism, which basically means that more cholesterol can make its way into the liver and then the gallbladder. Going to back to our earlier review, we know that too much cholesterol can cause a buildup of gallstones.
This finding is important, as it shows that the size of your waistline can function as a warning sign for gallstones. Even more importantly, it gives us another reason to cut down on the amount of cholesterol and saturated fat in our diets (as if heart disease weren’t enough!). As we can see, the effects of overeating, choosing the wrong foods, and not being active are far reaching — and painful!
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Tags: Diets, liver
