Why does drinking alcohol damage your liver? There is another way that can damage your liver that you may not have thought of!

Author: Sun Fengxia, Chief Physician, Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Capital Medical University

Reviewer: Wei Junping, Chief Physician, Guang'anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences

Deputy Director of the Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine Group of the Endocrinology Society of the Chinese Medical Association

Speaking of drinking, I have many cases I want to share with you and many things I want to say to you.

In the outpatient clinic, we often encounter patients who have suffered from cirrhosis and liver cancer due to long-term heavy drinking.

There was a young man who drank heavily for a long time. He was less than 30 years old and had decompensated liver cirrhosis. He went to many hospitals for treatment, but the doctors said there was no better way to treat him and he could only do a liver transplant.

A male patient in his fifties was also a long-term heavy drinker, starting in his teens. CT scan indicated advanced liver cancer with multiple metastases, and he had missed the opportunity for surgical treatment.

There are many more cases like this...

Drinking large amounts of alcohol for a long time can cause serious damage to the liver.

Figure 1 Original copyright image, no permission to reprint

1. Why does long-term heavy drinking damage the liver?

From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, alcohol is damp and hot in nature. Long-term drinking will gather dampness and generate heat. Dampness and heat can cause stagnation of Qi in the body, which will affect the liver's function of dispersing Qi.

The main function of the liver is to regulate qi and blood, and plays an important role in maintaining the circulation of qi and blood, and water metabolism. If the liver's regulating function is insufficient, it will lead to qi stagnation and blood stasis, which will form what Chinese medicine calls accumulation of masses over time. In modern medical terms, it means the formation of cirrhosis or liver cancer.

Long-term heavy drinking will subtly affect the liver, but people are seldom aware of it. Drinking makes you feel very refreshed because alcohol itself has a certain excitatory effect. After drinking a glass of wine, you feel refreshed. Long-term heavy drinking is likely to cause alcoholic liver disease, which will develop into hepatitis over time, and then cirrhosis. On the basis of cirrhosis, about 2.9% of people will develop cancer every year, which is already a high proportion among the risk factors for liver cancer.

2. Can the damage caused by alcohol to the liver return to normal after quitting drinking?

Some people may say, isn’t it okay to drink when you are young and stop drinking when you are older?

Will the incidence of liver cancer decrease after I stop drinking?

Yes, but the decline will be very limited, about 6%-7% per year. That is to say, it will take several decades for drinkers to reduce their liver cancer risk to the level of ordinary people. It does not mean that all problems can be solved immediately if they stop drinking.

In the outpatient clinic, I often encounter this situation: patients with alcoholic cirrhosis come to me and say, I haven't drunk alcohol for three years or five years, why did I still develop cirrhosis?

Think about it, if you drank so much alcohol in the past, the negative effects will not disappear immediately after you stop drinking. The damage to the liver caused by drinking before will still exist. After you stop drinking, you will find that cirrhosis is still slowly getting worse.

Drinking alcohol not only harms the liver, but almost all organs will be affected, such as the stomach, cardiovascular system, brain, etc. I recently saw an article saying that long-term drinking increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Similarly, after stopping drinking, the symptoms of dementia will not be cured immediately. It takes a long process to adjust. The impact may be reduced a little, but the disease will continue to slowly worsen.

Therefore, you must quit drinking when you are young, or never drink at all. The sooner the better. If you already have chronic liver disease or are obese, you should not drink at all.

Many people say that drinking alcohol is so harmful, so why not stop drinking? It’s always okay to take health supplements, which should have a health-promoting effect on the body.

If it is a regular health product, generally speaking, there is no big problem and it has a certain health care effect. However, in clinical practice, we also encounter some cases where taking health products causes liver damage.

Figure 2 Original copyright image, no permission to reprint

3. Can taking health supplements also damage the liver?

There was once a female patient in her 60s who experienced nausea, vomiting, and jaundice. She went to the hospital and was diagnosed with hepatitis. Her transaminase level rose to nearly 1000U/L, which was a case of acute liver damage. What was the cause of the sudden acute liver damage?

Viral hepatitis is relatively rare in the elderly, and the possibility of drug-induced liver damage is greater. I asked her if she had taken any medicines for a long time, such as lipid-lowering drugs and drugs for treating bone and joints. She said no. Later, I asked her carefully if she had taken any medicines recently, including health supplements. She told me that she was taking a health supplement recently.

It is very common for the elderly to have joint problems, and there is no good way to solve the leg pain. I heard from my neighbors that taking a health product can help improve joint pain. I spent several thousand yuan to buy a course of health products. The specific ingredients are not very clear. After taking it for about a month, the above symptoms appeared.

Of course, she herself didn't know that health supplements were related to liver damage. At that time, I highly suspected that acute liver damage might be related to health supplements.

Such cases are not isolated cases. Some weight loss teas and weight loss drugs are marketed to everyone in the name of health products.

Therefore, health supplements may also cause liver damage, which is common in the elderly. We would like to remind our elderly friends that if they take health supplements for a long time, they should pay attention to checking their liver function. Do not take health supplements of unknown origin or with unclear ingredients. Be cautious when choosing health supplements.