Process and cause of gallstone formation - text

Source: Dr. Péter Légrády - Eggs - Nutrition - Health
E. P. E. Ltd. - Maecenas Publishing House, Budapest - 2001

If we disregard the role of the bile that is excreted into the intestine - in which the quantity and its concentration are crucial - and look only at the bile itself that accumulates in the gallbladder, the importance of the fullest possible excretion can be easily illustrated by the following example. If a tank is filled with water, and only a small or large proportion of the water is poured out from the top, the sludge will increasingly settle out like sludge at the bottom, and its concentration in the lower layer of water will increase. But if you empty the tank completely every day, if you pour out all the water, you remove the sediment.
As has been said before, but because it cannot be said often enough, it will be said again: the gall bladder concentrates 6-10 times the amount of bile produced in the liver during the night, and if only part of the gall bladder is emptied with meals - as in the example above - the remaining part becomes more concentrated. After a while, it first clumps together like sludge, forming small balls - clearly visible on ultrasound and described as a sludge ball on the scan - and then later it clumps together into bile. One of the main causes of gallstone formation is a persistently stagnant gallbladder.
But since the daily emptying of the "waste" that accumulates in the gallbladder is not only vital for the proper functioning of the digestive system, but also for the whole body because of the bile acids it contains, the risk of gallstones forming is only a side benefit of the more complete gallbladder contraction.

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