Why Is It Important to Keep Your Liver Healthy

A human liver is the most metabolically complex internal organ. Its function count rises over five hundred. It filters your blood, controls blood sugar, helps control blood clotting, manufactures essential proteins, keeps the hormones in abundance, neutralises toxins.

Helps ward off infections, and carries out a good number of other tasks that keep you up and running.

Also, your liver can regenerate. That’s right! It can grow back to its original size from as little as 25 percent worth of healthy cells.

Now, take a moment. Consider what you just read. It is evident that your liver is vital for your survival. And it is a very efficient organ indeed. However, the strength of efforts on your part to avoid inflicting damage on it is microscopic.

How Does One Go from a Happy Liver to a Dying One?

Cell damage leads to different kinds of liver injuries, including jaundice and cirrhosis. A viral infection, drug or alcohol abuse, obesity, and such other factors end up causing substantial damage to the liver.

The liver mechanism is built around hepatocytes and blood veins that make a filtering system together. An injury, chronic alcohol abuse, for example, can cause the healthy liver cells to die and turn into scar tissue. Since the scarred cells are a useless lump, the liver begins losing its ability to perform efficiently with an increase in cell conversion.

On the other hand, let’s assume that your body starts breaking down old RBCs in an unusual manner(at a higher rate than what is considered normal.) It will release bilirubin, a component in RBC that must be filtered out, at a rate that may be higher than what the liver is capable of handling.

Either way, the liver’s performance will degrade as its cells turn ineffective and the network of veins travelling through it get blocked.

You Can Prevent the Damage with a Few Careful Decisions

Nipping the chances of liver damage in the bud is possible. Even if the condition is inherited, like Alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency or Wilson’s disease, precautions may lessen the severity.

Moderate your alcohol intake. Heavy drinking induces inflammation of the liver, alcoholic fatty disease, ultimately leading to fibrosis and cirrhosis. Over seven and fourteen drinks a week for women and men respectively qualifies as heavy drinking. If you monitor the alcohol quantity, it will allow your liver to take a breath and heal itself.

Get vaccinated. There isn’t much in your hands when it comes to preventing Hepatitis C. However, Hepatitis A and B have vaccine shots that you must get. As for Hep C, be careful in the manners where it may be a possible side effect. Avoid needle abuse, contact with infected body fluids or blood.

Jump into action if you are obese. Overweight and obese people have a greater chance of developing NAFLD (Nonalcoholic Fatty disease.) That fat could build up in your liver, causing fibrosis and extreme scarring.

Be mindful of medicines. Both the non-prescriptive and prescribed drugs must only be used when needed. Be sure of the dosage. Also, try never to mix alcohol with medication. The consequence could be disastrous. Be wary of herbal supplements, insecticides, and toxic sprays.