Have you ever experienced a colic pain after getting stuffed or facing with flatulence so often? Do you know that all of the mentioned symptoms can imply several diseases including Gallstones. Let see how high of the risk you have.

Here are the TARGET checklists;

• • People at the age of 40 and above especially at 60s, they have higher risk than others. Also women has more risk than men approx. 2 or 3 fold.

• • Pregnant people, those taking the birth control pill or Estrogen are at risk due to the rise of cholesterol in the bile which slows down the movement of the gallbladder leading to a precipitation.

• • Those having an obesity.

• • Western people have a higher tendency of having Gallstones than the Asian due to they genetically have a higher level of cholesterol in the bile than the Asian.

• • Genetic transferring

• • There is high risk in people who consume fatty and oily food includes drinking alcoholic beverages regularly.

• •  Those who have blood diseases, such as, Thalassemia will have a chronic anemia causing the rise of hemoglobin in the bile.

• • Those who have cirrhosis from drinking too much alcoholic beverages are also at risk.

• • The last risk is in diabetes patients who have high level of triglyceride and sugar in the blood vein.

How to lower the risk of having Gallstones?

We found that the main causes of the gallstones are obesity and high cholesterol. So we would like to recommend you 5 easy way to lower the risk as following,

1. Food selection : Avoid fatty food, sweet food and alcoholic beverages which lead to fats and cholesterol accumulation in your body. The more they are accumulated, the more risks of having the gallstones you will get.

2. Diabetes : You should carefully watch what you eat or do to your life. Exercising and the controls of triglyceride including sugar in the blood are essential.

3. No more obesity : You should control your weight as it put you at risk of having gallstones. However, that is not always the case. You can have high cholesterol even though you have an average body, therefore everyone both who have overweight and average body should do a health checkup in order to detect the cholesterol level.

4. Slowly losing weight : Although it is trendy to lose weight in a short period of time, on the contrary, that causes your liver to transfer more cholesterol into the gallbladder. Later, the gallbladder squeezes less which makes the bile stuck in the gallbladder and eventually becomes a stone. Accordingly, you are recommended to carefully learn how to take care of your body. You should control your diet and exercise often. Losing 2-3 kg. per month is the maximum because the fast losing weight may lead to Yoyo effect as well.

5. Change the way of birth control : The cholesterol in the gallbladder will be increased if you take birth control pill or conjugated estrogens for such a long time which causes gallstones. If you would like to control the birth, you better ask for advices from your specialized doctor directly.

More Information, please contact

General Surgical Clinic

Phyathai 1 Hospital

Tel. 02-201-4600 ext. 2185, 2285