QUIT SNACKING

Alas poor gallbladder!  I knew it well.  Not quite what Dr Shakespeare would have penned in my hospital report but I’m sure the sentiment was there.

Perfectly summed up by The Awkward Yeti

Like a faithful old nag being put out to pasture, it seems I’m being decommissioned piece by piece with yet another internal organ on the ‘body parts you can live without’ list.  Last time it was ovaries, this time it’s my gallbladder, a seemingly squishy and innocuous part of your anatomy located somewhere near your liver.  Mine’s in use as a rent-free squat by a large gallstone which is now in receipt of an NHS eviction order.

Do you know where your gallbladder is?

I’m surprised the frosty faced consultant (I’m not in charge of the NHS you know) didn’t blame gallstones on air pollution as this has become the new ‘fat’ which we all know replaced smoking as the cause of everything that’s bad in this world.  Noisy neighbours – yep, air pollution.  Cat bringing in dead birds – got to be air pollution.  Run out of cherry flavoured yogurts in Tesco – air pollution? You bet.  Gallstones – oh most definitely air pollution after all those years of breathing in particulates I didn’t know existed. 

Man-made climate emergency - fact or convenient financial fiction?

I’m sure I'm not the only one living in daily fear of the Pollution Police busting down the front door in one of those crack-of-dawn raids to arrest me for harbouring a gas combi-boiler fugitive in my kitchen such is the level of pollution anxiety the tabloids have reduced us to.

Quick hide!  It's a raid!

But let’s not get too hung up on air pollution in this post and return to my hospital consultation which lasted all of about 5 minutes in a minimally furnished room that would have made Colditz look like a 5 star hotel.  When I say consultation what I really mean was interrogation since I was not ‘consulted’ about my side of the story but accused of creating this monster problem by being too fat.  (She must have meant pollution, surely?)

Never mind that for years I’ve suffered from an underactive thyroid.  Did you know that thyroid hormones interfere with your bile production and affect the absorption of fat by your gallbladder?  Neither did I until I consulted Dr Google.  Miss Frosty-knickers MD was having none of it.  I’m a junk food scoffing couch potato in her eyes and that’s all there is to it.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Gallstones because this is what I do all day long?

And so whilst I wait for a spot on the NHS operating list (more chance of finding a unicorn than being seen this side of Christmas), I’ve gone cockling.  No doubt this will soon be banned on the grounds that cockle farts cause gallstones and every kind of cancer known to mankind and some ailments known only to Martians.  Ah the joys of summer!

Saving the planet from cockle farts

Low calorie and full of minerals

The Gallstone Seafood Diet - see food and don't eat it