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Bile: The Body’s Fat Emulsifier

One of the liver’s main jobs is to make bile, an amazing 1 to 1½ quarts per day. The liver synthesizes bile and delivers it to the gallbladder through many tiny bile ducts. The gallbladder is the liver’s storage reservoir for bile. When you eat fat, the stomach signals the gallbladder that fat is on the way. The gallbladder in turn contracts, sending bile into the small intestine to emulsify the fats.

 

Bile Sludge: From “Bad Fats”

For many people, including children, the biliary tubing is choked with gallstones due to eating the American diet, full of fried foods and hydrogenated oils. These toxic oils stagnate the bile. Chief offenders in the diet are margarine, mayonnaise, salad dressings, and even baked foods. When you eat a cracker, it doesn’t seem like you are eating fried food, but in fact the oil in the cracker has been heated to a high temperature because it has been baked. Highly heated oils initiate destructive free radical cascades, stressing and aging the liver.

 

Normal bile is the consistency of a light oil. When the liver is subjected to dietary stress, the bile becomes thick like honey and forms sludge. This can form small clay-like balls and stones which lodge in the liver, along the biliary tract, and in the intestines.

Because of this clogging of the bile tubing, many people develop poor digestion, chronic allergies or allergic reactions such as sinus problems or hives. Often a scan or x-ray of the gallbladder shows nothing.

 

Sludges of old, sticky bile and gallstones are often not in the gallbladder, but lodged in the liver or in the bile tubing. Many stones may be too small or not calcified, making visibility on x-ray almost impossible. Ultrasound may sometimes detect uncalcified gallstones, but not always.

 

Gallstones

There are over half a dozen varieties of gallstones, most which contain cholesterol crystals. These stones can be black, red, white, green, or tan-colored. The most common is the pea-green color. As the stones grow and become more numerous, they clog the tubing, creating back pressure on the liver, causing it to make less bile. Imagine what would happen if your garden hose had marbles in it. Much less water would flow, which in turn, would decrease the ability of the hose to squirt out the marbles.

 

Bile: A Natural Parasite Killer

With gallstones, much less cholesterol leaves the body because bile flow in the small intestine is needed to precipitate excess cholesterol from the blood. As a consequence of reduced bile flow, cholesterol levels may rise, even though the person may eat a good diet. Bile is a key factor that naturally kills many pathogens, such as parasites, which commonly enter the digestive tract via food. If the bile flow weakens, the digestion becomes less efficient, paving the way for more infection.

 

Since gallstones are porous, they can pick up bacteria, cysts, viruses, and parasites that are passing through the liver. In this way, nests of infection can form, continuously burdening the body’s defense systems. The body’s immune system must fight ceaselessly to keep these harmful organisms in check. Yet the body cannot rid itself completely of the beachhead of these organisms without first purging these bile formations. Intestinal bloating and other chronic digestive problems are difficult to clear permanently without eliminating the gallstones and gallstone sludge from the liver and intestines.