Recognizing the symptoms of liver disease could save your life. Just like with other diseases, if you recognize any signs of a bad liver in the early phase you can completely treat it.
Your liver will fully recover and start to grow new healthy tissues in order to replace any tissues that have previously been damaged. This can happen only if the disease is discovered in its earlier phase and haven’t progressed too far.
An organ and a gland
Your liver is the largest organ (and additionally the most important internal gland) that your body possesses. A standard liver in a totally healthy person can weigh somewhere between three to three and a half pounds and it plays an important role in many functions of different body parts.
The functions of the liver
The key functions of the liver are to detoxify your blood and boost the digestive system by producing digestive fluid. This fluid helps in breaking down the fats you consume into little items, thus making it easier for your gut to soak up.
The following is a short outline for all the benefits the liver has, and what it makes to improve your health:
- It cleans your blood out of toxins, filtering out any unwanted and harmful substances like pills and alcohol
- It produces bile to aid digestion
- It stores some of your body’s iron and vitamins
- It stores glucose
- It turns glucose into sugar for the body to use when body’s levels of sugar will become depleted
- It processes insulin, hemoglobin and other hormones
- It converts ammonia into urea; an essential compound for healthy metabolism
- It eliminates old red blood cells, which produce faecal matter usually in brown color. This is why when your stool is discolored (i.e. when it isn’t in brown color) it can be an sign that there is something wrong with the liver function.
Without a healthy liver, any holistic health life style can become severely compromised, and counting on the character and severity of the condition in which you don’t feel well may prove fatal. That is why it’s vital to be able to observe and interpret the first symptoms of the disease.
Hepatic disease
Liver disease is also known as hepatic disease. Once any form of this disease affects up to 3 quarters of your liver tissue, a considerable increase in liver’s function may be detected.
The causes of liver disease
Liver disease may be caused in a number of different ways.
- Its cells may be inflamed, as with hepatitis
- The passage of bile might become impeded, as in cholestasis
- A build-up of cholesterol might occur
- The flow of blood to the liver may be damaged
- The tissue of the liver might have been attacked and damaged by toxins
Alcohol abuse and cirrhosis of the liver
The most common explanation for this disease in North America is alcohol abuse. The ultimate stage of the disease (when the liver sustains severe scarring and cannot regenerate replacement tissue), is widely known as cirrhosis which results in around 25,000 deaths in North America per year.
The classic symptoms of liver disease
The most frequent and common symptoms of liver disease include:
- Pain – felt in the uppermost right hand quadrant of the abdomen
- Coated tongue
- Discolored stool
- Flushed facial appearance
- Brown blemishes on the skin
- Inflamed palms and soles of feet
- Black circles around the eyes
- Swollen eyeballs
- Bad breath
- Jaundice-the yellowing of the skin which can often be noticed in the whites of the eyes
- Nausea
- Bad body odor
- Increased tendency to perspire excessively
Some people also suffer from weight loss and fatigue
These symptoms are normally related to hepatic disease. However ,there are so many different diseases or illnesses that have an effect on the liver, and every one of them has its own specific symptoms
Gallstones
The symptoms of liver disease that are related to gallstones, embody pain within the higher right quadrant of the abdomen; vomiting, (having eaten up a fatty or greasy meal); and if the bladder itself becomes infected, this could additionally cause fever.
Cirrhosis of the liver
As hepatic disease progresses and reaches the stage of cirrhosis of
the liver, the below mentioned symptoms of liver disease appear
frequently :
• A tendency to bruise easily. This is often a result of the liver’s inability to clot the blood in an efficient manner.
• Itchiness. The results of digestive fluid salts being deposited within the skin will cause itchiness
- Enlarged male breasts. This is a state known as gynecomatia and can be brought about by ruining the balance of sex hormones
- Erectile dysfunction. The disconnecting of the balance of sex hormones can also bring reduction in sex drive and cause shrinking of the testicles.
- Feelings of confusion will arise once the degree of ammonia within the blood becomes too high
- Feelings of lethargy. this is often probably caused by the rise in blood ammonia.
- Decrease in muscle tissue. A compromised liver will reduce the protein production. This can lead to the wasting of muscle.
The unusual metabolism of fats
Other prime symptoms of liver disease is abnormal metabolism of fats, which shows in the following ways:
- Elevated LDL levels, triglycerides and cholesterol. Decreased levels of HDL cholesterol.
- Hypertension or blood pressure caused by blocked blood vessels by fatty deposits. This may potentially lead to heart attack and stroke.
- Fatty lymphomas and tumors developing in the skin
- Significant weight gain that leads to obesity
- Difficulties when trying to lose weight, even though you may be on diet
- Very slow metabolism
- Bloated stomach
- Cellulite appearance
Symptoms to look for with your digestive system
The symptoms of liver disease may also be seen in relation to the digestive system and frequently include things like:
- The inability to tolerate fatty food
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Constipation
- Indigestion and/or reflux
- Haemorrhoids
- The inability to tolerate alcohol
Symptoms relating to blood sugar levels
The symptoms of liver damage which relate to blood sugar include things like:
- Developing a need for sweets things
- Unstable sugar levels in the blood, also known as hypoglycaemia
- The type II diabetes
Symptoms relating to your immune system
Poor liver health may also affect your immunity. In this case the symptoms of liver disease are:
- Developing new, allergies such as hay fever, hives and asthma
- excessive itching
- Developing skin rashes
- An increased incidence of autoimmune disease
- Developing fibromyalgia
- An increase in the incidence of bacterial and viral infections