How to sleep after gallbladder surgery? It’s the oldest question in the book, but like all cliché medical inquiries, it has a very simple answer. You sleep as much as your pain allows you to. Because somehow, you will need to re-jig how you manage pain and discomfort now that gallbladders aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing anymore.
When is Gallbladder Surgery Necessary?
The gallbladder is one of the small organs present in the human body located under the liver. It stores bile produced by the liver, which plays a vital role in breaking down food, especially fat.
Sometimes when this little organ starts malfunctioning or certain problems like cancerous growths, it has to be removed through surgery. There are many reasons why someone might require the removal of their gallbladder; some of these include:
- Cancer – Cancer is one of the major causes of the removal of the gallbladder. The gallbladder contains cancerous tissue that can spread rapidly and destroy other body parts if left untreated.
- Painful gallstones – Are small stones formed inside the gallbladder or bile ducts due to excess cholesterol, bilirubin, etc. Symptoms of this disease include severe pain in the abdomen, back, and below ribs.
- Blockage in bile ducts – Due to many reasons like lump formation, sinusitis, etc., there may be a blockage in bile ducts resulting in gallbladder inflammation, which causes immense abdominal discomfort.
Gallbladder surgery is necessary when one wishes to live a life without any health issues related to the liver or stomach.
Why Do We Need to Sleep?
Sleeping is not just something that our bodies do when we close our eyes and stop moving (although that doesn’t sound too bad). Sleep is also necessary because it strengthens the immune system, helps control weight gain, and prevents depression.
Not unlike exercise, though, even if we feel better after a good night’s sleep, it can be hard to get started. But before we talk about how to sleep after gallbladder surgery, let’s look at the process of sleeping itself.
The average person spends six years of their life sleeping, more than any other activity that they partake in. Sleep is divided into two different types: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM). These cycles alternate throughout the night to create one cycle of around 90 minutes, which is repeated four or five times every night.
What do you experience while you’re asleep? After turning off all distractions like your phone, reading materials, and even pets, you typically fall asleep within 5-10 minutes.
The first 75% of your sleep is NREM, during which you tend to move very little and wake up easily. After that, REM takes over 25% of your total sleep time. During REM, your eyes move rapidly from side to side while the rest of your body stays motionless. It’s in this part of the cycle that most dreams occur, including those nightmares! After 20 minutes in the REM stage, the whole process starts all over again. Sound familiar?
What Happens When We Lose a Gallbladder?
The average weight of a gallbladder ranges from 10-30 grams (or 0.35 – 1 ounce), but losing it doesn’t mean you’ll instantly drop 10 pounds. While some people do experience a sudden change in bowel habits, others have no symptoms at all.
Most people with gallbladder issues don’t even know that they have them until something goes wrong. When removing a gallbladder is necessary, it’s most often because there is a problem with the flow of bile from the liver to the gallbladder. This can either be due to an obstruction or damage to the common bile duct or inflammation and swelling of the gallbladder itself (acute cholecystitis).
Anesthesia is what causes you to sleep after surgery. If your procedure was done under general anesthesia, you probably slept through it all! But for those who received regional anesthesia, you might remember some parts of the surgery and then waking up in the recovery room.
These two different types of anesthesia, along with everything else that helped during your procedure, can negatively affect your sleep afterward.
How to Sleep After Gallbladder Surgery
A gallstones attack can be so painful it wakes you up in the middle of the night. The pain can linger for as long as several hours before subsiding enough for you to fall back asleep.
For that reason, many people have wondered whether sleeping position makes any difference in how well they’ll be able to rest after surgery to remove their gallbladder, the pear-shaped organ underneath your liver that aids digestion by producing bile.
The answer is yes and no, experts say, but mostly no. Sleeping on your right side is good for the gallbladder because it affects how quickly food passes through your system. But sleeping on your left side is fine, too, says Dr. Mark Ebell, an associate professor of epidemiology at Georgia Southern University who has researched this question.
While no scientific studies measure how position affects sleep after gallbladder surgery, some experts say there’s a practical reason to believe that your right side can help you feel better faster. That’s because bile drains from the liver and into the gallbladder via the cystic duct tube.
In most people, this duct opens next to the liver on the upper right side of the organ. Putting pressure on that spot while lying down could help with drainage and decrease pain.
In fact, a 2005 study from India suggested that patients who slept on their right side required less pain medication after gallbladder surgery. Other research has shown that people pass gas more easily when they sleep on the right side, which might help relieve bloating and discomfort after an operation.
But the sleeping position is unlikely to make much of a difference for how well you will be able to rest, says Dr. Michael Jellin, a clinical assistant professor at New York University School of Medicine in Manhattan. “I don’t think there’s any real correlation between sleep and recovery,” he says, adding that some people may even be more comfortable on their left side because of postoperative belly swelling.
It’s also unclear whether it’s better to sleep on your back or stomach after gallbladder surgery. Experts simply don’t know, Dr. Jellin says.
If you can’t lie down comfortably, try sitting up in a recliner chair with the head of the bed slightly elevated, suggests Dr. Ebell. It’s important that you get up and walk around as soon as possible to prevent blood clots from developing. Getting up and walking is even more important than sleeping position, Dr. Jellin agrees. “I usually tell patients not to worry about what side they’re lying on,” he adds, “as long as they stay mobile.”