Patients often contact us because they have a gallstone they want to treat with our Lit-Control® products, but this is not possible! Be careful because, although their name is very similar to "kidney stone" and both can be painful, their causes of formation, symptoms, and treatments are totally different and we should not confuse them.
Do you want to know what these differences are between these two types of stones? Keep reading to find out.
What are gallstones?
Gallstones are hardened deposits of digestive fluid that form in the gallbladder.
The gallbladder is a small, pear-shaped organ located in the upper right part of the abdomen, just below the liver (see image). The gallbladder contains a digestive fluid called bile, which is produced in the liver, stored in the gallbladder, and released into the small intestine when we eat to help with food digestion.
When bile has a high concentration of certain substances like cholesterol or bilirubin, these can crystallize and grow to form gallstones. Therefore, gallstones can be made of cholesterol (which are the most common and are yellow) or bilirubin (dark brown), as shown below.
Gallstones can vary in size, from as small as a grain of sand to as large as a golf ball. Some people develop only one gallstone, while others develop many at the same time.
What are kidney or urinary stones?
Kidney stones are hardened deposits of substances found in urine that form inside the kidneys, and over time can appear in the ureter or bladder.
Kidney stones can be classified into four main groups depending on the type of substance they are composed of: calcium, struvite, uric acid, and cystine.
What are their symptoms?
It is possible to have a gallstone (or many) and never know it. However, if one of these stones ends up blocking the bile duct connecting the gallbladder to the small intestine, your body will react with symptoms such as: nausea, vomiting, sudden pain that intensifies in the upper central part of the abdomen, and pain in the back at the level of the right shoulder.
It is also possible to have kidney stones and not know about them until you have an imaging test and your radiologist detects them. However, if one of these stones ends up blocking the passage of urine through the ureter, the resulting symptoms will be: nausea, vomiting, fever, lower back pain, pain in the lower abdomen near the genitals, and possible bleeding in the urine.
What are their treatments?
Gallstones can be treated with medications that dissolve them, such as ursodiol, but these medications often require many months or even years to achieve complete dissolution.
If dissolution is not possible with medication, doctors (in this case, gastroenterologists) resort to other techniques such as shock wave lithotripsy or endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). However, the most common treatment is the complete removal of the gallbladder through surgery with a procedure called cholecystectomy.
In a cholecystectomy, the gallbladder is removed, and bile flows directly from the liver to the small intestine. The gallbladder is not a vital organ, and the person can live normally without it.
Uric acid or cystine stones can be dissolved with alkalizers like potassium-magnesium citrate found in Lit-Control® pH Up, while struvite stones can be dissolved with acidifiers like L-methionine found in Lit-Control® pH Down.
If dissolution is not possible with medication, then doctors (in this case, urologists) resort to other techniques such as shock wave lithotripsy, ureteroscopy, or percutaneous nephrolithotomy. In this case, the aim is to extract the stone or break it into smaller fragments that will pass during urination.
In summary
Gallstones and kidney stones have similar names and both can be very painful, but as you now know, they form in different organs, are composed of different substances, generate different symptoms, have different treatments, and even their doctors are also different.
