“Hello all. Thanks for the comments here which I hit with a search to find a solution to this problem. The frequent mentioning that you have already asked doctors about this and came up empty is not encouraging.
I had mine out 6 years ago. I asked a co-worker at the time what the effects were of losing a gall bladder, and the answer was that unless she ate a big breakfast, she would get diarrhea, so she smiled and said “”so I eat a big breakfast!”” 🙂 She was a little on the heavy side and this obviously was not punishment to her.
I have always experienced the same as all of you, but a few comments threw me off, such as there is less bile than before. My basic reasoning is that the gall bladder stored bile, and without the storage it is going directly on into the stomach. The less food is eaten, the more bile accumulates, so that when anything hits the stomach, the **** hits the fan, figuratively, literally, etc.
My experience has been that this is almost calcuable based on time since last eating. There was advice on eating frequently and in small amounts, which was good but I think it’s a little bit more accurate to say eat normal sized portions frequently rather than a big meal infrequently. It is ironic that the very act of delaying from eating out of fear of the results is the cause of the results. Eating frequently keeps the bile used up and results in normal bowel movements, in my experience.
I also had concluded from past experience that heavy foods, such as steak, were best at keeping the system moving normally. I now see from these posts that bile is used on fatty meats and fried foods. My advice is the opposite of some of the above. Eat normally and every few hours, and the bile will be used up as it is created. You will have as normal a digestive system as before, without the gall bladder attacks, which I agree with one writer above, I thought I was going to die before going to ER and into surgery, after years of attacks that I thought were gas related because my stomach was swelled up so hard. But of course that was a response to the severe pain underneath emanating from the gall bladder and not gas related at all.
For various reasons, I haven’t had the time for the past three days to eat enough, and now have non-painful diarrhea, or a purely water based bowel movement, if you will, for the last two or three days. Partly I want to shrink my stomach, and I am willing to deal with this side effect in the process. The stomach has shrunk down quite a bit ove the last three days as I ate very minimally, but I was hoping to find a bile nullifier other than heavy foods as a permanent solution. Believe me, I was quite shocked to find that doctors are so clueless on this subject. I am just conjecturing based on experience, and the key is whether bile is generated as a result of eating foods that require it for digestion, therefore a diet avoiding the foods mentioned in previous posts would skirt around the problem somewhat, or whether bile is produced steadily and must be used up and flushed out before it accumulates. The fact that a gall bladder stored bile for use when food arrived for digestion suggests to me that it is produced ahead of time and is now sitting in the stomach instead of the gall bladder, producing the undesirable diarreah. Speaking of which, as I type this, I can attest that the stomach will continue to churn away on nothing and produce more watery output even when absolutely nothing is eaten or drunk in the last 15 hours. Sorry, gotta go! 🙂
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