Internally Peer Reviewed After a meal, while watching television, suddenly you feel a stabbing pain below your rib cage. This isn't the first time. Eventually, you find out your pain was caused by gallstones.
Gallstones are a major health problem.
About 20 million people in the United States have them and one million new cases are diagnosed each year. The gallbladder is a small muscular sac located under the liver that stores bile secreted by the liver. Bile helps you digest fats. At the turn of the century, physicians believed gallstones were always the result of a diseased gallbladder. Today they realize that gallstones, most of which are composed mainly of cholesterol, are primarily caused by a disturbance in cholesterol metabolism within the liver.