Living with Gilberts Disease

Hi my name is Matt andI have Gilberts disease. I disigned this site to give my information to people that have Gilberts Disease and hopefully answer some of your questions. To start off Gilberts Disease is a disease that effects the liver. Gilberts Disease is a relatively common disease affecting only 7% of the U.S. population. Usually goes undetected, because many of the patients have no symptoms. With Gilberts there is a malfunction in the ability to take up or metobolize a component of blood called bilirubin. Bilirubin is constantly being formed when old blood cells are destroyed and recycled. In this case the bilirubin is not picked up by the liver and stays in the blood and accumulates in certain tissues around the body such as the whites of the eyes and skin, which will turn a shade of yellow depending on the severity of the condition known as jaundice.
When I was diagnosed it took three months of blood testing to figure out what was really causing the jaundice. For those three months my disease was often confused with the disease Hepatitus which is a common mistake. The jaundice caused by Gilberts fluctuates do to to much stress physically and emmotionally and not a steady diet. Gilberts has no long term effects and is not a progressive dissorder. The most common effects depending on the stress and diet is flu like symptoms, jaundice and lack of energy. To help with the symptoms i take milk thistle which a dietary supplement givin to people with different sort of liver and kidney diseases. You can find Milk Thistle at any health stores and very inexpensive.