Welcome to the Doctor Burg, Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Now, your host, the man taking your health to a whole new level.

Doctor Eric Burg.

Hey, guys.

Today we're going to talk about fasting and gallstones.

This is based on a very interesting study right here, which I'm going to put a link down below.

First thing to know is that gallstones are created by two conditions.

One is a super concentrated amount of cholesterol, with low amounts of bile.

Because bile naturally breaks down cholesterol.

So if you don't have enough bile, then you get this formation of cholesterol that then can crystallize into stones.

This study involved nine healthy women, where they extracted bile from the duodenum, which is the first part of the small intestine, at 10-hour fast, 15-hour fast, and 20-hour fast.

And they were looking at the saturation index.

So the more saturated the more risk of getting a gallstone.

So this is what they found, a significant greater saturation at 15-hours compared to 10-hours.

Now, if you're just reading this, you're going to go, oh my gosh, fasting does increase your risk of getting a gallstone.

Well, if you keep reading the article, you'll also notice that they said this.

However, at 20-hours, it reverted.

So I'm just going to read the last part, the conclusion.

In conclusion, our findings suggest that fasting between 10 and 20-hours may indeed increase the risk of gallstone formation.

But this effect is countered by a more prolonged fast.

Now, there's a couple other points that they mentioned that I need to talk about.

Number one, it looked like the gallbladder stopped concentrating at a certain point when the person's fasting.

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