Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason
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Have read through most of the thread, am hoping you find a quick and proper solution.
I did not see mention of bone broth, collagen or gelatin. Their amino acid profiles are similar and have benefits for the gut. Bone broth with simple and easy to digest ingredients would also be an additional food source.
And please excuse if it has .. but I also saw no mention of B1 Thiamine. A recent study i read also mentioned B5, B6 and B7 for fatty acid oxidation, metabolism & synthesis: Vitamin B, Role of Gut Microbiota and Gut Health (Satrio Wibowo and Almira Pramadhani).
Hope this helps!
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@BearWithMe said in Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason:
@Korven I agree something must change. Not sure if rice is the answer, though? Rice is almost devoid of nutrients. Oats, while by no means complete, have very good mineral profile. Interestingly enough, I've had intense cravings for rice noodles recently.
Whey protein powder and fruits doesn't cause obvious digestive symptoms in any quantity, but have other problems so they are not an option. Not sure what else to try. Corn maybe? I've had good experience with corn in the past
While rice has less nutrients, I still think it's superior to oatmeal since it doesn't have irritating, bacteria feeding fibre, high amounts of nickel, gluten proteins, etc. For healthy people oatmeal is fine but for people with dysbiosis or poor digestion they are a very suspect food. Interestingly I also had steatorrhea back when I ate a lot of oats. And I was depressed.
In general I believe that gut health is much more important than having a nutrient dense diet. Also you are not properly digesting and assimilating nutrients when your gut is inflamed, so in the short-term the objective should be to just find the least offensive foods, and when that is taken care of, you can worry about the overall nutrient composition of the diet.
Yes I think corn is good. Can you find a Mexican restaurant which sells 100% corn tortillas?
If you just switch the oatmeal out for rice noodles and corn tortillas I believe you will feel so much better.
What about eggs, do you tolerate those? Eggs are very nutrient dense and good for gut repair.
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@BearWithMe in my experience oats, rice, potatoes are harder to digest. Believe it or not I had most success with refined wheat as a starch. Pasta, no problem. Bread also fine. If you have not tried it is worth a shot in my opinion.
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Rice and corn seems to cause even worse symptoms than oats. Eating a meal containing rice or corn takes me very long time and is extremely exhausting. It is a chore. The nausea and stomach pain that follows is torturous and lasts forever.
The oats are a bit more compact and dense which helps a lot.
The main difference might be that oats don't soak up saliva. Foods that soaks up saliva deplete my saliva during first few bites and then I'm left with completely dry mouth, chewing and swallowing is a chore, and digestion impossible?
That might be why meats and liquid calories (fruit juices, protein powders) works the best for me?
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@BearWithMe said in Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason:
Rice and corn seems to cause even worse symptoms than oats. Eating a meal containing rice or corn takes me very long time and is extremely exhausting. It is a chore. The nausea and stomach pain that follows is torturous and lasts forever.
The oats are a bit more compact and dense which helps a lot.
The main difference might be that oats don't soak up saliva. Foods that soaks up saliva deplete my saliva during first few bites and then I'm left with completely dry mouth, chewing and swallowing is a chore, and digestion impossible?
That might be why meats and liquid calories (fruit juices, protein powders) works the best for me?
If meats and liquids “work best for” you- you would not be so symptomatic.
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@Peatful said in Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason:
If meats and liquids “work best for” you- you would not be so symptomatic.
I'm not eating any liquid food at the moment because it is destroying my teeth, as mentioned earlier in the thread. Neither oats nor rice and corn is a liquid food
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@BearWithMe said in Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason:
@Peatful said in Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason:
If meats and liquids “work best for” you- you would not be so symptomatic.
I'm not eating any liquid food at the moment because it is destroying my teeth, as mentioned earlier in the thread. Neither oats nor rice and corn is a liquid food
Missed that
Not thrilled with this forum’s layoutYour teeth being destroyed by liquid points more to your digestion and subsequent inflammation then it does the liquids per say
I still am low liquid kind of girl, because liquids aren’t necessarily easy to digest or shall I say easy on the stomach -and harder to regulate your blood sugar with liquids I found
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Is significant worsening of the symptoms something to be expected when taking borax to eradicate Candida? @CrumblingCookie
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@BearWithMe Yes wrt strong headaches and flatulence therefore go slowly. Borax breaks loose biofilm. Maybe headaches can be slightly alleviated by KCl and Mg (to increase kidney clearance and also to satisfy needs of its osteoblastic effects). Dimeticone/simeticone would help dissolve gas. And some sort of vegetable fiber to enhance bowel emptying unlesss somebody would want to go straight into a borax-enhanced salt-flush for that.
@BearWithMe said:
I'm left with completely dry mouth, chewing and swallowing is a chore
Look into acetylcholine already (B5 & choline). Hopefully you haven't been doing cyproheptadine or ketotifen or such stuff. Iodide raises secretion of exogenous glands, too.
How was the H.pylori testing, after all? -
Seems like nobody mentioned it so far: When I was unable to digest fat all I needed was to take 4000mg of Taurin and that resolved the issue. Probably not it since you said you could also not digest sugar, but maybe still worth a try.
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@CrumblingCookie Thank you very much.
I was taking 600-1000mg of alpha-gpc, 250-500mg of B5, 100-200mg of B1 and some TMG-betaine every day since early June until mid-August. I was not taking b12 because it was causing bad toothache, and I was not taking lipoic acid because it caused nausea.
My digestion deteriorated very much during that time, I'm unable to eat even 1800 kcal daily now. I don't think the deterioration is caused by the supplements, but they probably did not helped much either. Nowadays I'm too nauseous to take any supplements at all. It is strange because logically your explanation makes perfect sense. And I'm sure I'm deficient in choline. I don't know why it doesn't work.
I did not touched cyproheptadine or ketotifen (or any similar substance) as an adult. I started receiving asthma medication when I was 5 years old, I didn't know what I'm receiving back then and neither did my parents. I changed doctors very often and they always changed my medication so I might have received cyproheptadine or ketotifen at some point.
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GABA, while being great for sleep, made my digestion much worse btw. It went away shortly after stopping the supplementation
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A huge chunk of my molar just crumbled and fell apart after just 5 days of boron supplementation. I've had similar reaction to other forms of boron supplements (glycinate) in the past. Will have to get the prescription for Nystatin, or obtain the medicine by other means
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@BearWithMe said:
A huge chunk of my molar just crumbled and fell apart
That's not normal. Maybe it's time to up your scope before any more dabbling and to get an abdominal MRI to look for structural constrictions or masses and also your plasma levels of Ca, PTH, CT and a GI hormones panel at a specialized clinic.
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@CrumblingCookie My plasma level of Ca was elevated every time I had the test done as far back as 2014, except for the last test I did in 2024. My intact PTH was 2,87 pmol/l (or 27 pg/mL) in 2023. Not sure what CT means in this context, is this possibly a typo?
Can very bad case of pectus excavatum create a structural constriction in GI tract? Also I suspect I have hiatal hernia, but my digestive issues most likely predate the hernia
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@BearWithMe Sorry that the rice and corn didn't work out for you. Did you also try rice noodles? In the past I've noticed huge difference in digestibility between rice - which wouldn't digest well at all - and rice noodles which were very easy to digest. It's a denser carb source and doesn't have as much water.
You've had high blood calcium levels since 2014? That would explain the teeth crumbling situation.... probably not primary hyperparathyroidism though if your PTH is on the low end. What have your vitamin D levels been during this period? And you might've mentioned it already, but have you gotten screened for celiac? In celiac disease you malabsorb vitamin D which then causes secondary hyperparathyroidism and consequent bone loss (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/486428?). It's part of the reason why I think oats are such a sketchy food since they contain gluten proteins.
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@Korven
Vitamin D (25-OH)
June 2017: 39,2 nmol/l
June 2024: 133,4 nmol/lI was supplementing D sublingually in 2024 and also getting plenty of sunlight so the results are not a proof of good vitamin D absorbtion. But they do suggest that lack of vitamin D is likely not the cause of teeth crumbling. I was not screened for celiac disease.
I did not try rice noodles yet but I absolutely should do it as soon as possible.
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@BearWithMe Hmm okay.
Your blood calcium was normal in 2024 after you supplemented vitamin D, right? That points to it being a case of secondary hyperparathyroidism, i.e. deficiency of vitamin D3 and/or calcium.
I am a bit surprised that your doctor never tested you for gluten intolerance. I am probably a bit biased since gluten is very bad for me, but celiac disease could explain many if not all your symptoms. The problem is that you have to eat gluten on a daily basis before getting the tests done, otherwise you won't necessarily see the intestinal damage and you get a false negative.
Edit: I would also like to add that if you had high blood calcium, low'ish vitamin D and potentially high PTH (it can fluctuate and sometimes you get a low-mid PTH reading while it's actually elevated) during the years 2014-2023, that might certainly have contributed to your poor dental health. There is a lot of calcium stored in bones and it can take years before the effects of a calcium/vitamin D deficiency show themselves.
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@BearWithMe, no need to respond, but just something to consider if you haven’t explored it yet—thyroid function. You may already know all of this, but just in case you don’t, since the thyroid/parathyroid glands are the main glands involved in calcium metabolism and connective tissue integrity, dry skin, herniations, broken teeth/bone loss, structural deformities, depression, exhaustion, heat and/or cold intolerance, and even poor peristalsis (resulting in dysbiosis/overgrowths, reflux etc.) and dehydration (the thyroid and adrenals, being the main power sources of the body, work in concert with each other to control peristalsis and electrolyte balance) are some of the many symptoms of poor thyroid function. I find the most accurate diagnostics to be:
• Temps—taken first thing in the morning, midday and 20–30 minute after eating, including temps of extremities (feet, hands, nose and ears)
• Pulse rate
• Achilles tendon reflex test—there are videos on YouTube showing how to perform it if your doctor won’t
• Evaporation rate/metabolic rate—total fluids consumed and eliminated via sweat vs urine in a 24 hour periodIf thyroid supplementation is needed, it can temporarily make one sensitive to the adrenaline that was compensating for the lack of thyroid hormone so heart palpitations, shortness of breath, overheating and anxiety, basically, what is often mistaken for hyperthyroid symptoms, are common, in which case taking magnesium at the same time can be helpful to reduce symptoms as the thyroid and adrenals adjust. When finding a proper dose, I increase or decrease it by 1/4 grain (or the equivalent dose of synthetic) every two weeks, checking my temps and pulse rate. If taking a natural thyroid glandular/NDT it should be standardized to be most effective.
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@BearWithMe said:
what CT means in this context
Calcitonin, in the context of (GI) hormones.
Running celiac diagnostics makes sense.
