Are Supplements Beneficial for Gallbladder Disease?

By Celeste Yarnall, PhD

Over 1/2 million people in America have their gallbladders removed every year.

The surgical removal of the gallbladder is called cholecystectomy. You might be wondering, if you are diagnosed with gallbladder disease or gallstones, whether surgical removal is absolutely necessary? What happens afterwards? Will all those uncomfortable symptoms and pain just go away now and leave you symptom free? After going the through the surgery, everybody is hoping to be pain free, gas free, bloat free, not constipated and be able to eat whatever they like. But here is the rub…you have only a 60 percent chance of that happening, because out of every 10 cholecystectomies, there will be four people who will still have symptoms.

If my situation is not life threatening and I have my doctors permission what can I do or take that will help me?

When it comes to the health of our gallbladders, I feel at this time it is important to share some information about various supplements available today to augment the dietary suggestions I offer in “Was That a Gallbladder Attack?” and “Best & Worst Foods for Gallbladder Disease.” Clinical nutrition and supplementation is extremely beneficial after utilizing the initial nutritional phase offered in the other two posts. I am going to step out of the box, head straight for the elephant in the room and be politically incorrect and actually recommend some brand names for the reader to explore. Do your own due diligence, of course but do take a look at the recommendations made here as all supplements are not created equal and that is a fact inherent in the supplement business today. Certainly the old adage of one bad apple can spoil the whole batch and make you untrusting and unwilling to explore the benefits of supplementation, which often gets its share of bad press. In some cases it is deserving but to throw the baby out with the bathwater would be a big mistake as many products have much to offer us especially when clinical nutritionists use them in their own practices. We can, through specific nutraceutical supplementation, give our bodies the building blocks to help our bodies heal themselves. The people who know these products the best, and the ones I trust the most, are the actual practitioners who use them in their own practice. These practitioners research them and offer them to their own clients and patients, and then see firsthand how they perform.

There are, as you all know, multiple sources for supplements available today and most people go to check out their local health food stores supplement departments, which in many cases do offer some great product lines, such as New Chapter, for example. But did you know that some product lines are only available through practitioners and or specific distributors and are not available in retail stores? To obtain some of these products and work with these companies directly, practitioners need to have specific credentials, or be licensed and/or have certain qualifications to obtain their products to resell to clients.

Each company sets their own criteria to obtain access to their lines in order for practitioners to be able to offer them to patients in varying clinical situations, such practitioners include: chiropractors, acupuncturists and nutritionists, etc. Two such companies that immediately come to mind, are Standard Process and Premier Research Labs. I have personally been trained on both of these lines. Some of these companies insist that you be trained through one of their recommended affiliate programs or have us work with one of their consultants before being able to have access to them and provide our clients with them. I have done this with many product lines over my 20 year tenure as a holistic nutritionist and found these courses very valuable. The presenters are often MD’s who have made the switch to alternative health care modalities. They too have seen first hand the benefits of quality supplements and how they perform vs. pharmaceuticals.

Personally I like to work with practitioners who pick and choose from the various product lines that are out there and have no prejudice as to how a product is marketed, as I do. It doesn’t matter to me, nor should it matter to anyone who claims to put their clients and patients first how a particular product is sold or marketed, as long as it is exceptional and is part of a ‘conscious commerce’ effort. When a profit is made by an individual or a company, that’s fine too as we all need to profit from our work, in order to stay in business. I do question how much profit some need to make and that is why straight retail sales from stores are my least favorite because in this type of sales, fillers, preservatives and other additives called excipients are used in these products in order to extend its shelflife but worse than that they must make room for their 100 percent or more mark up by using fillers. I was told when I formulated my first supplement product line that unless I filled my jars by a minimum of 50 percent (half full of fillers) that I would never make a profit. They were right, I never did make a profit with that line and still don’t, but that was ok as I wanted to make the best product I could as I used it myself. Fillers are just plain unacceptable in my book. We’re not paying for fillers and or smoke and mirrors. We want what is advertised on the label to actually be in the jar.