Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason

CrumblingCookie

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.

As for GI hormones my initial thought would be to check for elevated somatostatin (constipation, lack of motility, steatorrhea; pancreatic and reciprocal gastric dysfunction). In the US they typically run a complete GI hormones panel which includes SST but it's more selective and specialized in other places. Weirdly, the symptomatic treatment for SSTomas is the SST-analogon octreotide, due to a high affinity to SST autoreceptors. You'd be a 1 in 40 millions /year case with that. Anatomically, surgical removal of such neuroendocrine tumors are far from elegant. Clearly it's better to not have one. I'd work my way forward by exluding possible causes step by step. Not sure what your state of insurance and medical services provision is like where you are (Eastern Europe). At this point I would try to (also) get a contrast-enhanced full abdominal MRI without further deferral.

CrumblingCookie

@BearWithMe
Any updates about this whole conundrum?

BearWithMe

@CrumblingCookie Thank you very much for asking! You are very kind.

I'm eating over 2800 kcal, 460g of sugar, 110g of protein, 50g of fat, consistently, every day. On some days, I eat over 3100 kcal and 500g of sugar.

I have gained some weight, but my weight gain is very slow considering my caloric intake; +2kg / 4.4 lbs after 6 months of ≈3000 kcal diet and almost no physical activity.

My digestive discomfort and overall exhaustion is probably worse than ever.

I'm currently experimenting with @user1's dates and soursop diet, supplemented by plenty of organ meat for protein, copper and iron. It is too soon to judge the effects as I started just 30 days ago, but my digestion is better on the days I eat soursop. It is definitely doing something.

I haven't done the GI hormones panel because no lab in my country does it, and no lab in my conutry tests somatostatin. Even places that focus solely on hormonal testing are not testing gastric hormones

user1

@BearWithMe wich organs? Do you eat a lot of salt?

BearWithMe

@user1 Chicken heart and liver, occasionally turkey heart and liver and beef heart and liver. I'm using salt sparingly

BearWithMe

@user1 Lamb meat is prohibitively expensive. I thought that chicken and turkey organ meat might be second best, or second least bad. But I might be wrong.

My salt intake is under 1g daily. I'm trying to keep it low-ish to avoid calcium wasting, but I might be wrong again beause salt might be necessary for stomach HCL production.

Gardner

@BearWithMe said in Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason:

salt might be necessary for stomach HCL production

I don't add any salt now and cook food myself with no salt. My blood levels of CL are always showing in higher range. If I add salt my stomach feels irrtated or inflamed , it rather hinders stomach HCL production.
But a bit of pickles with a teaspoon of brine can be very helpful occasionally .

BearWithMe

So I was increasing the dose of soursop until it started causing diarrhea. Then I backed off a little bit. I'm still taking this dose.

The volume of my poop significantly decreased. I think I'm pooping maybe 30% of the volume I'm eating. Before it felt like I'm pooping 130% of the volume I'm eating. This change cannot be explained by increased pooping frequency. The quality of my poop also improved quite a bit.

I have gained another 2kg / 4.4 lbs in approx. 2 months and now I'm the heaviest I have been since 2007. I need only 5 more kilograms / 11 lbs to have optimal BMI. My personal goal is 10 more kilograms.

The soursop made me constantly hungry and signigicantly improved my digestive comfort when eating dates and lean meat. I still can't digest anything but dates, lean meat and maybe bananas, though.

Also, my sun intolerance got significantly worse than it was last year. Yesterday I spent one hour in the sun and I'm still totally incapacitated 24 hours later.

BearWithMe

My teeth-crumbling problem got worse too. Seems like the two are correlated.

But my BMI is actually 18.01 now, so I need only 2kg / 4.4 lbs more to be in the Healthy Weight Range

CrumblingCookie

That's bad news.

~~Do you reckon your PTH of 2,87 pmol/l (or 27 pg/mL) may be too low, i.e. dysfunctionally low?~~
Also, as Korven said, PTH can be highly variable. Had measurents of 40 and 90 pg/ml just seven days apart (which are both too high).
PTH's complexely interrelated with fat malabsorption and liver and gallbladder secretory functioning if you look at that study I dug up:
https://bioenergetic.forum/topic/3503/bile-can-serve-as-a-reservoir-for-funghi-making-them-harder-to-treat/58#

BearWithMe

@CrumblingCookie Should I have my PTH tested again?

CrumblingCookie

Never mind, my effort to think was flawed. With elevated serum calcium you cannot have any hypoparathyroidism.
Still, there's some weird connection between calcium deficiency, fat malabsorption, yeast growth.

BearWithMe

@CrumblingCookie I was surprised my PTH is so low because my symptoms and clinical findings (hypercalcemia, hypophosphatemia) exactly match those of hyperparathyroidism, minus the low PTH of course.

Should I have the PTH tested again?

Yesterday, I tried adding blackstrap molasses to my diet, because it seemed like a great source of calcium and some other important nutrients. Today, my breath smells like a corpse, and the swelling in my mouth is so bad it changes my facial structure... I expect some teeth to chip or crumble soon. The molasses contain too much magnesium I think.

Magnesium, B1, B3, thyroid hormones and androgens are the bane of my existence and I need to deliberately keep these depleted to save the last remnants of my teeth

BearWithMe

@CrumblingCookie Is it possible that PTH of 2,87 pmol/l (27 pg/mL) is actually a proof of hyperparathyroidism in the presence of hypercalcemia?

BearWithMe

Maybe I should take plenty of magnesium, B1, B3, thyroid hormones and androgens to trigger very bad teeth-crumbling and then have my PTH, calcium and phosphorus checked?

BearWithMe

Calcium deficiency is very likely because between 2010 and 2018 my diet was almost devoid of calcium. But why is it impossible to correct? No amount of milk, bone meal, calcium carbonate, lactate or citrate over prolonged periods of time seems to help.

BearWithMe

My digestion is too screwed up to absorb calcium but it needs calcium to be fixed?

user1

@BearWithMe said in Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason:

Calcium deficiency is very likely because between 2010 and 2018 my diet was almost devoid of calcium. But why is it impossible to correct? No amount of milk, bone meal, calcium carbonate, lactate or citrate over prolonged periods of time seems to help.

Milk even raw milk alone isnt necessary pro teeth, it can worsen it, you could be laking selenium, molybdenum, manganese. I suggest dont eat any beef liver.i suggest reduce table sugar/added sugar to 0 if you eat any.Have you been avoiding fish all these years?

user1

@BearWithMe said in Mysterious gallbladder disease - can't digest fat for no apparent reason:

Maybe I should take plenty of magnesium, B1, B3, thyroid hormones and androgens to trigger very bad teeth-crumbling and then have my PTH, calcium and phosphorus checked?

I suggest no you should not

BearWithMe

@user1 Yes, beef liver is very bad for my teeth. I wanted to replace table sugar with molasses, but I will just drop the sugar altogether and eat more dates instead. It might be 30 years since the last time I ate fish.