8 Foods for Gallbladder Sludge

[aliml]

8 Foods for Gallbladder Sludge

Modern-day diet can wreak havoc on digestion and gallbladder health. Learn how to reset with gallbladder-friendly food.

lifespa.com

What is Bile Sludge?​

Gallbladder removal surgery (cholecystectomy) is the number one elective abdominal surgery in America today, but problems may begin years before manifestation of biliary sludge, also known as gallbladder sludge or bile sludge.12

Bile sludge is when bile becomes thick and viscous and congests inside the gallbladder. The sludge is a collection of mucus and particulate solids—usually cholesterol crystals, calcium bilirubinate, and calcium salts.2

When bile becomes too thick, it can alter gallbladder contractibility. While bile sludge often clears up on its own, in many cases, it can linger for some time, resulting in digestive-related concerns.1,2 In one study following more than 100 patients with bile sludge for 21 months, almost 25% developed more significant liver/gallbladder concerns.

According to Ayurveda, when toxins and impurities recycle back into the liver from the intestines via the enteric cycle, digestion flow upward, rather than downward. This backflow of impurities may congest the gallbladder and bile ducts, affecting their ability to properly function.

4 Main Bile Functions​

1. Support downward movement of digestion and healthy elimination.
2. Buffer stomach acid, allowing optimal acid to break down challenging foods.
3. Emulsify fats and fat-soluble toxins.
4. Act as a Pac-Man to gobble up impurities in the liver and intestinal villi.

If any of these four functions are compromised, digestive concerns are likely to ensue.

8 Secrets to Healthy Bile Flow + Liver-Gallbladder Function​

The key to maintaining healthy bile flow and liver-gallbladder function is, of course, diet.

1. Cut Out Processed Foods + Eat More Plant-Based​

   Avoiding processed food, processed oils, trans fats, and refined sugars is supportive for healthy gallbladder function, as is a predominately plant-based diet.3

2. Eat Cholagogue-Rich Foods​

   Cholagogue-rich foods support healthy gallbladder function and bile flow. The main cholagogues are:
   • Apples
   • Artichoke
   • Beets
   • Bitter Greens
   • Celery
   • Cinnamon
   • Fennel
   • Fenugreek
   • Ginger
   • Turmeric
   • Aloe Vera Gel
   • Aloe Vera Juice
   • Barley
   • Radish
   • Cilantro
   • Pomegranate
   • Beet Greens
   • Garlic
   • Burdock Root
   • Mustard Greens
   • Kale
   • Apple Cider Vinegar
   • Balsamic Vinegar
   • Endive
   • Arugula
   • Rhubarb
   • Hibiscus
   • Turmeric
   • Red Leaf Lettuce
   • Chicory Lettuce
   • Grapefruit
   • Lemon
   • Lime
   • Olive Oil
   • Ghee

3. Beet Smoothies​

   A blend of beet, celery, apple juice, and cinnamon with breakfast daily is a great way to boost bile flow and support healthy gallbladder function.

4. Peppermint​

   Sipping peppermint tea or taking a few drops of peppermint oil in water with meals has shown to support better digestive health and gallbladder function.4

5. Raw or Cooked Beets​

   Yes, beets again. Beets are important for the liver and gallbladder. They can be raw, cooked, or grated into a salad. Studies show beets are rich in antioxidants that protect the liver and boost beneficial liver enzymes, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione.6
   Beets have also been shown to attach to bile and escort it, with gobbled-up (Pac-Manned) toxins in tow, to the toilet.7
   Learn more about the benefits of beets here.

6. Fenugreek Boost​

   Numerous studies suggest fenugreek may be one of the most powerful herbs for liver, gallbladder, and digestive health. Fenugreek works by removing cholesterol from bile and increasing bile acid concentration by almost four times.8,9

7. Cinnamon​

   The benefits of cinnamon have been praised in Ayurveda for thousands of years. The liver and pancreas are sister organs, and in 91% of the population, the bile ducts and pancreatic ducts are joined—suggesting that you cannot address one without affecting the other.10
   Cinnamon, in Ayurveda, is a scraping herb that supports detox and addresses congestion. It is well-known to support healthy blood sugar and lipid regulatory function, which depends on both healthy pancreatic and liver-gallbladder function.11

8. Beet Cleanse​

   Of course, eating bile-moving foods mentioned above is key, but if such a diet is not possible, or you feel you need a better bile flow boost, consider supplementing with LifeSpa’s Beet Cleanse. I formulated this with great success to support healthy bile flow and gallbladder function.

References​

1. Clinical Importance and Natural History of Biliary Sludge in Outpatients - PubMed
2. Biliary sludge: the sluggish gallbladder - PubMed
3. Nutritional approaches to prevention and treatment of gallstones - PubMed
4. Review article: the physiological effects and safety of peppermint oil and its efficacy in irritable bowel syndrome and other functional disorders - PubMed
5. Safe Liver and Gallbladder Cleansing eBook
6. Liver-protecting effects of table beet (Beta vulgaris var. rubra) during ischemia-reperfusion - PubMed
7. Food Chemistry. 2007, Vol.103(2):676–680, doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2006.07.056
8. Dietary fenugreek and onion attenuate cholesterol gallstone formation in lithogenic diet-fed mice - PubMed
9. Effect of dietary fenugreek seeds on biliary proteins that influence nucleation of cholesterol crystals in bile - PubMed
10. Guyton and Hall. Textbook of Medical Physiology. 12th Edition. Saunders. 2011
11. Cinnamon: Potential Role in the Prevention of Insulin Resistance, Metabolic Syndrome, and Type 2 Diabetes
12. Epidemiology of Gallbladder Disease: Cholelithiasis and Cancer

 

[Deborah888]

Thanks for this. Great list! Battling this problem right now. Been using a beet powder mixed with apple cider vinegar, cranberry juice, citrus peel powder and apple juice. Helps calm down any pain, too. I'm also taking milk thistle and black spanish radish which is also supposed to help.

 

[aliml]

Thanks for this. Great list! Battling this problem right now. Been using a beet powder mixed with apple cider vinegar, cranberry juice, citrus peel powder and apple juice. Helps calm down any pain, too. I'm also taking milk thistle and black spanish radish which is also supposed to help.

You're welcome. Beans are also a bile magnet and help remove bile sludge. If you can not eat beans and other legumes, use psyllium.

What is the Karen Hurd Bean Diet (Bean Protocol)? — Simple Gold Life

The Bean diet isn't a diet; it's a protocol developed by Karen Hurd that helps the liver detox and heal from a range of ailments.

www.simplegoldlife.com

 

[Kris]

I do gallbladder flash every several months. takes one day, and you empty your gallbladder from sludge and stones. all the other things maybe work, or maybe it is just placebo effect.

 

[Angel45]

Thanks for this. Great list! Battling this problem right now. Been using a beet powder mixed with apple cider vinegar, cranberry juice, citrus peel powder and apple juice. Helps calm down any pain, too. I'm also taking milk thistle and black spanish radish which is also supposed to help.

In Germany before they give you gall bladder removal they recommend RowaCHOL. I get it on amazon and my gall bladder pain has been controlled with only using it once a day with a meal. They recommend 3x a day with meals. I forget to take it a lot now because I don't have the pain.

 

[Ben.]

You're welcome. Beans are also a bile magnet and help remove bile sludge. If you can not eat beans and other legumes, use psyllium.

What is the Karen Hurd Bean Diet (Bean Protocol)? — Simple Gold Life

The Bean diet isn't a diet; it's a protocol developed by Karen Hurd that helps the liver detox and heal from a range of ailments.

www.simplegoldlife.com

If i remember correctly she recommends it mostly for hormonal issues. serious liver/gallbladder issues for some reason is something where she doesn't recommend beans but psyllium instead. I dont know why. Not paying hundred of dollars to find out in a course of hers tho. Dont like psyllium either. Seems to cause severe constipation. Prolly because it swells so intense with fluid.

Tarmander had her on his podcast i think.

I tryed to add beans to my routine but they often times make me feel extremely cold ...

 

[Elchupanibrain]

I do gallbladder flash every several months. takes one day, and you empty your gallbladder from sludge and stones. all the other things maybe work, or maybe it is just placebo effect.

Some scientists say, that the green stones are actually made from the chemical reaction of olive oil, epsom salt and bile. Could you share your experiences on this? Did you see a decrease in the number of stones after some flushes? Different stones? The impact on your health? Thanks

 

[Ben.]

Some scientists say, that the green stones are actually made from the chemical reaction of olive oil, epsom salt and bile. Could you share your experiences on this? Did you see a decrease in the number of stones after some flushes? Different stones? The impact on your health? Thanks

I am not the one who was asked but I did like 10 flushes.

Not one single stone. Nothing at all like the pictures.

What did come out was a blackish kind of sand. Which was odd, because i can assure you, both trough enemas and epsom salts that the digestive track was as empty as it could be.
I coudn't continue doing them because they would render my digestion in a awful situation for a week where food sits on the stomache forever.

I think its realy hard on the gallbladder. I've read of a more gentle approach but havent tried it yet, that was doing a ghee or olive oil with citrus juice in low amounts every day instead of this one big ghulp of awfulness.

I was thinking of maybe following it up half a hour or two afterwards with some soluble fiber to bind w/e garbage gets released from the bile.

 

[Elchupanibrain]

I am not the one who was asked but I did like 10 flushes.

Not one single stone. Nothing at all like the pictures.

What did come out was a blackish kind of sand. Which was odd, because i can assure you, both trough enemas and epsom salts that the digestive track was as empty as it could be.
I coudn't continue doing them because they would render my digestion in a awful situation for a week where food sits on the stomache forever.

I think its realy hard on the gallbladder. I've read of a more gentle approach but havent tried it yet, that was doing a ghee or olive oil with citrus juice in low amounts every day instead of this one big ghulp of awfulness.

I was thinking of maybe following it up half a hour or two afterwards with some soluble fiber to bind w/e garbage gets released from the bile.

interesting. i have read that something like gravel would also be possible if no stones have yet formed

the protocol according to doc sutter also sounds more pleasant to me. coke, olive oil and lemon juice :)

 

[Kris]

Some scientists say, that the green stones are actually made from the chemical reaction of olive oil, epsom salt and bile. Could you share your experiences on this? Did you see a decrease in the number of stones after some flushes? Different stones? The impact on your health? Thanks

Yes, i am familiar with this theory, but what comes out are definitely stones. not all of them are green. older stones have darker, brown color and sandy texture. Some of them have been even formed in childhood. the newer ones are bright green. you can also get white stones. i agree that this is a bit aggressive approach. for me it does not cause any bodily discomfort...but both epsom salts and drinking the whole cup of olive oil is pretty disgusting, at least for me.

I think that some people are just doing it wrong. the idea is that you drink epsom salt to a degree that you have diarrhoea, and you bowels are fully empty (how epsom salt can then bind with olive oil?). If two cups of epsom salt does not cause diarrhoea, one has to keep drinking it until it does. Once, I had to drink 4 cups with 2 Tbs ES in each. basically, you should not drink the olive oil until the epsom salts fully does its job. by the way, one time I got out the actual sludge, which was like a half of a cup of a grainy green paste.

 

[Kris]

I am not the one who was asked but I did like 10 flushes.

Not one single stone. Nothing at all like the pictures.

What did come out was a blackish kind of sand. Which was odd, because i can assure you, both trough enemas and epsom salts that the digestive track was as empty as it could be.
I coudn't continue doing them because they would render my digestion in a awful situation for a week where food sits on the stomache forever.

I think its realy hard on the gallbladder. I've read of a more gentle approach but havent tried it yet, that was doing a ghee or olive oil with citrus juice in low amounts every day instead of this one big ghulp of awfulness.

I was thinking of maybe following it up half a hour or two afterwards with some soluble fiber to bind w/e garbage gets released from the bile.

maybe your body is just not producing stones. some people have more tendency for this than others.

 

[Ben.]

maybe your body is just not producing stones. some people have more tendency for this than others.

To be honest, i was kind of concerned that it might be a sign of severe gallblader/liver ducts being congested in a realy realy bad way and the only thing my gallbladder can release is a little bit of "sand". Would explain my malabsorption/assimilation issues.

But at the end, i dont realy know. All i know is that the first hour or two of ghulping the solution down makes me feel warm everywhere and a wierd calmness and happiness sets in. Sadly, followed by severe nausea and a week long issue digesting food. The more flushes i did the worse the sideffects became.

 

[yerrag]

I don't really like articles with a list of this and that. Too many lists if you read here and there and everywhere.

This article talks of cholagogue. I prefer Peat talking of estrogen and bile issues. I like his reasoning.

Too much estrogen overwhelms the detox capability of the liver. If the liver has to process a high estrogen load daily, it won't be able to detox all of it. What gets past the liver and into the gall causes the gall to be inflammed and fibrotic over time. A lot of sludge will accumulate eventually as a matter of course.

If you take care of your body well, and give it what it needs, you don't need a lot of of lists. Keep it simple.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry — 'Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.'

 

[Kris]

I started to do the gallbladder flush after I got hepatitis E. So I thought, it is time to take care of my liver. I was very young at that time, 30 years old. I know there are many less intrusive approaches to detoxing the gallbladder, but for me those flashes really worked. To say that too much estrogen causes this issues, is just a theory; there is no real proof. Or is there?

 

[yerrag]

I started to do the gallbladder flush after I got hepatitis E. So I thought, it is time to take care of my liver. I was very young at that time, 30 years old. I know there are many less intrusive approaches to detoxing the gallbladder, but for me those flashes really worked. To say that too much estrogen causes this issues, is just a theory; there is no real proof. Or is there?

What flush did you use?The one from Andreas Moritz?What is to say your liver healed from using the flush? What if it were to going to heal anyway regardless? Asking for proof?

Ray Peat has been right more than you've been. He's not perfect, but what he says makes sense, if you have read well enough of his writings and listened to his interviews.

Just so you know, I did a liver flush of Andreas Moritz and there were very small gallstones that came out. I wasn't having any issues, but I still think if I had gallstones it would have helped.

So what if the gallbladder flushed worked? It does not disprove Ray's ideas on estrogen and having sludge and stones in the gallbladder. It doesn't even lessen my dislike for lists that are churned out without much reasoning behind them.

And you have the inability to distinguish between therapy and lifestyle. What if it worked for you? Does it mean you should rely on lists upon lists? No, it just means you have a treatment that you can rely on when you have a gallbladder issue.

The problem with lists is that you read them and then you don't really go about gathering the items and using them daily. You can't even gather the foods you already know gives you the whole food nutrition that dispense with relying on tons of supplementation and nootrophics.

If you have your hands full just trying to get your BASIC list together, what good is it to have more lists?

It's better to understand concepts such as the impact of high estrogen and with this body of knowledge be able to live a healthful lifestyle without burdening yourself with piles of unnecessary advice.

If you had a high estrogen load and you are clueless about it, what good is having this list and taking all the 8 foods? Isn't it better to reduce that chronic estrogen load than allow it to percolate in your body?

Even if those foods manage to remove the sludge in the gallbladder, will you be taking them all the time to keep your gallbladder from getting sludge again? Why not understand what causes the sludge and address the underlying cause? For if you do that, you would also be fixing other related issues, instead of having to shop for a special list for each of those other related issues.

Don't complicate. Simplify.

 

[Kris]

What flush did you use?The one from Andreas Moritz?What is to say your liver healed from using the flush? What if it were to going to heal anyway regardless? Asking for proof?

Ray Peat has been right more than you've been. He's not perfect, but what he says makes sense, if you have read well enough of his writings and listened to his interviews.

Just so you know, I did a liver flush of Andreas Moritz and there were very small gallstones that came out. I wasn't having any issues, but I still think if I had gallstones it would have helped.

So what if the gallbladder flushed worked? It does not disprove Ray's ideas on estrogen and having sludge and stones in the gallbladder. It doesn't even lessen my dislike for lists that are churned out without much reasoning behind them.

And you have the inability to distinguish between therapy and lifestyle. What if it worked for you? Does it mean you should rely on lists upon lists? No, it just means you have a treatment that you can rely on when you have a gallbladder issue.

The problem with lists is that you read them and then you don't really go about gathering the items and using them daily. You can't even gather the foods you already know gives you the whole food nutrition that dispense with relying on tons of supplementation and nootrophics.

If you have your hands full just trying to get your BASIC list together, what good is it to have more lists?

It's better to understand concepts such as the impact of high estrogen and with this body of knowledge be able to live a healthful lifestyle without burdening yourself with piles of unnecessary advice.

If you had a high estrogen load and you are clueless about it, what good is having this list and taking all the 8 foods? Isn't it better to reduce that chronic estrogen load than allow it to percolate in your body?

Even if those foods manage to remove the sludge in the gallbladder, will you be taking them all the time to keep your gallbladder from getting sludge again? Why not understand what causes the sludge and address the underlying cause? For if you do that, you would also be fixing other related issues, instead of having to shop for a special list for each of those other related issues.

Don't complicate. Simplify.

you are complicating. gallbladder stones are a real problem, and all of you have them. you want to live with them, this is your choice.

 

[yerrag]

you are complicating. gallbladder stones are a real problem, and all of you have them. you want to live with them, this is your choice.

You can't read beyond a paragraph, can you?

 

[Kris]

gallbladder stone are real. probably, people who speak against it, have never done it. I respect RP ideas, but he has his own limitations.

 

[Marcine]

NOT Peaty. Lots of goitrogens. If you follow the protocols and use the supplements you shouldn't need to do any of this crap. I tend to think that the basic flavorings of the French chefs, meison plus, something like that-onions, celery, maybe garlic and or bell peppers pretty much are enough vegies for anyone, flavor with them only if they aren't roots.

 

[yerrag]

NOT Peaty. Lots of goitrogens. If you follow the protocols and use the supplements you shouldn't need to do any of this crap. I tend to think that the basic flavorings of the French chefs, meison plus, something like that-onions, celery, maybe garlic and or bell peppers pretty much are enough vegies for anyone, flavor with them only if they aren't roots.

My sentiments as well.

My eldest sister reads the wrong things, knows very little of Peaty basics, buys a lot of health food store crap.

Always sickly. Never improving. Always getting worse slowly.

Sad thing is to understand Peat basics, she has to read more than just a list from pips who just wanna sell you something.