First and foremost, overeating can cause a gallbladder attack. While your doctor won’t tell you that, just try it out. Too much food in your stomach can bring on an attack, even if the food is not fatty or greasy.

People get attacks after salad, after pasta, after broccoli, or even garlic. Why? Well, there is a list of foods that can bring on a gallbladder attack that are not fatty at all. 8% of people in a study got a gallbladder attack after drinking orange juice. Why? Because 8% of them had a food sensitivity to orange juice? Or because of the acidity? No one knows for sure.

Someone else discovered she had attacks after eating anything with garlic in it. Another person reacted with an attack after eating pasta. And the number one food causing gallbladder attacks is eggs - not fried foods. If you pair the eggs with French fries and bacon the likelihood will just be all the higher.

If you have a food allergy - and I’m not talking about a serious one that puts you into anaphylaxis- just a food sensitivity such as gluten, dairy or eggs - when you eat these foods, they cause inflammation. The inflammation can affect any part of the body such as joints, causing joint pain, the brain causing brain fog or lack of concentration, or parts of the digestive system, causing pain or indigestion.

While it can go everywhere, we tend to feel it in our weakest links. In the gallbladder, an allergen can cause inflammation in the gallbladder itself, and in the bile ducts and sphincters. This can be happening all the time and only sometimes cause an actual attack. Overeating just increases the odds.

How long after eating does gallbladder pain start?

While you can get an attack shortly after eating (within minutes to hours), it is most likely to happen at night. And the amount of time a gallbladder attack lasts can vary a lot. Most commonly, it will last anywhere from 15 minutes to 4 hours.

While there is often no warning before the pain hits, as you become more observant of it, you may notice some discomfort in the area of the gallbladder and sometimes in the center just below the rib cage hours before. And sometimes this will happen on and off for days before you get an attack.

There are things you can do at this stage to help to prevent a full-on attack from happening. The easiest is to take Phos Formula liquid drops in 1/3 cup of water and repeat every 10-15 minutes until the discomfort subsides. You can also use this in the midst of an attack with no problem. You can’t eat anything or swallow any pills during an attack, but taking sips of Phos Formula in water is both tolerable and surprisingly supportive.

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