What Causes Gallstones?

An estimated 10-15% of adults in the United States have gallstones, but only about one in five people with gallstones ever needs treatment. If a gallstone does cause symptoms, though, you’ll know it — the pain in your upper abdomen is often sudden and severe, and it’s frequently accompanied by nausea, sweating, and fever.

At North Tarrant Health Providers in Fort Worth, Texas, Balaguru Sambandam, MD, FACS, treats problematic gallstones with minimally invasive gallbladder surgery. Read on as Dr. Sambandam explains what causes gallstones — and what you can do about them.

What are gallstones?

When you eat a meal, your body starts working behind the scenes. One of the vital functions it performs is to digest your food to make good use of the nutrients it contains. To help with this, your liver produces a fluid called bile that helps digest dietary fats. Bile is stored in your gallbladder and transported to your small intestine through bile ducts.

Gallstones are hardened pieces of bile that form in your gallbladder or bile ducts. They form as sediment from your bile collects and crystallizes. 

Most of the time, gallstones don’t cause problems and you don’t even know you have them. Problems can occur, though, if they travel through a bile duct and get stuck. They can also grow over time, which can make them more likely to get caught in a narrow space like a duct or the neck of the gallbladder.

Once a gallstone is stuck, pain begins. Gallstone pain is often referred, meaning that you feel it in a different place than where it started, such as your arm or shoulder.

What causes gallstones?

Gallstones typically form when one of the ingredients in bile is present in excess. The extra ingredient then turns to sediment that gathers and hardens into stones.

This can happen when you have excess cholesterol and bilirubin, if you don’t have enough bile acids, or if you have gallbladder stasis, which means your gallbladder isn’t moving bile through your ducts effectively, causing sediment to form.

Gallstone risk factors include age (the older you are, the more likely gallstones are), gender (women are two to three times as likely as men to get them), and weight (weighing too much or losing weight too quickly can trigger gallstone formation).

How do you treat gallstones?

If you never experience gallbladder “attack” symptoms, you won’t need treatment. But once a gallstone has caused a blockage, you’re likely to have more, so there’s only one effective solution: gallbladder removal. This is one of the most common surgeries in the United States — more than one million of these procedures are done every year.

If you suspect you may be dealing with gallstones, North Tarrant Health Providers in Fort Worth, Texas, can help. Give us a call at 817-904-4165 today, or use our online scheduling tool to book an appointment at your convenience.