Cholecystitis dietary taboos

Don’t touch high-fat and high-cholesterol foods, try to avoid stimulating foods, and never overeat. The remaining details actually revolve around these three items. There is no need to memorize a messy and complicated list. If you stick to these three items first, at least 90% of acute attacks can be avoided.

My second uncle had an acute cholecystitis attack the winter before last year. He was rolling around in pain and was hospitalized for three days. The doctor warned him not to eat too much oil. On the third day after he was discharged from the hospital, he stewed elbows in sauce at home. He thought it was fine anyway, so he chewed a small piece. That night, he went back to the emergency room in pain. The edema of the gallbladder wall was even worse than before, and he stayed in the hospital for five more days. From then on, he always avoided the hospital when he saw the elbows.

Many people ask whether eggs should never be eaten? In fact, this issue has been debated many times in clinical and popular science circles. The extremes say that as long as there is cholecystitis, all eggs should be banned, while the moderates say that boiled eggs are absolutely fine. In fact, the answer depends on the stage: in the acute attack stage, when the pain is so severe that you have to drink less water, don’t touch any eggs. ； If there are no symptoms during the remission period, eating a hard-boiled egg every day without the yolk will not cause any problem at all. Instead, you can supplement some high-quality protein, which is better than eating boiled vegetables every day to make your skin look sallow and lean.

Don’t think that only fatty meats are high-fat. For example, animal offal, crab roe, fish roe, even the fried dough sticks and pancakes you like to eat in the morning, the fried green vegetables in restaurants, and avocados and durians that many people think are healthy have higher fat content than lean pork. Eating too much will stimulate the contraction of the gallbladder and cause you to sweat. I met a little girl in the clinic before. She ate avocado salad every day in order to lose weight. As a result, she developed cholecystitis. She was particularly confused and said that she had not touched meat for a long time. When she looked at the ingredient list of the salad dressing, the first one was vegetable oil. The oil in a salad is not much less than a bowl of braised pork.

In addition to the oil problem, there are many inconspicuous irritants that are also common causes of cholecystitis. Ice cola and ice watermelon just taken out of the refrigerator in summer, strong wine and strong coffee drunk at friends' gatherings, and even the spicy soup base when eating hot pot will stimulate the biliary sphincter to spasm, and the bile cannot be discharged, causing pain on the spot. There was a college student who had just been discharged from the hospital a week ago. He went to eat Chongqing hot pot with his classmates. The extra spicy hot pot was paired with cold beer. As soon as he walked to the school gate after eating, he felt so painful that he couldn't stand up. He called 120 and called 120. The inflammation that was about to be cured took less than half a month to go away.

Regarding dietary taboos, Chinese medicine and Western medicine have slightly different opinions. Western medicine does not have the concept of "fat food", but Chinese medicine usually recommends that patients with cholecystitis eat less hot food such as mutton, dog meat, and lychees. I have met many patients. It is true that after eating lychees, you will feel a slight discomfort in the right upper abdomen, so you don’t have to believe it at all. If you really feel uncomfortable after eating some of the so-called “fat foods”, just avoid them in the future. There is no need to argue that Western medicine didn’t say you shouldn’t eat them.

There are also many people who think that cholecystitis requires a vegetarian diet. This is really the biggest misunderstanding. If the long-term complete vegetarian nutrition cannot keep up, the regularity of bile secretion will be disordered, which will make it easier to develop stones and stimulate repeated outbreaks of inflammation. In fact, as long as the food is light, such as steamed fish or lean chicken breast, it is perfectly fine to eat less each time. On the contrary, it can maintain the normal contraction rhythm of the gallbladder, which is good for recovery.

I have been dealing with cholecystitis patients for almost ten years, and I have found that you really don’t have to go to jail to have dietary taboos. You don’t have to remember dozens or hundreds of things you can’t eat. You just have to stick to the three things I mentioned at the beginning, and try the rest slowly: for example, if someone else eats fried peanuts that are fine, but you feel pain after eating them, then don’t touch them in the future.； If you don't feel anything after eating a boiled egg, then feel free to eat it. After all, everyone's inflammation level is different, and their gallbladder tolerance is also very different. What suits you is the best. Don't suffer pain just for one bite. It's really not worth it.