Liver Disease
Although liver disease is stereotypically linked to alcohol or drugs,
the truth is that there are over 100 known forms of liver disease
caused by a variety of factors and affecting everyone from infants to
older adults. For information on specific forms of liver disease, click
on 'Types of Liver Disease' in the menu on the left.
Cirrhosis
is often considered to be a form of liver disease and may be the only
liver-related condition that many people have heard of. In fact,
cirrhosis is a condition that results from permanent damage or scarring
of the liver. It is the end stage of many different forms of liver
disease and is known to cause a number of other health problems,
including variceal bleeding, ascites and hepatic encephalopathy.
Many types of liver disease still have unknown causes but the most
frequent liver diseases are generally caused by one of the following
factors:
How Do Alcoholic Drinks Damage The Liver?
Alcohol is a poison really, and our
liver has
evolved to deal with poisons that we might meet when we were foraging
for food or drinking things we weren’t sure what they were. So the
alcoholic drinks you consume is treated by your liver just like a
poison.
The liver is very good at its job and it can deal with poisons
extremely effectively, but it only has so much capacity. If you consume
something with a low alcoholic content it won’t do you much harm at all.
Your liver will cope with it and everything will be ok. But if you
exceed the liver’s ability to deal with it, it’ll start accumulating in
the body. What this means to the liver is that certain alcoholic
metabolites will start to build up and actually start to damage the
liver. Because of the liver’s capacity to deal with it has been
exceeded, the alcoholic metabolites will get to other areas of the body
and start to cause harm elsewhere or even hepatitis.
How many units, do you recommend, should you drink in a week?
In terms for what a safe limit is for an individual, it varies. In general we would recommend not exceeding 2-3
alcoholic units
per day for a woman and 3-4 units per day for a man. This goes up to a
maximum of 21 units a week for a man and 14 units a week for a woman.
We also recommend you take a few days off each week to give your liver a
chance to recover.
What do you consider binge drinking?
Binge drinking normally means different things to different people.
In general, most people think binge drinking is when you become
intoxicated rather than drinking a little bit of an alcoholic drink it
and having a mild euphoric effect. In general, if you are drinking more
than 8 units a day in one go, we consider that to be a binge. The
problem with binge drinking is that because you are taking in more than
your liver can cope with, your liver can only metabolise about a unit of
alcohol every hour. So if you’re taking more than that then the
alcoholic metabolites accumulate in your body and are more likely to do
damage to your liver and to other organs.
