Gallstone flushes are a scam, I'm afraid.

I think I must have phrased my last post badly: I wasn't planning to reduce my fat intake lower than 10%, I was talking about reducing it slowly *to* 10%! I rang the surgery two days later to check up on this 10% fat thing, and asked the GP I spoke to (a different one) whether they really meant me to avoid all nuts, seeds, oils, tofu, soya milk and so forth (I'm vegan, so I'm already off animal fats). She sounded surprised and said, "Of course not," after saying earlier that they tell everyone to have 10% of their calories from fat. Once she realised what 10% actually meant, she said that it was probably 10% of calories from *saturated* fat then, and that I certainly shouldn't need to drop that low and should just eat my usual diet, that the previous doctor had been wanting me to stay off fried and greasy foods (which I don't eat, and which is not quite the same as telling someone they have to go so low-fat they have to worry about the fat content of three spoonfuls of oats in their breakfast). In other words, they don't actually understand basic nutrition. Thankfully neither of these was my regular GP, who's on holiday this week.

I posted about this in the general support forum (think it's on page 2 now), and have gone for about 19% fat as a manageable target, 20-25g, calculcated from what the father of someone here who had gallstones was advised. As you say, gallstones can also be caused by insufficient fat in the diet. I was on about 26% fat before, which is a perfectly reasonable amount. That said, I'd had a bit more fat recently as someone had suggested to me that maybe I needed more to help with hormonal disruption, so if it is gallstones, that could be what set off the last attack. The ultrasound is booked for ten days' time.

The bloating and gas, by the way, was quite likely caused by the omeprazole the first doctor also put me on in case the problem is stomach acid. I really should know better than to believe a doctor who says that a drug doesn't have side effects by now. He's lost quite a few brownie points between that, the 10% fat business, and completely failing to tell the ultrasound folks that I need large print after promising to do so. He was a perfectly nice doctor, though, and the examination was fine.