National Liver Care Day丨These 5 abnormalities in the body may be the liver's "call for help"...

Expert of this article: Li Zhao, Chief Physician and Associate Professor of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Peking University People's Hospital

Your skin becomes dull and dry, you feel tired all the time, and your body is swollen... Be careful! This may be your liver asking for help!

Today (March 18) is National Liver Health Day. For the sake of your own health, you must pay attention to and care for your body, develop good habits, and take charge of your own health.

Let us learn how to take care of our liver through this article.

Are most liver diseases caused by something?

The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that 15% of human health depends on genetic factors, 10% on social conditions, 8% on medical conditions, 7% on the natural environment, and 60% on personal lifestyle, that is, diet and living habits. It can be seen that lifestyle is closely related to our health, and liver disease is no exception.

Therefore, the World Health Organization put forward the concept of "you are responsible for your own health" a long time ago.

The liver is our body's biological processing plant, with very important physiological functions, including metabolism, synthesis, detoxification, immunity, etc. The intestines and liver are closely connected. The food we eat enters the intestines through the stomach. The nutrients in the food are absorbed by the intestines and then flow back into the liver through the blood, where they are converted and synthesized.

The first part of your body that is affected by unhealthy eating habits is the liver. Therefore, many liver diseases are caused by an unhealthy lifestyle.

Which behaviors are most likely to damage the liver?

Common causes of liver damage include hepatitis viruses, alcohol intake, medications, and fatty liver, many of which are closely related to our lifestyle.

For example, if you have no knowledge of hepatitis virus, do not know the common sense that most of the liver cancer patients in my country develop from hepatitis B, do not know that hepatitis B is an infectious disease, and do not know that the hepatitis B virus is transmitted through blood or body fluids, then once the people around you have hepatitis B and you do not take effective protective measures, you may be infected, and then you may develop cirrhosis or liver cancer based on hepatitis B.

If you don’t know that alcohol is mainly metabolized through the liver, and you consume large amounts of alcohol over a long period of time during work and social activities, you may develop alcoholic cirrhosis.

If you don’t know that the metabolism and detoxification of drugs also depend on the liver, blindly taking drugs or health products with unknown ingredients may cause drug-induced liver damage, which may lead to drug-induced hepatitis or even liver failure.

If you do not pay attention to fatty liver discovered during your physical examination, as the inflammation caused by fat in the liver gradually worsens, abdominal ultrasound may show that mild fatty liver has turned into severe fatty liver, and it may develop into fatty liver hepatitis or fatty liver cirrhosis.

Therefore, all of the above behaviors that touch upon the common causes of liver damage are the most harmful to the liver!

What are the liver’s distress signals?

The distress signals after liver problems occur are closely related to the liver's inability to perform its own physiological functions.

For example:

One of the important physiological functions of the liver is to synthesize bile. If the liver is damaged, this ability is impaired, which may cause yellowing of the skin and mucous membranes throughout the body, which is what we call "jaundice" in medicine.

If the liver's ability to synthesize albumin is impaired, it will manifest as hypoproteinemia, which may lead to clinical manifestations such as lower limb edema, abdominal distension (caused by ascites in the abdominal cavity), and oliguria.

If the liver's detoxification ability is impaired, hepatic encephalopathy may occur, manifesting as abnormal speech and behavior or even hepatic coma;

If the liver's ability to synthesize coagulation substances is impaired, it will manifest as congestion and bruises on the body;

If the liver's ability to inactivate hormones is impaired, it will manifest as palmar erythema (pink spots and plaques on the palmar surface of the thenar and hypothenar eminences and fingertips on both sides of the palms of both hands) or spider angiomas (dilated capillaries on the face, neck and chest).

How to nourish and protect the liver?

Knowing the physiological functions of the liver, understanding the common causes of liver damage, identifying some early distress signals after liver damage, and regularly performing liver examinations can effectively avoid the occurrence of liver disease.

It is recommended to start from the following three aspects:

1. Understand the high-risk factors for liver disease and take active measures to prevent it

In many cases, hepatitis B patients do not know whether they are sick or they know they are sick but do not know that hepatitis B is mainly transmitted through blood, which is a high-risk factor for cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Especially for men and women of childbearing age who have hepatitis B, if they know this knowledge, they can take effective preventive measures in advance, thus avoiding their children from contracting hepatitis B in the future.

2. Develop healthy living habits

The liver has a very strong compensatory function, and in many cases liver damage can be restored by "resting". Therefore, ensure a healthy diet, regular and moderate exercise, insist on getting a good night's sleep, stay up late less, and avoid taking random medicines and drinking too much.

3. Regularly perform liver-related health screening

After understanding the common causes of liver disease, physical examinations and screening should be strengthened for people at high risk of liver disease.

For example, friends who know that they have hepatitis B or hepatitis C should have an abdominal B-ultrasound and liver cancer-related tumor markers to screen for liver cancer every six months; friends who drink alcohol for a long time, take drugs indiscriminately, overeat, and have irregular lifestyles and rest should also regularly check their liver function and liver B-ultrasound to achieve early detection, early diagnosis, and early treatment.

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