If your liver stops working, so do you.
The liver is a resilient organ that is easy to ignore until something goes wrong. Because of its wide-ranging responsibilities, your healthy liver can be subjected to the onslaught of viruses, toxic substances, pollutants, and diseases. However, even when under siege, the liver is very slow to voice its complaints. People with liver problems are often unaware of them because they may have very few symptoms, if any. Your liver is such a resilient organ that it continues to function even if two-thirds of it is damaged.
Weighing just over a kilogram, your liver is a complex chemical factory that works 24 hours a day. It processes almost everything you eat, drink, breathe, or apply to your skin; in fact, the liver performs more than 500 functions vital to life.
Every day, your liver helps your body by providing energy, fighting infections and toxins, helping blood clot, regulating hormones, and much more.
Your Liver
Cleans your blood: It metabolizes alcohol and other drugs and chemicals, neutralizing and removing toxic substances.
Regulates your body's fuel supply: It produces, stores, and supplies quick energy (glucose) to keep your mind alert and your body active. It produces, stores, and distributes fat.
Produces most of the essential body proteins involved in the following processes: Transporting substances in your blood, blood clotting, and providing resistance to infections.
Regulates the balance of hormones: Including sex hormones, thyroid hormones, cortisone, and other adrenal hormones.
Regulates your body's cholesterol: It produces cholesterol, excretes it, and converts it into other necessary substances.
Regulates the supply of essential vitamins and minerals: Including iron and copper.
Produces bile: It removes toxic substances from your body and aids in your digestion.
Liver Diseases
- Viral Hepatitis:
It is a viral infection that causes liver inflammation and damage. Inflammation is the swelling that damages organs that occurs when body tissues are injured or infected. Several different viruses that cause hepatitis have been identified, including Hepatitis A, B, C, D, and E.
Hepatitis B, C, and D viruses can cause acute, chronic, or long-term infections. Chronic hepatitis occurs when your body cannot fight the hepatitis virus and the virus does not disappear. Chronic hepatitis can lead to complications such as cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer. Early diagnosis and treatment of chronic hepatitis can prevent or reduce your chances of developing these complications.
- Autoimmune hepatitis:
It is a chronic disease in which your body's own immune system attacks the liver, causing inflammation and liver damage. If left untreated, autoimmune hepatitis can worsen and lead to complications such as cirrhosis and liver failure.
- Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease:
Formerly known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), this is a condition where fat accumulates in your liver. Non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) are types of NAFLD. If you have NASH, you have inflammation and liver damage in addition to fat accumulation in your liver.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is often a silent disease with very few or no symptoms. Certain health conditions and diseases, including obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes, increase your likelihood of developing NAFLD.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has now been replaced in terminology by “metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD).”
- People who are overweight, obese, or severely obese according to body mass index
- People with fat accumulation around the waist
- Patients whose blood sugar levels are high or who have been diagnosed with diabetes
- Patients with conditions where insulin resistance is observed at a very high rate, such as PCOS and Hashimoto’s
- Patients with high blood pressure or those taking blood pressure medication
- People with high levels of fat in their blood or a high ratio of bad cholesterol
- Patients taking cholesterol medication
are people who are highly likely to have metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease.
Doctors recommend weight loss to treat non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Weight loss through healthy eating and an active lifestyle can reduce fat, inflammation, and fibrosis in the liver. There is no approved medication to treat fatty liver disease.
- Cirrhosis:
It is a severe stage of liver disease where the liver is scarred and permanently damaged. Scar tissue replaces healthy liver tissue and prevents the liver from performing its functions. As cirrhosis worsens, the liver approaches total failure. Cirrhosis can eventually lead to liver failure, also called end-stage liver disease. In liver failure, the liver is severely damaged and stops working. These people may need a liver transplant.
Most people with liver cancer already have cirrhosis. Cirrhosis increases the risk of developing liver cancer.
The decisions we make every day affect our liver health. Let's take a closer look at how our daily activities and the decisions we make affect our liver;
RISK FACTORS
- Exposure to Herbal or Pharmaceutical Drugs
Many chemicals that are intentionally or accidentally inhaled or consumed can have toxic effects on the liver. These chemicals include medicines (prescription and over-the-counter), industrial solvents, and pollutants. Since the liver is the detoxification site for most medicines, herbal remedies, vitamins, and supplements, it is vulnerable to the harmful consequences of these toxins themselves.
One of the most basic things we need to pay attention to in order to minimize the potential side effects of such drugs is that we should not mix medicines with alcohol. Such a combination, for example paracetamol and alcohol, can cause liver damage. At the same time, avoiding the use of one or more drugs, such as multiple cold medicines, will prevent us from unknowingly taking the same active ingredient in a harmful dose.
- Chronic or Multiple Drug Exposure
The liver of people who have to use the same medication for a long time or a large number of different medications at the same time due to chronic or multiple diseases may have difficulty coping with this intense exposure. In such cases, the liver should be carefully monitored by a doctor throughout the treatment.
- Alcohol Consumption
Breaking down alcohol is just one of the more than 500 vital functions your liver performs. In addition to these vital functions, your liver is responsible for processing that alcohol and detoxifying your blood whenever you drink a glass of wine, beer, or any other alcoholic beverage. Excessive alcohol use causes your liver to work overtime. The consequences of this excessive use can be the destruction of liver cells, fat accumulation in your liver (fatty liver), and more seriously, liver inflammation (alcoholic hepatitis), permanent damage (cirrhosis), and even liver cancer.
- Unhealthy Diet
Your liver deals with everything you eat and drink every day. Too much sugar and saturated fat in your diet can have an effect similar to having too much alcohol and fat buildup in the liver. When the liver is full of fat, it cannot perform all of its 500 functions and becomes increasingly damaged, potentially turning into cirrhosis or even cancer.
- Environmental Factors
The liver plays a key role in the metabolism and excretion of xenobiotics (foreign to the body). Therefore, the liver cannot escape being a target for these substances.
- Other Risk Factors
According to data from guidelines published by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, a fatty liver structure is seen in 95% of obese patients, approximately 67% of diabetic patients, and on average 50% of people with high cholesterol.
Liver Health Tests
Detecting that liver health is deteriorating can often be challenging because they are asymptomatic or show very late (mild) symptoms, and liver enzyme tests are also only able to show an abnormality when the liver is already under significant stress or damaged.
Liver tests are blood tests used to help determine the health of your liver and bile ducts. These tests measure the levels of certain enzymes and proteins in your blood, how well the liver is performing its functions, or enzymes that liver cells release in response to damage or disease.
In addition to blood tests, diagnosis can also be made via ultrasound or biopsy.
References:
- Your liver is essential to your life. The Canadian Liver Foundation [Internet]. [cited 2023 Oct 19].
Available from: https://www.liver.ca/your-liver/#about-the-liver - Barouki R, Samson M, Blanc EB, et al. The exposome and liver disease - how environmental factors affect liver health. J Hepatol. 2023;79(2):492-505. doi:10.1016/j.jhep.2023.02.034
- Chalasani N, Younossi Z, Lavine JE, et al. The diagnosis and management of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: Practice guidance from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. Hepatology. 2018;67(1):328-357. doi:10.1002/hep.29367
- Onwuzo S, Boustany A, Saleh M, Gupta R, Onwuzo C, Mascarenhas Monteiro J, et al. Increased risk of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: A population-based study. Cureus. 2023; ;15(3)
- Liver disease - NIDDK [Internet]. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; [cited 2023 Oct 20]. Available from: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/liver-disease
To examine all products related to the liver together, you can visit the Functional Molecules for the Liver page.
