GLPs, Your Gallbladder, And You – Birdwhacker's Guide to Busting Organ Failure

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Gallbladder failure can result as a side effect of the rapid weight loss that GLPs cause — and possibly from GLPs on their own.

Nope, sources won't be provided by me, since I'm no nerd. Google it yourself.

Nope, no doctor has given me a diagnosis. If that rubs you the wrong way, unless you're footing the bill for the appointment, find another thread.

About me: 27m, 6'0", began reta roughly 13 weeks back, and I've dropped 32lbs (14.5kg) since then. Essentially that's a steady 3lbs weekly, right from week 1 on reta. Only cardio and diet, no lifting. A 1200 calorie defecit.

Roughly 2 months in, URQ (upper right quadrant) pain started hitting me during runs. A precise spot at the 1 o'clock position, right along the line of my lowest rib. Kind of like an inside cramp. Once it kicks off, it keeps escalating unless I dial back the activity. Heading home and eating a meal appeared to clear it up for the remainder of the day.

I now realize those attacks were set off by a zero fat cold breakfast (whey shake with nonfat milk).

Keep in mind other people might have completely different symptoms. Some folks enjoy challenging this and implying I'm clueless because no sawbones has told me to go take ibuprofen for it. I've done more research than you, and my dozens of forum posts and reddit threads beat your medical credentials any day of the week.

What comes next is a brief rundown of symptoms, risk factors, and most importantly what you can do to fix it. Go ahead and search reddit.com/r/gallbladder, reddit.com/r/altgallbladder, and other forums if you want more experiences. I just want to inform people using the search function in future about what they can do to potentially keep their gallbladder (hold out until surgery is required) for as long as they can.

TMI warning:

Since this all began, I've also observed that taurine (any amount) and TUDCA make me shit my entire ass within minutes of taking them. Neither supplement normally does this. If taurine makes you immediately shit your pants, your gallbladder might be problematic! The poo is yellow or orange, burns, and doesn't smell or look like normal poo. It also floats on top of the water due to poorly digested lipids.

Both taurine and TUDCA stimulate bile flow. When the gallbladder is functioning poorly due to inflammation, sludge, or stones, taking something to stimulate it causes it to dump out all of the bile which subsequently stimulates the colon to produce lubricating mucous that tells you to shit your britches.

Things that are bad for your gallbladder include: Opiates, GLPs, calcium channel blockers, progesterone, merely being a woman, being over 40, being fat, not being fat too quickly after being fat, fasting, keto, skipping breakfast, cold drinks, nicotine, excess calcium, excess copper, excess iron, and beef.

Gallbladder issues strike women more often. Surgery and medical intervention are needed more often by men.

Here is what you can do to unfuck your gallbladder:

  • Digestive enzymes
  • Chanca piedra
  • Curucumin (turmeric) extract (with piperine)
  • Betaine HCL with Pepsin
  • Ox Bile
  • TUDCA
  • UDCA (Medication: Ursodiol)
  • Magnesium malate
  • Psilium husk, magnesium malate, zinc, lemon juice, ginger, vinegar
  • Oxytocin peptide

UDCA is the medication that a doctor would prescribe you to potentially dissolve gallstones. This does not work in more than half of cases, but you and me are built different so our chances are much better. TUDCA is taurine conjugated UDCA. Research shows that UDCA is more effective than TUDCA in dissolving stones. I haven't tried UDCA yet, but TUDCA produced an immediate relief in URQ symptoms for me (and taurine to a lesser extent). TUDCA is also used by bodybuilders and alcoholics to help protect the liver.

Chanca piedra, also known as stone breaker (a little on the nose imo), is some kind of bullshit tea that was originally used to break down kidney stones. Apparently is works for gallstones as well. From what I've seen in my research, this is one of the more effective treatments on par with UDCA. There are extract capsules on Amazon, and it seems that pairing these capsules with tea would be the smart move.

Curucumin with piperine, it's fucking turmeric. It's gotta be super good for you. The people on reddit told me to take it. Can't hurt, right? When it comes to herbal extracts and more esoteric supplements, I trust nootropicsdepot more than anyone on Amazon, so I'm gonna mention them since they have some high quality curucumin extracts available. I'll be picking them up for sure.

Digestive enzymes and betaine HCL with pepsin: Again, it's in the name. Digestive enzymes? That shit has to be super good for digestion. Betaine HCL with Pepsin, I have actually taken before when I was much younger. It cured my indigestion and I was quite impressed, but I never actually bought more. People on Reddit who have actually have success recommend the stone breaker tea in the morning, and the enzymes+pepsin taken before every meal. I personally would like very much to digest my fish oil again instead of dumping it into my toilet bowl.

Ox Bile: Gonna be honest, I don't know if this is totally necessary with UDCA/TUDCA since those are already bile salts. Use at your discretion, it comes up a lot so I had to mention it.

Magnesium Malate: Magnesium and zinc are good for the gallbladder. To be honest, if you're not already supplementing one or both of these, I have to wonder if you're responsible enough to be using peptides at all. I recommend malate, because I heard through a little birdy that malic acid is also good for stone dissolution and this seems like a good way to kill two paraquets with one cholesterol stone.



Oxytocin: This is a fun one and it's actually been super beneficial in my routine. Oxytocin is known for two things: Making you poop, and causing headaches. It excels at both of these tasks. In-fact, I have a headache right now. I was curious and I looked up the mechanism and found out that oxytocin causes contractions in the gallbladder that help push out bile acids.

My routine currently is as follows: Wake up, go make a hot toddy with honey, ginger, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper (surprisingly good). Then I chug down some psilium husk, and I chase it with 500mg tudca and a few grams of taurine while sipping the warm mixture. Then I have a few prunes and drink a shit load of olive oil. Then as I'm nearing the end of my drink, I blast 200-500mcg of oxytocin. After about ten minutes, the gall bladder starts dumping and I have a BM.

Today is day 3 of this routine, and I actually haven't pooped yet today because the gallbladder is getting better. Poops are looking slightly more normal, and I'm actually doing the routine for a second time right now after i had my dinner (7pm here). I'm going to add all of the above in next month and try to actually dissolve the stones and keep them dissolved moving forward. Thank God I'm unemployed and had the time to figure all of this out because the surgery is wildly expensive and good luck getting one immediately if it isn't like threatening or you don't have 10k sitting around.

Birdwhacker out!

Edit: Big update everyone, I managed to digest all of my food today and my poop was solid and somewhat brown for the first time in weeks. There is hope after all.
 
So much information here — I appreciate you putting your research out there, since I'm dealing with trouble going to the bathroom right now. It's been 3 days with nothing happening at all. I'm going through everything you wrote now! Thanks once more
 
SeaGypsy said:

So much information here — I appreciate you putting your research out there, since I'm dealing with trouble going to the bathroom right now. It's been 3 days with nothing happening at all. I'm going through everything you wrote now! Thanks once more
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That has never happened to me. Make sure you're getting plenty of magnesium, eating enough healthy fats, never missing breakfast, having something warm to drink in the morning, and maybe adding TUDCA or taurine so bile keeps moving.

And one more time, because it really matters: magnesium, and a lot of it!
 
birdwhacker said:

SeaGypsy said:

So much information here — I appreciate you putting your research out there, since I'm dealing with trouble going to the bathroom right now. It's been 3 days with nothing happening at all. I'm going through everything you wrote now! Thanks once more
Click to expand...
That has never happened to me. Make sure you're getting plenty of magnesium, eating enough healthy fats, never missing breakfast, having something warm to drink in the morning, and maybe adding TUDCA or taurine so bile keeps moving.

And one more time, because it really matters: magnesium, and a lot of it!
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Thank you—I'm placing an order for some of that immediately! I really appreciate it; this is pretty rough.

Edit: I've just placed the order for the TUDCA along with the magnesium!
 
The pain from a gallbladder is unlike any other I've felt. When weight comes off quickly, that organ frequently gives out. After bariatric surgery, having it removed is routine. Mine was in perfect shape before the operation. 16months later, out it came.

In my husband's case, decades back, he showed up at a hospital with intense gallbladder pain. While they were evaluating him, they found something far more serious that needed surgery right away, followed by a brutal recovery lasting months. Nobody ever dealt with the gallbladder problem. Several years later, the pain returned, and digestive enzymes plus other things we tried at home did nothing. Out it came. The pathology results, unfortunately, were not good. A second operation - open this time - was needed to deal with the marginal tissue.

Cells get damaged by ongoing inflammation. Gallbladder cancer is practically never caught before it is far along.

I'm not here to tell anyone how to handle their health, or to be scared. What I am doing is pushing for seeing a doctor instead of ignoring things.

I hope your self care eliminates the pain and it's source!
 
Last night I ran this by chatgpt, because I wanted a sense of how often GLP drugs send people to the hospital.

Since older studies put gallstone rates after bariatric surgery as high as 10%, I wondered whether GLPs land in the same range, and if they don't, what explains the difference.

The figures I got were all over the place. Plenty of people develop gallstones without ever feeling them, but on GLPs the share who end up with symptomatic gallstones might reach roughly 1%, with a lot of variation by weight loss and age and so on — the more pounds lost, and the quicker they come off, the higher the odds climb. At truly fast weight loss, gallstone risk can run as high as 10%, which is a very strong argument for not pushing too hard right out of the gate.

I also tried to pin down how often GLP side effects lead to hospital care for dehydration, since that was my hunch for the most frequent serious issue. What came back was around 4 per 1000 emergency department visits and roughly 1/1000 hospital admissions, though that shifts with the drug, the dose and the individual — older and sicker people carry more risk. And grey GLP users run higher risk still because of dosing mistakes.

Still, at or near 1%, it looks like gallstone pain is more likely to send you to the emergency department than dehydration is. Gallstone pain is usually that severe.
 
lessthanhalf said:

Last night I ran this by chatgpt, because I wanted a sense of how often GLP drugs send people to the hospital.

Since older studies put gallstone rates after bariatric surgery as high as 10%, I wondered whether GLPs land in the same range, and if they don't, what explains the difference.

The figures I got were all over the place. Plenty of people develop gallstones without ever feeling them, but on GLPs the share who end up with symptomatic gallstones might reach roughly 1%, with a lot of variation by weight loss and age and so on — the more pounds lost, and the quicker they come off, the higher the odds climb. At truly fast weight loss, gallstone risk can run as high as 10%, which is a very strong argument for not pushing too hard right out of the gate.

I also tried to pin down how often GLP side effects lead to hospital care for dehydration, since that was my hunch for the most frequent serious issue. What came back was around 4 per 1000 emergency department visits and roughly 1/1000 hospital admissions, though that shifts with the drug, the dose and the individual — older and sicker people carry more risk. And grey GLP users run higher risk still because of dosing mistakes.

Still, at or near 1%, it looks like gallstone pain is more likely to send you to the emergency department than dehydration is. Gallstone pain is usually that severe.
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That's a solid question, and Lilly benefits from keeping it unresolved for as long as possible.

lessthanhalf said:

Last night I ran this by chatgpt, because I wanted a sense of how often GLP drugs send people to the hospital.

Since older studies put gallstone rates after bariatric surgery as high as 10%, I wondered whether GLPs land in the same range, and if they don't, what explains the difference.

The figures I got were all over the place. Plenty of people develop gallstones without ever feeling them, but on GLPs the share who end up with symptomatic gallstones might reach roughly 1%, with a lot of variation by weight loss and age and so on — the more pounds lost, and the quicker they come off, the higher the odds climb. At truly fast weight loss, gallstone risk can run as high as 10%, which is a very strong argument for not pushing too hard right out of the gate.

I also tried to pin down how often GLP side effects lead to hospital care for dehydration, since that was my hunch for the most frequent serious issue. What came back was around 4 per 1000 emergency department visits and roughly 1/1000 hospital admissions, though that shifts with the drug, the dose and the individual — older and sicker people carry more risk. And grey GLP users run higher risk still because of dosing mistakes.

Still, at or near 1%, it looks like gallstone pain is more likely to send you to the emergency department than dehydration is. Gallstone pain is usually that severe.
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The word "usually" is carrying a lot of weight in that statement. A more precise way to put it: gallbladder problems tend to fly under the radar until they become serious. There are many accounts like mine—minor flare-ups that caused digestive trouble, with people trying to cope on and off for months or years before eventually requiring surgery.
 
That large block at the start is completely dark for me — I can't make out anything in it.

Is it just me? When I select everything, it becomes highlighted and then I can read it.
 
Fantastic breakdown. Do let us know how things go. Wishing you all the best as you head down the path of dissolution.
 
desinr-gal said:

That large block at the start is completely dark for me — I can't make out anything in it.

Is it just me? When I select everything, it becomes highlighted and then I can read it.
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Hold on, I need to get on my computer. The formatting is messed up somehow. Part of the text came out white, so I attempted switching the color to black.

@desinr-gal For sure. During month 2, I went from 2.33mg weekly up to 4.66mg weekly. After that, though, I never raised the dose again. These days I'm actually tapering down to 1.8mg every 3 to 4 days, since 2mg every 3 days turned out to be too effective.

Over the past two weeks I even gave a refeed a shot, and wound up dropping another 5lbs lmao. Suffering from success
 
For anyone considering Chanca Piedra: I can personally attest to its effectiveness when it comes to kidney stones. It does the job beautifully, and you can even use it as a preventive measure. The NaturalisimoLife Chanca Piedra 1600 mg is a reliable option, and it's the only thing I turn to whenever I feel even a slight pang or twitch that might signal a stone. Having already dealt with passing 8mm stones, I have no desire to repeat that experience.
 
Thanks for posting this.

You really can't overlook how important the gallbladder is. After my bariatric surgery, mine failed on me. The awful part? I felt absolutely nothing wrong until the pain hit and I was bent in half.

And here's the worst part: the gallbladder had turned gangrenous, and when they took it out in the emergency OR, it ruptured inside my belly.

The Mayo Clinic surgeon cleaned out as many stones as he could, but a lot of them were tinier than a grain of sand.

Twelve months later, 4 stones no bigger than grains of sand nearly killed me.

How did it go down? A mild fever, then chills, then out-of-nowhere severe pain.

At first the doctors suspected cancer, because those tiny stones were showing up bright in the biliary tract of my liver. What it actually was: abscesses forming around those stones... which progressed to sepsis, then septic shock, and a lovely stay in the ICU fighting for my life, during which I dropped 40lbs in 30 days.

Once I got out, with medical bills equal to some small nation's entire GDP, it took me a solid 2 years to recover.

So keep an eye on your gallbladder, on gallbladder health... rapid weight loss really can make the gallbladder crash. Thanks for the reminder.
 
FarmgirlRebel said:

Thanks for posting this.

You really can't overlook how important the gallbladder is. After my bariatric surgery, mine failed on me. The awful part? I felt absolutely nothing wrong until the pain hit and I was bent in half.

And here's the worst part: the gallbladder had turned gangrenous, and when they took it out in the emergency OR, it ruptured inside my belly.

The Mayo Clinic surgeon cleaned out as many stones as he could, but a lot of them were tinier than a grain of sand.

Twelve months later, 4 stones no bigger than grains of sand nearly killed me.

How did it go down? A mild fever, then chills, then out-of-nowhere severe pain.

At first the doctors suspected cancer, because those tiny stones were showing up bright in the biliary tract of my liver. What it actually was: abscesses forming around those stones... which progressed to sepsis, then septic shock, and a lovely stay in the ICU fighting for my life, during which I dropped 40lbs in 30 days.

Once I got out, with medical bills equal to some small nation's entire GDP, it took me a solid 2 years to recover.

So keep an eye on your gallbladder, on gallbladder health... rapid weight loss really can make the gallbladder crash. Thanks for the reminder.
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Good lord, lady. I'm so relieved you pulled through. That kind of scare is beyond anything I can picture.
 
HereKittyKitty said:

FarmgirlRebel said:

Thanks for posting this.

You really can't overlook how important the gallbladder is. After my bariatric surgery, mine failed on me. The awful part? I felt absolutely nothing wrong until the pain hit and I was bent in half.

And here's the worst part: the gallbladder had turned gangrenous, and when they took it out in the emergency OR, it ruptured inside my belly.

The Mayo Clinic surgeon cleaned out as many stones as he could, but a lot of them were tinier than a grain of sand.

Twelve months later, 4 stones no bigger than grains of sand nearly killed me.

How did it go down? A mild fever, then chills, then out-of-nowhere severe pain.

At first the doctors suspected cancer, because those tiny stones were showing up bright in the biliary tract of my liver. What it actually was: abscesses forming around those stones... which progressed to sepsis, then septic shock, and a lovely stay in the ICU fighting for my life, during which I dropped 40lbs in 30 days.

Once I got out, with medical bills equal to some small nation's entire GDP, it took me a solid 2 years to recover.

So keep an eye on your gallbladder, on gallbladder health... rapid weight loss really can make the gallbladder crash. Thanks for the reminder.
Click to expand...
Good lord, lady. I'm so relieved you pulled through. That kind of scare is beyond anything I can picture.
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Appreciate it...honestly I can't decide which part was more brutal—those Mayo physicians getting it wrong and telling me stage four cancer, or the fact that sepsis nearly killed me regardless...strange...still, it forced me to really evaluate my life and get my priorities straight.

Left work early, got a horse camper, a one ton truck, and now I trail ride across the US whenever I can.
 
FarmgirlRebel said:

HereKittyKitty said:

FarmgirlRebel said:

Thanks for posting this.

You really can't overlook how important the gallbladder is. After my bariatric surgery, mine failed on me. The awful part? I felt absolutely nothing wrong until the pain hit and I was bent in half.

And here's the worst part: the gallbladder had turned gangrenous, and when they took it out in the emergency OR, it ruptured inside my belly.

The Mayo Clinic surgeon cleaned out as many stones as he could, but a lot of them were tinier than a grain of sand.

Twelve months later, 4 stones no bigger than grains of sand nearly killed me.

How did it go down? A mild fever, then chills, then out-of-nowhere severe pain.

At first the doctors suspected cancer, because those tiny stones were showing up bright in the biliary tract of my liver. What it actually was: abscesses forming around those stones... which progressed to sepsis, then septic shock, and a lovely stay in the ICU fighting for my life, during which I dropped 40lbs in 30 days.

Once I got out, with medical bills equal to some small nation's entire GDP, it took me a solid 2 years to recover.

So keep an eye on your gallbladder, on gallbladder health... rapid weight loss really can make the gallbladder crash. Thanks for the reminder.
Click to expand...
Good lord, lady. I'm so relieved you pulled through. That kind of scare is beyond anything I can picture.
Click to expand...
Appreciate it...honestly I can't decide which part was more brutal—those Mayo physicians getting it wrong and telling me stage four cancer, or the fact that sepsis nearly killed me regardless...strange...still, it forced me to really evaluate my life and get my priorities straight.

Left work early, got a horse camper, a one ton truck, and now I trail ride across the US whenever I can.
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Your run-of-the-mill physician.

If only you'd presented as male rather than female, then they might have actually listened to you!

Unfortunately, for anyone dealing with gallbladder problems, removal isn't an option unless the situation becomes life threatening — as happened in your case or kitty's — or unless they can pay out of pocket. Even when insurance covers it, the cost can still be steep.

My strategy: keep it under control for now while I relocate to a Blue state that has sensible healthcare and horrific gun control policy, sign up for Obammacare or its equivalent, and then find a surgeon willing to operate without running my credit so I can dodge the bill.
 
Sema for 3 months, then Tirz for 8 months — that was my history before moving to Reta, and the reason for the change was that loss had become extremely slow.

4 weeks into Reta, with the dose raised to 6 mg, a pain appeared in my upper back, right between the shoulder blades. My first assumption was that I had simply slept in a bad position, but it did not take long to realize this was probably something more, likely referred gallbladder pain.

So I quit Reta and went back on Tirz. 2 weeks later the pain was gone, and it has not come back since. n=1
 
QueenMuntha said:

Sema for 3 months, then Tirz for 8 months — that was my history before moving to Reta, and the reason for the change was that loss had become extremely slow.

4 weeks into Reta, with the dose raised to 6 mg, a pain appeared in my upper back, right between the shoulder blades. My first assumption was that I had simply slept in a bad position, but it did not take long to realize this was probably something more, likely referred gallbladder pain.

So I quit Reta and went back on Tirz. 2 weeks later the pain was gone, and it has not come back since. n=1
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Wow, that's a lot. Thanks for passing this along.

Someone else's post mentioned their physician claiming that stopping the GLP might undo the gallbladder problems they were experiencing. I figured that was just another instance of doctors making things up. Now I'm starting to think there might be some truth in it.

As it stands, I'm at 3.2mg per week of reta (~14 weeks in) and could drop even further. Curious how this plays out.
 
I've come across your posts previously. Have any blood panels been run, LFTs among them? What about ultrasound imaging? There's a great deal of theorizing in this thread, but I'd be interested in hearing some objective data.
 
Lear00 said:

I've come across your posts previously. Have any blood panels been run, LFTs among them? What about ultrasound imaging? There's a great deal of theorizing in this thread, but I'd be interested in hearing some objective data.
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I'm fairly certain that the opening paragraphs already address this matter in detail.

I've set aside money for bloodwork and will get whatever tests I can next month. Apart from bilirubin and liver enzymes, is there anything else you'd recommend? As far as I understand, those would make up a liver function test.

If I had any scans or imaging available, I clearly wouldn't be sitting here going on about "theory." Also, the point of this post is prevention, not a diary of my personal day-to-day symptoms. Plenty more than theory is going on with my body at this moment, and there's no shortage of evidence pointing to the gallbladder. Just like heart attacks, symptoms vary enormously across genders, age brackets, and risk factors.

I've heard from a reliable source that my liver showed some marbling back in 2021. Sadly, I couldn't get follow-up care then for the same reasons I can't get it now. Unless I obtain health insurance or the pain turns debilitating, I'm stuck handling this by myself. Eventually I'll have it looked at, and see a cardiologist. But that won't happen before Q2 of next year at the earliest.
 
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