Your News of the Week

Your Gallbladder: Friend or Foe?

I don't know about you, but every now and then my gallbladder will yell at me in a big way. I think that perhaps my gallbladder was born cranky and that every now and again it will remind me that it is alive and perhaps not as well as it could be. Our sac-shaped gallbladder sits just below our ribcage on the right hand side of your body. It stores and concentrates bile which is produced by the liver and it helps digest fats, squirting bile into the small intestine as needed. Bile is composed mainly of cholesterol and salts and when diseased will become thick and sludgy and then may form into hard lumps called gallstones which can range in size from golf ball to tiny grains of sand. Eventually, these can block the flow of bile from the gall bladder to the small intestine... then you're in big trouble. Continue >>