Gallbladder surgery is one of the most commonly performed surgeries today. Did you know simply going gluten-free may lower the risk of needing gallbladder surgery?

For people with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, gluten triggers a wide range of adverse reactions, from joint pain to poor brain function. In the last several years, research has also linked gluten with gallbladder disease in gluten-sensitive individuals.

Gluten sensitivity largely undiagnosed

An astonishing number of people are gluten intolerant but do not know it. Undiagnosed gluten sensitivity can cause leaky gut, chronic pain, inflammation, neurological damage, and autoimmunity (when the immune system attacks and destroys body tissue). Gluten sensitivity is estimated to affect between 20 and 40 percent of the general population, and is less frequently identified than celiac disease, though this is changing.

How gluten can raise the risk of needing gallbladder surgery

So how can gluten raise the risk of requiring gallbladder surgery? The process begins with damage to the small intestine. This damage inhibits its ability to properly secrete a hormone called cholecystokinin. Cholecystokinin is the hormone that signals the gallbladder when it’s time to release bile, which aids in the digestion and absorption of fat. As a result, bile builds up in the gallbladder, causing inflammation and raising the risk of gallbladder disease and subsequent gallbladder surgery.

Approximately 60 percent of people with celiac disease — an autoimmune reaction to gluten — also have gallbladder, liver, or pancreatic conditions, and this is apparently one reason why.

Why you need a gallbladder

Although you can live without your gallbladder, it is essential to overall health. The bile stored and secreted by the gallbladder enables you to digest fats. Without a gallbladder, your liver still produces bile, but the bile just “leaks” continually into the small intestine. This means there are no adequate reserves of bile to break down fats when needed.

These fats then become rancid and inflame the digestive tract while fat-soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids are not properly absorbed. Ultimately, this compromises the function of your entire digestive tract. In fact, studies have linked gallbladder removal with an elevated risk of colon cancer.

Also, if the gallbladder is not removed but isn’t doing its job well, this can be detrimental to liver function.

It is worth caring for your gallbladder to preserve the health of your digestive system, and hence your immune system. If you are sensitive to gluten, it’s important to go gluten-free to maintain gallbladder health and lower your risk of needing gallbladder surgery.

Additionally, your gallbladder appreciates a diet high in omega 3 essential fatty acids, and free of processed oils and hydrogenated fats. And in general, it is safest to keep starchy carbs (cake, potatoes, white flour, refined sugar, etc.) to a minimum.

Various botanicals and nutrients can support liver and gallbladder health. They include milk thistle seed extract, dandelion root, ginger root, and phosphatidyl choline.

If you have already had your gallbladder removed, don’t despair. Taking ox bile with your meals can help you emulsify and absorb your fats, which are vital for many aspects of health including brain function. For more information, contact my office.

If you have succumbed to mysterious and debilitating symptoms after breast implant surgery, or if you are considering breast implants, take note that both silicone and saline can make you sick.

Not only can breast implants break down, leak, or burst, but the body’s immune system may simply reject them. This rejection may lead to autoimmune reactions to other tissues in the body, meaning the immune system attacks and destroys these tissues.

Symptoms vary widely but often include fatigue, muscle and joint pain, brain fog, memory loss, depression, hair loss, and symptoms associated with specific autoimmune diseases.

Why breast implants are risky

All breast implants – whether filled with silicone or saline – leak and/or break down eventually. Some of the consequences are merely uncomfortable, while others are potentially far more serious.

Sometimes an implant can last as long as 12 years without fracturing; others may develop problems within just a few months. But no implant will remain intact indefinitely.

Mammograms will not always reveal when an implant has ruptured. In fact, pressure from the mammogram itself can damage the implant.

Possible breast implant complications

Autoimmune disorders. Any foreign substance in the body can cause an autoimmune reaction, including breast implants. Sometimes removing the implants will relieve the symptoms, although the autoimmune reaction may persist after removal and require functional medicine management.

Infection. Though leakage is less frequent with saline implants than with silicone implants, mold and bacteria can grow within the saline solution. It has been speculated that when the solution inevitably leaks out, it may cause illness and possibly even endanger a nursing baby, though this effect has not been conclusively studied or established. (For more about potential complications with saline implants, see the FDA’s comprehensive report on saline breast implant surgery.)

Cancers. Breast implants may be linked with cancer in two ways. One is that the implants can obstruct early detection of breast cancer. The other is that silicone implants in particular are believed by some doctors to leak cancer-causing chemicals.

Raynaud’s Syndrome. This is a condition in which blood circulation is restricted by a narrowing of the small arteries, causing coldness and numbness in the hands and feet. It occurs more often in women who have had breast implants.

For more detail about possible complications, see the FDA’s report on Risks of Breast Implants  A new type of implant, known as stem cell fat transfer, involves injecting fat from a woman’s hips or thighs into her breasts. This may prove a safer alternative to silicon or saline, though it is still in the testing phases.

If you suspect you are sick from your breast implants or you are trying to recover after breast implant removal, functional medicine can improve immune function and help with autoimmune remission. Contact my office for more information.

Have you noticed how shockingly bright streetlights are these days? Although they’re great for night time visibility, the newer LED streetlights tamper with the body’s internal clock, skewing metabolic function and raising disease risk.

The effect of blue-rich white light at night on human health is so significant that the American Medical Association (AMA) issued a policy statement about street lighting.

It warns LED street lights are five times more disruptive to the human sleep cycle than traditional street lighting and that recent large surveys link brighter residential lighting with reduced sleep, poor functioning, and more obesity. The lighting also increases the risk of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

These bright blue-white lights also strain the eyes and can cause problems walking or driving safely at night. Enough blue light can even damage the retina.

How night time lighting can be safer for health

LED lights were introduced because they consume less energy. The AMA suggests ways to make the lighting friendlier to human biology (and that of area wildlife):

• Lowering the color temperature of the lights away from the blue end of the spectrum (which signals the brain it is daytime) and towards the orange end of the spectrum. Current lights have a color temperature of 4000K to 5000K. Compare this with the use of fire and candles human have used for most of history, at 1800K. The AMA recommends lights be no bluer than 3000K.
• Better shielding the light to reduce eye-straining glare.
• Using adaptive controls to dim or extinguish the lights.

Residents complaining about bright lights

You don’t have to understand the science to feel the effects of these lights. Residents in areas where they are installed around the country are complaining, saying the lights feel like a car lot or strip mall parking lot. The LED street lamps also light up the insides of homes, especially in hilly areas such as Seattle.

Davis, California residents found them so objectionable the city agreed to replace all existing LED streetlights with more biologically friendly lighting.

Do you need sunglasses at night?

Of course, it’s dangerous to wear dark glasses at night. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have recourse if LED streetlights are a part of your night life.

You can switch the light coming into your eyes to a more biologically friendly hue by wearing orange or rose tinted glasses that aren’t sunglasses. Examples include affordable Uvex safety glasses from Amazon, orange glasses from Low Blue Lights (these glasses are more expensive because they are scratch resistant), or rose tinted migraine glasses.

Also, cities are taking note of complaints, so be sure to add your voice.

Avoid night time blue lights indoors too

LED streetlights aren’t the only culprits when it comes to confusing your sleep-wake cycle. LED televisions, smart phones, tablets, computers, and LED bulbs also bombard you with too much blue light at night, hindering the output of sleep hormones.

Purchasing orange bulbs for lamps, orange filters to put over your screens, or wearing orange glasses a couple of hours before bed are ways to encourage the production of sleep hormones and maintain the delicate but important sleep-wake cycle.

Do you crash when you go too long without eating, losing energy and becoming “hangry?” Hanger—hunger plus anger—is that explosive combination of low blood sugar and irrepressible irritability that turns a normally nice person into a multi-headed hydra.

People joke about being hangry, but when it happens regularly, it means your body and brain are in a perpetual state of alarm. This constant stress raises inflammation and accelerates degeneration of the brain.

In other words, being chronically hangry ages you too fast.

How being hangry ages your body too fast

The low blood sugar that triggers “hanger” sends your body into an emergency “fight-or-flight” mode, causing you to snap at loved ones or fly into a rage because you can’t untangle your earphone cords. This constant stress ages the body and brain.

Low blood sugar also raises an immune messenger called IL-6, which triggers inflammation that destroys tissue.

If you have a chronic or autoimmune condition such as Hashimoto’s or rheumatoid arthritis, the inflammation from low blood sugar can trigger flare ups that destroy tissue, worsen symptoms, and advance your condition.

Autoimmunity means an over zealous and imbalanced immune system is attacking and destroying tissue in the body. Many people have autoimmunity but have not been diagnosed. Low blood sugar can worsen autoimmunity and speed destruction of tissues or glands in the body.

In a nutshell, the stress and inflammation from chronically low blood sugar ages your body too quickly.

How being hangry ages your brain too fast

The low blood sugar from being hangry deprives the brain of fuel and impairs brain function. This speeds degeneration because energy-deprived brain cells die.

Brain-related symptoms of low blood sugar include:

• Irritable and easily upset
• Lightheaded
• Fatigued
• Feeling shaky, jittery, or tremulous
• Agitated and nervous
• Eating gives you energy
• Poor memory, forgetfulness
• Blurred vision
• Lack of appetite or nausea
• Energy crash around 3 or 4 p.m.
• Wake up anxious around 3 or 4 a.m.

Being hangry can worsen brain autoimmunity

Chronically low blood sugar also ages the brain by triggering autoimmune flares in the brain.

A number of people have autoimmunity to brain and nerve tissue but don’t know it—it’s more common than realized.

When blood sugar drops too low, it can trigger the autoimmune process in the brain just as it does in the body, speeding the brain degeneration process.

A few common symptoms of brain autoimmunity include fatigue, “crashing” after too much stimulation or exertion, brain fog, memory loss, anxiety or depression disorders, autism or ADHD symptoms, and poor balance.

If you suffer from any brain-related symptoms, preventing low blood sugar is crucial.

Tips on avoiding low blood sugar to slow aging

If you want to function optimally and slow the aging process, make sure to avoid getting “hangry.”

Tips include never skipping breakfast or other meals, avoiding sugars and processed starches, eating plenty of vegetable fiber and healthy fats, minimizing caffeine, eating small meals every two to three hours until blood sugar stabilizes, and avoiding foods to which you are sensitive (such as gluten and dairy for many people).

A number of herbal and nutritional compounds can also help bring blood sugar to normal levels and balance immune and brain health. Ask my office for more advice.

Research has confirmed what many people have long known: Gluten sensitivity is a real thing.

A Columbia University Medical Center study found gluten sensitivity is not an imagined condition, as many seem to think these days, and that celiac disease or a wheat allergy are not required to react to gluten.

Although people with gluten sensitivity may not demonstrate classic symptoms or lab markers of celiac disease, gluten nevertheless causes an acute immune response in gluten sensitive people.

Symptoms of gluten sensitivity vary widely and often include fatigue, brain fog, memory problems, mood imbalances, joint pain, skin eruptions, respiratory issues, and worsening of existing health conditions.

Gluten sensitivity different than celiac disease

In celiac disease, the immune response to gluten happens primarily in the small intestine.

With gluten sensitivity, however, the immune response is systemic, meaning the inflammatory cells travel in the bloodstream throughout the body. This explains why symptoms vary so widely.

Researchers found that six months on a gluten-free diet normalized the immune response and significantly improved patient symptoms.

Gluten sensitivity awareness crucial for patients

Studies like this are important to help educate doctors that gluten sensitivity can cause chronic health problems.

Many doctors still believe that only celiac disease is to blame for a reaction to gluten. Because gluten sensitivity is largely dismissed and conventional testing for it is so inadequate, many patients unnecessarily suffer from undiagnosed gluten sensitivity.

Gluten linked to autoimmunity and brain disorders

What’s worse, gluten is linked to many autoimmune diseases. An autoimmune disease is a condition in which the immune system attacks and destroys tissue in the body. Common autoimmune diseases include Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes.

However, the tissue most commonly attacked in response to gluten sensitivity is neurological tissue.

In other words, your undiagnosed gluten sensitivity could be destroying your brain  This is why gluten causes brain-based disorders in many people.

Gluten sensitivity more common than celiac

Celiac disease was long thought to affect about 1 percent of the population, but newer research shows rates have gone up 700 percent in the last 50 years.

Also, numbers are likely even higher because testing for celiac disease is extremely stringent and outdated. (Diagnostic criteria were developed in Europe, where a celiac diagnosis qualifies one for disability payments.)

Estimates for the rate of gluten sensitivity range from 6 percent of the population to considerably higher—a randomized population sample of 500 people conducted by immunologist Aristo Vojdani, PhD found one in three people had gluten sensitivity.

Proper testing and strict gluten-free diet are vital

Most testing for gluten sensitivity is inaccurate as people can react to at least 12 different compounds in gluten. Standard tests only screen for one, alpha gliadin.

Also, many people have cross reactions to gluten, meaning they respond to other foods they eat as if it were gluten. Dairy is one of the most common of these. It’s important to test for cross-reactive foods and remove them from the diet along with gluten.

It’s also vital to strictly adhere to a gluten-free diet as the occasional cheat can keep inflammation high and chances at symptom recovery low.

Ask my office for advice on the latest in testing for gluten sensitivity.