Keto without gallbladder

#1

Hi, I had my gallbladder removed 7 years ago and was wondering if I could still follow a keto diet without it as I will be eating more fat? Thanks.

#2

Yup! Digestive enzymes can fill the role of some of the bile you’re missing. You still have bile, just not as much as you would have with a gallbaldder. Your liver makes the bile, gallbladder was just extra storage. No shortage of gallbladder-less keto’rs out there!

Also, many people WAY overdo the fat when they eat keto, there is no requirement to find creative ways to eat sticks of butter and pour bacon grease over everything, ketosis is a result of low carb, not because of high fat.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #3

Welcome to the forums, and good luck on your keto journey.

A lot of people on these forums whose gall bladder has been removed have no trouble at all, some find it helpful to space out their fat intake throughout the day, and there are those who find it helpful to take bile salts.

As you may be aware, bile is actually made in the liver; the gall bladder merely stores it for later use.

(Kathy Timmons) #4

Hi Annette, Yes, you can do Keto!!! I am one of those without a gallbladder and I have never had any trouble. I don’t have to take bile salts either!
Welcome to the forums! This is the best place to be…Ask questions and you will get a lot of answers. We are all different and we learn how to tweak it to get the best results for us. Good luck.

#5

Thank you for this advice. It’s all a bit overwhelming at the minute as I had a scan two weeks ago and then got a phone call from my doctor telling me I had a moderate to severely enlarged fatty liver and I needed to make changes immediately as the window of reversal is very small. This has scared the life out of me.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #6

Eliminating sugar and alcohol is the first priority, then. Table sugar, sucrose, is two sugars joined together: glucose and fructose. Your body can handle the glucose better than the fructose, which can only be metabolised in the liver. The same metabolic pathway handles both fructose and ethanol, and it has a limited capacity. Fatty liver starts to develop when that pathway is overwhelmed. If you stop consuming sugar and alcohol, your liver should start to heal within a few days.

Excessive glucose (from carbohydrate intake) causes its own problems, which is why we recommend eating no more than 20 g/day. But you might find it helpful to begin by cutting out the sugar first, then worrying about the grains and starches later. It worked for me, anyway (though of course I was already sober and just had the sugar to overcome). You might or might not find artificial sweeteners to be a help during the transition. Many people find that it is easier to avoid sweet tastes altogether, similarly to how alcoholics find it much easier to stop drinking completely than to try to drink in moderation.

If you’d like to know something of the biology of how sugar and ethanol damage our liver, watch the YouTube video of Dr. Robert Lustig’s lecture, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” He used to run a paediatric obesity clinic at the US/San Francisco medical school, and in one experiment on children with fatty liver disease, they were able to start reversing symptoms within ten days, simply by removing sugar from their diet. Here is a link to one version of Dr. Lustig’s talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

#7

I’m more worried about the diagnosis as I dont drink any alcohol at all and always thought you only got liver problems if you drank.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #8

That’s what doctors used to believe, too, until children started getting fatty liver disease, and they were clearly not drinking! The key lies in the fact that fructose is handled by the same metabolic pathway as ethanol (it also handles branched-chain amino acids, as well). Kids don’t drink alcohol, but many of them drink lots of soda and juice, which gives them an enormous fructose load. Doctors distinguish between alcoholic and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, but I think that’s a mistake: it’s all just fatty liver disease, whatever caused it.

Dr. Lustig said that his clinic permitted their patients to drink only water or milk. They were forbidden to drink juice or soda. Sodas contain an astonishing amount of fructose, and the fructose in juice is not accompanied by the fibre that comes in the fruit that produced it. You can drink a lot more apples in the form of juice or cider than you can eat. Juicing destroys the fibre, whereas when you eat a whole fruit, the fibre slows down the intake of fructose to a rate closer to what the liver can handle.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the good news is that it only takes a few days without sugar for the fat deposits in the liver to start going away. This is one of the ways in which a ketogenic diet helps restore our health.

(GINA ) #9

I don’t have a gallbladder and can eat low carb just fine. Like others have said, you don’t need to eat gobs of fat anyway, but you don’t have to skimp on it.

People are different though. You can start slowly and/or try supplements until you see how it affects you.