The Trouble With Gallstones

How to prevent and treat an attack

- Samantha Rideout

FOR A SMALL, inessential body part, the gallbladder can cause a lot of pain. Roughly the shape and size of a pear, the organ sits in the right side of your abdomen. Its job is storing bile, a liquid produced by the liver that helps you digest the fats in your diet. The gallbladder releases the liquid as needed into the small intestine.

When bile’s delicate chemical balance gets thrown off—we don’t fully know how or why—its components can crystallize. Over years, these crystals can combine to form gallstones (medical term: cholelithiasis), which can be as tiny as grains of sand or as large as golf balls. In at least 75 per cent of cases, gallstones don’t cause symptoms or complications and therefore don’t require treatment.