Heart beat: Gallstones and heart disease
Gallstones and heart disease
A gallstone attack, with its knife-like pain suddenly piercing the upper abdomen and lower chest and gradually growing more intense, is one of many things that mimics a heart attack. It turns out there's another connection between the two: People with heart disease are three times more likely to have gallstones than those free of heart disease.
Your gallbladder makes and stores the fat-digesting substance known as bile. Bile sometimes crystallizes inside the gallbladder. The hard lumps that form, called gallstones, are usually made of cholesterol. Gallstones can be as small as a grain of sand or as large as a ping-pong ball.