Heals or cripples: can food harm or help the gall and pancreas

The AST publishing house published a book by gastroenterologist Sergey Vyalov "Bile & Enzymes". In it, the author talks about the processes occurring in the gallbladder and pancreas. We publish an excerpt from Chapter 19 on how food affects these organs.

Does food heal or hurt?

About the possibility of treatment with food

Food affects all organs. And different food - on different organs. All foods are important, but in reasonable amounts, and in excess they cause discomfort and increase the risk of disease. If food affects the brain, heart, blood vessels and other organs slowly, for years, then it affects the digestive organs immediately - minutes or hours after consumption.

Food can cause illnesses and can cure them. The absence of food or the absence of certain foods is used in the diet as an adjunct to the treatment of diseases or as the elimination of a provocation.

Can food really heal anything? Certainly! For example, eating onions and black currants saves from

scurvy. Eating meat and liver helps with anemia, only you have to eat a lot and for a long time. If you eat vegetables, you can cure constipation. But this only means that before these products or substances were simply not enough, that is, before the person, in fact, “undernourished”, and not that these products “cured” him.

The absence of all or certain food also heals. For example, if a person has diarrhea from microbes in the intestines and he stops eating, the diarrhea will go away. Yes, there will simply be nothing to go to the toilet with, but this will not cure the intestinal problem and will not eliminate harmful microbes, but simply eliminate its external manifestations. Some resort to therapeutic fasting and believe that it helps with all diseases.

Fasting can be called a cure for perhaps only one disease. This is obesity.

In fact, all this is fiction from despair or from hopelessness and ignorance of really working and effective ways to get rid of the problem. Therefore, such extremes should not be resorted to. But the absence of certain products is really useful for certain categories of people. For example, in kidney disease, protein is limited. At diabetes - carbohydrates. In case of heart disease, it is recommended to consume less animal food so that less cholesterol enters the body.

In case of problems with the pancreas, fat is primarily limited, because with a lack enzymes, fats are poorly digested and create a load, forcing the inflamed organ once again strain. In addition, sour, bitter, calcium and protein stimulate the pancreas.

When is it necessary to limit these products? Most often in chronic pancreatitis, but in acute cases there are no such restrictions. Because with acute pancreatitis, you can’t eat at all. As the old doctors said, "cold, hunger and rest" is indicated. No, this is not a morgue, but an attempt in a really difficult and life-threatening situation to cool down hot inflammation, completely eliminate stimulation of the pancreas by the stomach and nerves. But with chronic inflammation is not so strong. But the pain in the abdomen gets worse each time the pancreas has to strain. It is better not to strain it once again, and if you have eaten something fatty, then eat the enzymes that are contained in the powder from the pork or beef pancreas.

Diet or treatment table number 5

About treatment tables and the principles of excluding products for inflammation

Table number 5 was originally designed by M. Pevsner back in 1929 to feed people in hospitals with acute and chronic hepatitis (at that time they didn’t know that they were different), with cholecystitis and pancreatitis in the stage of exacerbation (when he ate something wrong) and in the stage of remission (when they were not completely cured, they did not know how before), as well as with cholelithiasis.

Each diet pursues a specific goal. It is achieved due to the chemical composition of products, the balance of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, the method of cooking, the volume and frequency of eating products. What the patient most needs is delivered to the patient's body, and what can harm or cause discomfort is excluded or limited. This creates favorable conditions for treatment, improves the well-being of a person. At the same time, you need to understand that the diet itself does not cure the disease. On a diet, you can sometimes wait until it goes away on its own, or go through a course of treatment, being sure that malnutrition will interfere with recovery.

The goal of Diet #5 is to keep the liver and bile ducts light and to improve bile flow.

Pevzner was a smart person and offered different load options for gallbladderthat made sense at different stages of the disease. For example, in case of deterioration, it was necessary to limit fats, and in case of improvement, on the contrary, to add. Modern interpretations have unnecessarily simplified the diet and only limit fats, while increasing fiber and water intake. Dishes are eaten mainly baked and boiled 4-5 times a day, although this has nothing to do with the gallbladder, and the pancreas too.

All these tables with numbers are very old diets, they are over a hundred years old. Today, they are no longer used in their original form. Modern diets are elimination diets. You are simply told: do not eat anything that can harm you. For example, do not eat fatty, but everything else is possible. At the same time, everyone always starts asking: fatty - what's this? Or: what is possible then? Of course, it is impossible to make a list of all possible products, so the doctors decided to write down the most common ones. This is how the list of “don’t” and “can” appeared, but it is not comprehensive, but only an example for creating a general idea of ​​\u200b\u200bnutrition. But many take the recommendation 100% and limit themselves to these five products. Such diets often exclude almost everything, leaving nothing to eat. But this is a diet for a healthy person, because only a healthy person can withstand it. And for those suffering from pancreatic problems, there are key limitations.

Over time, chronic pancreatitis causes a malfunction and a decrease in the power of the pancreas. From this moment on, eating fat is not only unpleasant, because it hurts, but also dangerous, it can carry. Undigested fat causes diarrhea at the wrong time in the wrong place. True, it comes to fecal incontinence in the most extreme cases, only if you eat fatty foods to the dump. In other situations, it just becomes more poop, they come out more often, in larger quantities, the consistency is thinner, the smell is worse, and the walls of the toilet bowl are more difficult to wash because they become greasy. Gradually lose weight and develop a deficiency of fat-soluble vitamins.

The problem is not solved by diet alone. Of course, you can completely give up fat and feel good. But the body also needs fat: it is not only a source of calories, but also a building material for organs and tissues, as well as the starting material for the production of biologically active substances. In addition, fat is the meaning of life and the reason for the work of the gallbladder. Therefore, you need to eat fat, but in smaller quantities. With a significant decrease in pancreatic function, enzymes are prescribed that are eaten with food to digest fats.

gall eggplant

About the alkaloid solanine

Potato and eggplant contain the alkaloid solanine. It is bad for the digestive system. Solanine is a glycoside composed of glucose and solanoidin. In structure, it is close to steroid hormones. It is found in all nightshade crops, and in any part of the plant. Its main function is to protect the young shoots of plants from animals so that they do not eat it or eat it, but not much.

Solanine irritates the mucous membranes of the digestive tract, disrupts the function of the pancreas and the central nervous system. In acute poisoning, nausea occurs, vomit, diarrhea and intestinal colic. For acute poisoning, it is enough to eat only 200 mg of solanine - and you can kill the pancreas.

English breakfast: not greasy?

About a regular load of fats as a training for bile secretion

Here is an example of how human logic works in matters of medicine. Fact: in diseases liver, gallbladder and pancreas limit fatty. Conclusion: Fat damages the liver, gallbladder and pancreas. Solution: it is better to eat less fat so as not to harm these organs and maintain excellent health until old age.

Not true! Fat is not harmful, but beneficial for the pancreas, gallbladder and liver.

Fat drives bile so that it does not stagnate and concentrate, so that stones and sludge do not form. Fat trains the pancreas, forcing it to work. Any organ without work will simply atrophy. If you don’t eat fatty foods for a long time, then the pancreas will become “lazy”, so a person’s fat tolerance may worsen in the future. As a result, he will conclude that the fat “rips off” the pancreas, and he will eat even less fat.

To make the scheme more understandable, let's draw an analogy with another organ - muscle. Is lifting weights good or bad for a muscle? Useful because the muscle grows and becomes stronger. You lift 1 kg - hard. But you lift tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and it becomes easy. Then lift 2 kg, and eventually 5 kg. But what happens if you limit the load: you won't lift anything? The muscle will atrophy.

Then you grab 5 kg, tear the muscle and come to the conclusion that lifting weights is harmful for the muscle, it’s better to never lift anything at all.

Losing fat is a similar solution. In this case, the pancreas will definitely not hurt, but it will weaken, like a muscle that is never loaded or trained. Fats are limited only to those whose pancreas is already damaged. If it is fully functional, then there is no need to deprive the organ of the work for which it is, in fact, designed.

Especially useful fat in the morning. Therefore, in many cultures it is customary to have breakfast richly and fattyly. For example, an English breakfast: butter, eggs, bacon, fatty milk.

And wise people say that breakfast you need to eat it yourself, share lunch with a friend, and shake out dinner to the enemy by the scruff of the neck or smear it on the face. It is understood that it is in the morning that you need to eat the maximum. All these traditions and wisdoms have a scientific basis. Cholagogue breakfast expels bile that has accumulated overnight.

Winter is coming: cold, hunger and peace

About the benefits of hunger in acute and chronic inflammation of the pancreas

The golden rule for acute pancreatitis is cold, hunger and rest. If the pancreas began not only to hurt, but to collapse, then it cannot work. It is broken down by its own enzymes. Moreover, they enter the bloodstream and destroy other organs. Therefore, it would be nice if the pancreas produced fewer enzymes. And how to reduce their production? The most obvious way is not to stimulate the pancreas. What stimulates her? Of course, food. We will limit not only fat, but in general everything! Because other food also stimulates the pancreas, albeit to a lesser extent.

Cold is used to reduce the inflammatory response. It is applied to the stomach. The principle is the same as applying ice to a bruised knee or a bump on the forehead. If you have ever done this procedure, you will notice that redness, swelling and pain are reduced. Why? Because the blood vessels narrow in the cold, and the edema subsides. Cold is needed only for acute pancreatitis and only in the first days. With chronic pancreatitis, which people have been suffering for decades, it makes no sense to freeze your stomach every day throughout your life.

Rest is needed to eliminate the influence of the autonomic nervous system. This nervesregulating all the functions of organs that cannot be controlled consciously. Including they change the tone of the pancreatic ducts and the production of digestive enzymes. At rest, when a person is resting, his internal organs, including the pancreas, also rest.

Fat bubble: not enough oil and fat?

About the regular use of fat and the absence of changes in the bladder and gland

Someone's grandmother ate fat all her life and saloand there were no stones. At the age of 90, she died a natural death, she never got sick with anything, she didn’t toil with her stomach, she didn’t go to the doctors, she didn’t lie in the hospital, she didn’t follow diets. And someone sits on a diet all the time, doesn’t eat fatty foods, runs around the house in the morning, doesn’t get out of the doctor’s offices, but the gallstones are full of stones, the mouth is bitter, and the stomach hurts. How to explain this phenomenon?

1. Regular workout. Grandmother's liver, bladder and pancreas from childhood to old age experienced a regular load. Grandmother trained the pancreas and gall like a muscle. If your relative, moreover, from childhood worked in the garden and in the barnyard, then in old age she could bend a horseshoe.
2. Maybe there were stones, but who saw them. My grandmother did not go to the doctors, she did not do an ultrasound. In most people, bladder stones do not hurt and do not protrude under the skin in the form of tubercles, so it is impossible to find out about their existence without the help of doctors or examinations.
3. Salo is cholesterol. Cholesterol stones. Conclusion: stones from fat. The truth is that the level of cholesterol in the blood really depends on the risk of formation of stones and polyps. But there is another truth: the level of cholesterol in the blood does not depend much on the diet. If you give up fatty, then you can reduce cholesterol levels by no more than 10-15%. Therefore, cardiologists have already spat and stopped prescribing a diet for heart patients, because it is faster and easier to achieve cholesterol reduction with pills. In addition, you do not have to swear with the patient and watch him at night so that he does not eat bacon and pork. Only 20-30% of cholesterol a person receives from food, and 70-80% is formed in the liver.
4. The quality of the products was completely different. They did not cause inflammation or polyps, because in agriculture there were no antibiotics and hormones. Yes, and there was hunger in those days, it was difficult to overeat too much.
5. The body of each person is individual. Genetic variants of metabolism and metabolism have not been tested before.

But the most important thing is that you can’t compare people with each other in terms of health, especially in terms of external signs. Few people know all the features of the lifestyle of even their loved ones: what they eat, how much and when, what hurts them and how they go to the toilet.

Even if people live together and inhale the smell of violets, then still no one will admit who made this smell.

In addition, even the most harmful risks do not always work. Classic example: my grandfather drinking and smoking, died at the age of 80, not knowing doctors, hospitals and pills. Another "grandfather" died at the age of 50 from a heart attack, although he did not drink or smoke. Conclusion: drinking and smoking is good for you. Is it logical? No. If you analyze the data of 1,000 people who drank and smoked, it turns out that on average they die much earlier. But on the basis of one person, such conclusions are not made, even if this person is a drinking-smoking grandfather or grandmother - a lover of fat.

In addition, if fat is harmful, then only for the heart and blood vessels, but not for the liver, gallbladder and pancreas. For these bodies fat is useful, as it drives bile and provides a stable load, keeping the digestive system in good shape. Fat is limited only to those who are already seriously ill, but healthy people can eat it without a twinge of conscience in small doses in any quantity.

Cleansing of the gallbladder and tubazh almighty (oil, lemon, heating pad)

About the influence of tubage and oil on the bile: risks, consequences

From the point of view of alternative medicine, you need to clean the liver regularly. Since it is technically difficult to remove it from the abdominal cavity, soak it for a day or two in the basin and clean it with a brush, you have to clean it right inside the body. In fact, they clean, of course, not the liver itself, but the bile ducts inside it. What are they cleaning from? It is believed that from stones, slag and toxins. Why clean? In order not to poison the body, they did not clog the bile ducts.

The classic version of "liver and gall cleansing" with tubage involves consuming olive oil with lemon and lying on your side with a heating pad on your stomach. As a result, green lumps fall out into the toilet. Fans of alternative medicine claim that this is gallstones coming out of the gallbladder. This assertion does not stand up to scrutiny. Any home-grown can create such "stones" alchemist, if you mix the ingredients for the tubage in a glass. In addition, the theory is easy to debunk if you do an ultrasound before the procedure. Ultrasound does not see any stones, but for some reason they still fall into the toilet in industrial quantities.

Do I need to do tubage? No, because it doesn't make sense. There is no benefit from the procedure, but there may be harm. This procedure is neutral or harmful, depending on whether there are stones in the bladder or not.

1. There are no stones. In this case, the tubage will not harm, but it will not help either. Why do the procedure if its main goal is to remove stones that are not there? Answer traditional healers: for prevention. So that stones do not appear in the future. But how distant is the future? Tubage removes thick bile. Let's say it is really thick and there is no doubt that this bile flows from the bladder. But in a few hours the bubble will be filled again. The bile will be just as thick. Therefore, this is a half-day prevention. Having made a tubage, you can be sure that stones in the bladder will not appear in the next few hours. But the process of stone formation is long, it lasts for months and years. You will not do tubage every day, will you? With the same success, you can eat fatty foods three times a day and confirm on an ultrasound scan that the gallbladder is really decreasing.
2. There are stones. Then the task of the tubage is to shove them into intestines. Some stones are attached to the wall and cannot be moved. Others will actually float. Is it good or bad? This is at least dangerous. It is the stone stuck in the duct that causes biliary colic and acute cholecystitis. After tyubage, you can be on the operating table.

Whether it is necessary to drive bile? Yes, but it needs to be driven every day. To do this, it is not necessary to sip vegetable oil in liters and wallow with a heating pad on your stomach. Just eat something fatty, and the bile will flow out naturally.

Cholagogue mineral water

About the influence of mineral waters on the bladder and pancreas

Mineral water does not have a significant effect on the bladder and pancreas, although it can drive bile a little. However, water does not dissolve stones, does not cure cholecystitis or pancreatitis, and does not even lead to a significant improvement in symptoms.

Where did the myths about the high efficiency of mineral waters come from? They are distributed sanatoriumscommercially interested in your ignorance. It is important for them that you come, rent an expensive room, drink water (which you can buy in a store or pharmacy), and also received expensive and stupid pseudo-medical procedures, such as tubage, enemas, or probing the duodenum intestines.

What happens from water? The most common is diarrhea. If the water is salty, then queue for the toilet in advance. Especially if you drink in a large company of mineral water lovers. Salt draws water, which rushes into the intestines. The contents liquefy and rapidly flies out of the rectum, regardless of whether you managed to rush to the toilet and take off your pants.

If you go to a sanatorium employee and complain about diarrhea, he will probably say that this is not a side effect, but a cleansing of the body.

It’s not shit with water that pours out of you, but slag with toxins. Now your intestines are crystal clear, and soon diseases will run away from the body without looking back. And if they don’t run away, then come back in another half a year, take money and a pot under the bed with you. In addition, they will cite as an example a person with constipation, who, from the laxative effect of mineral water, has become easy and happy and who, foaming at the mouth, will everywhere prove that he has been healed, and you will anger God and simply do not understand and have not yet felt effect. But this is how the effect of “cleansing the body” is created, although it can be called only “cleansing the intestines” with a stretch.

Osmotic force, or mineralization, affects the tone and motility of the bile and intestines. Water with a high content of magnesium or sulfates swears more. The ancient ideal laxative is magnesia, or magnesium sulfate. This remedy also has a choleretic effect.

Why can a person feel better after a course of mineral water? There are several explanations for this phenomenon:

1. Some time passed, and the exacerbation of the disease ended. It would have ended even without mineral water.
2. In fact, it’s not the gallbladder that hurts, but the intestines or stomach. Some mineral waters can actually reduce symptoms.
3. Treatment was carried out not only with water, but also with other means or procedures. Some of them worked, providing at least a short-term effect. Whether it will be preserved upon returning from the sanatorium is a big question.
4. The man in the sanatorium ate regularly, and this had a positive effect, along with a normal sleep and rest regimen from work and constant nervousness at home.

However, to drink mineral water, it is not necessary to go to a sanatorium. You can drink it at home from a bottle, lying on the couch in shorts in front of the TV - instead of beer. And you can also buy magnesium sulfate powder and dilute it with water - the effect will be the same, but spend less money.

The book "Bile & Enzymes" will help you understand how the gallbladder and pancreas are arranged and work. iron, what is useful for these organs and what is harmful, and also find out whether it is worth drinking enzymes or driving bile.

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