Middle-aged and elderly women should be alert to gallstone harassment

Skipping breakfast, preferring high-fat and high-sugar foods, eating snacks while watching TV... These behaviors may lead to gallstones over time, especially for middle-aged and overweight women.

Gallstones Prefer Middle-Aged Obese Women

Ms. Feng, who just turned 40 this year, was found to have gallstones during a physical examination at her workplace. The stones were numerous and large, and she might need surgical treatment. The doctor said that skipping breakfast for a long time was the main cause of her illness. It turned out that after giving birth, Ms. Feng had always been overweight. In order to lose weight, she, who loved beauty, skipped breakfast every morning. Unexpectedly, not only did she gain weight, she also developed gallstones. "Middle-aged obese women are typical patients for gallstone disease."

Relevant experts say that the incidence of gallstones is gradually increasing. In addition to the increasingly advanced examination methods and people paying more attention to their own health, changes in people's dietary structure are also one of the important reasons.

The increasing number of "fat and greasy foods" on the dinner table has made many people, especially middle-aged obese women, become patients with gallstones. Middle-aged women before menopause often have endocrine changes that affect the secretion and regulation of bile, so they are more likely to suffer from cholecystitis than men of the same age. Therefore, middle-aged women should pay more attention to their gallbladders.

Pain in the right upper abdomen warns of gallstones

According to relevant experts, half of the patients with gallstones have no symptoms and their gallbladder stones are in a quiet state, while the other half will experience pain. From a medical point of view, the most common symptom of gallstones is pain in the right upper abdomen, which is often similar to stomach disease. The symptoms are very mild in the first few attacks and the pain is not severe, so it is often mistaken for stomach disease and not taken seriously.

Sometimes it can occur in the chest area, heart area, or even the shoulders and back, so patients usually think they have stomach or heart problems at first and treat them as these diseases.

"In clinical practice, we often encounter patients with gallstones who do not undergo B-ultrasound and take medicine on their own guess. As a result, they take a lot of medicine and do not see any improvement after a long period of treatment." Relevant experts say that the consequence of doing so is that severe gallstones will cause fever, jaundice and colic, which is very dangerous.

Although risk factors exist, many patients who do not have immediate symptoms feel that “there is no need for treatment as long as it does not hurt or itch.” "There are many ways to treat gallstones now, but if treated in the early stages, the pain will be less and the prognosis will be better." Relevant experts recommend that gallstones should be treated as soon as possible after they are discovered.