Saturday 15 November 2014

Factors that affect gallstone formation

Oral dissolution therapy

In traditional Malay medicine, people have tried taking blended juices of daun lidah jin and daun gajah beranak to help dissolve gallstones. But this may only work for small gallstones.

In modern medicine, there are 2 preps - Ursodiol (Actigall) and Chenodiol (Chenix). These medications contain bile acids that can dissolve small gallstones made of cholesterol. It may take months or years of treatment to dissolve all the gallstones.

Cholesterol gallstones form when there is an imbalance between the 3 major components of bile (biliary lipids) - cholesterol, phospholipids, and bile acids (please refer to phase diagrams).

Cholesterol gallstones are also attributed to prolonged large bowel emptying, large bowel transit time, LBTT, slow colonic transit, or prolonged intestinal transit (slow transit constipation).

So it all boils down to: