In this short, Dr. Tabatha Barber explains that many women undergo gallbladder removal (cholecystectomy) without being warned about the downstream metabolic and hormonal disturbances. She argues that the loss of concentrated bile acid release impairs toxin and hormone sequestration, disrupts fat digestion (especially on ketogenic diets), and diminishes signaling of GLP‑1, insulin, and motilin. This cascade can lead to estrogen dominance, fatigue, joint pain, brain fog, and poor bowel motility. Barber emphasizes that regular bowel movements (1‑3 per day) are essential for detoxification, linking bile‑driven motility to overall health. She critiques conventional medicine’s claim that the gallbladder is unnecessary post‑surgery, citing research that contradicts the notion that all problems disappear after removal.
Chapters
For so many women, maybe they've had their gallbladder, you know, removed because they were having the right side pain or they saw that there were some stones and it seemingly, you know, today is just such a common surgery and they go, just take it out. But they're never ever told the metabolic effects that will happen, the hormone impact in terms of estrogen dominance, right? Because now we don't have enough bile acids being released in the right concentrate at the right time from the gallbladder. To help us sequester toxins, remove metabolized hormones, cholesterol, break down all of these fats, especially if someone's following a more of a ketogenic diet, right? They're trying to fix their metabolic health, but yet they're missing this really crucial— I don't— technically it's not a digestive juice, but I will say for in layman's terms, right, someone to kind of think of it that way. Um, but we need it to, to help us and then also signal, uh, our GLP-1 and signaling insulin, uh, from our inslet cells in the pancreas. And if we cannot break down, digest, and absorb nutrients, we start to see the systemic breakdown, the overburden of toxins. And then people are wondering why they've got fatigue, joint pain, brain fog. So again, going back to the root cause, if we start to look at this connection and we start to educate women How do we eat differently? We can get rid of a lot of this dysfunction because as we know, you know, in our profession as clinicians, when we look at the bottom of a funnel, we, we cannot get rid of toxicity unless we open the drain, right? And so that's really where for me as the poop queen, I'm talking a lot about pooping 1 to 3 times a day. If you're not pooping, you're not detoxing. But a big part of that signal comes from bile. To signal motilin, your hormone to help with motility, right? But if you talk to a doctor about this in conventional medicine, you don't need your gallbladder. Seemingly everything should just be fine. We'll take it out and all your problems go away. And it's very clear in the research that's not true.
