How to treat calm gallstones?

  Many middle-aged and elderly people are found to have gallstones through “ultrasound” during medical checkups. They are usually surprised: how can they have gallstones when they are normally fine and have no discomfort? In fact, this is “asymptomatic cholelithiasis”.  Gallstone disease is a common and frequent disease. With the improvement of people’s living standards, the incidence is increasing, so it has become one of the three “rich diseases” that threaten people’s health today. A Japanese hospital once made 7000 autopsies and found about 800 cases of gallstones, but less than half of them had symptoms during life, and some people call this kind of gallstones without symptoms “calm gallstone disease”.  The reason why some patients with gallstones do not show symptoms is that the symptoms of gallstones depend mainly on whether the stones obstruct the gallbladder duct and produce bile stasis and infection. The second is the mechanical irritation of the mucosa by the stones themselves. Therefore, asymptomatic stones are usually cholesterol stones with small number of stones, large size and smooth surface, which roll back and forth in the gallbladder with small amplitude and are not easy to block the cystic duct suddenly and fall into the common bile duct through the narrow cystic duct. Therefore, there is less chance of acute symptoms, and some people may even be free of “gallstone” disease for life, so of course, the diagnosis can be easily ignored.  The absence of symptoms does not mean that there is no disease in the gallbladder. Gallstones are foreign bodies, which often cause the gallbladder to gradually and deeply become chronic inflammation, manifested by thickening of the gallbladder wall (more than 3 cm), inflammatory adhesions around it, or cholesterol crystals deposited in the mucosa, which affects the normal function of the gallbladder in concentrating bile and contracting bile discharge. Some people usually have indigestion signs such as epigastric distention, erratic and even “stomach pain” after eating fatty food, overworking or cold, which may be caused by gallstones, but the symptoms are mild and not taken seriously, or mistaken as “old stomach disease” recurrence. The symptoms may be mild and not taken seriously, or mistaken for a recurrence of “old stomach problems”. It can be seen that the calm gallstones are not absolutely calm.