Liver Archives - Varanasi Hospital

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September 26, 2019

Follow These Useful Advice To Ensure A Healthy Liver

The liver is a very crucial organ of our digestive system. It carries out some essential functions like blood purification, protein-synthesis, production of bile, albumin & bilirubin, metabolization, vitamins & minerals storage, prevents clotting of blood. Hence, maintaining liver health should be practiced to have a good digestive system or else it might lead to many liver ailments and would eventually require liver surgery to treat them. To maintain a healthy liver, adapt the tips mentioned below:

Limit Your Alcohol Intake

Alcohol can destroy the liver, so aim to stop it as soon as possible.

Quit Smoking

Smoking is extremely harmful to your lungs and liver. Stop smoking altogether.

Eat A Well-Balanced Diet

Your diet should contain lots of fruits, plenty of vegetables, whole grains, lean meats like fish, healthy oils and nuts. Make sure to get more fiber and less saturated fats in your food.

Liver-Friendly Foods

Detox your body with warm water mixed with freshly squeezed lemon. Have spinach, kale, brussels sprouts, broccoli, grapefruits, blueberries and cranberries, pears, fatty fishes like salmon, tuna and mackerel etc. Also include garlic, olive oil, papayas, melons, avocados, oatmeal, tea, green tea, and coffee in your diet chart.

Stay Away From High-Calorie Rich Food

Eat less fatty foods to avoid fatty liver disease. These include fast foods like pizza, burgers, pasta, takeouts from restaurants, deep-fried food, oily snacks. Also avoid eating packaged and processed food like packaged chips and nuts, ready-to-eat meals.

Ensure Both Mental And Physical Health

Exercise regularly to maintain healthy body weight and to reduce liver fat. Live a stress-free life, have healthy food and an adequate amount of rest.

Take Vaccination

Immunize yourself from viral infections like Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B that can damage the liver.

Don’t Go For OTC Drugs

Always take medicines as per the prescription. Never ever experiment with your health by taking over-the-counter medicines suggested by a friend/family or from the internet. Don’t take medicines without the doctor’s approval.

Get Regular Health-Care Check-Ups

Do get basic annual health check-ups to scan for health issues. Get tested for liver ailments in case you had liver infection in the recent past.

Liver diseases like cirrhosis, liver cysts, liver cancer, and liver failure require immediate medical supervision where the doctor may opt for liver surgery. As one of the best hospital in Varanasi, we offer surgery and other forms of treatment for liver illness.

April 16, 2019

Liver And Alcohol: An Incompatible Match

I have made an important discovery… that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.-Oscar Wilde

Liver and alcohol, they never match. Even one dose of alcohol surely puts an adverse effect on the liver. Though the liver can process a certain amount of alcohol from time to time, if a person goes for excessive alcohol consumption, the liver won’t process the alcohol fully. The person will become intoxicated as a result and will start having many complications. High alcohol consumption can damage the liver cells and cause fatty liver, chronic liver disease, and scarred liver. It can even lead to liver cancer which can only be managed effectively with Liver surgery.

Let’s understand how the liver gets affected by alcohol consumption.

How Alcohol Affect The Liver?

The liver helps to filter out the harmful substances from the body and help to transform essential nutrients, vitamins, and medicines into substances, which our body needs. The liver also purifies the blood and produce bile for digestion.

A liver cannot process any alcoholic beverages quickly. Too much of alcohol consumption makes it quite difficult for the liver to process and thus, most of it passes along the circulatory system. As a result, it put an adverse effect on the body, particularly on the brain and heart. Regular consumption of alcohol, moreover, causes catastrophic effects on the liver. It damages the liver cells, triggering cirrhosis, and liver cancer. Fatty liver is the most common complication of alcohol consumption.

Symptoms Of Liver Disease:

People who regularly consume alcohol, develop a higher risk of liver disease. Moreover, who has a family history with a liver problem can also have a high risk of liver disease, even with much lesser alcohol consumption. The alcoholic liver disease carries many recognizable symptoms, such as-

1. Fever and Shivering,

2. Jaundice,

3. Fluid build-up in the abdomen,

4. Irritation in the skin (itching and burning sensation),

5. Blood in vomit and stools,

6. Internal bleeding,

7. Rapid weight loss,

8. Weakness and muscle spasm,

Treatment For Liver Disease:

Avoid Alcohol:

For people, who are diagnosed with fatty liver disease, it is better to stop drinking alcohol immediately, because a mild, fatty liver can heal over time, by doing so. However, when this becomes chronic there is a much lesser possibility to heal without medication and might even lead to Liver Surgery. But drinking alcohol will interfere with the treatment and the patient must quit it anyhow.

Medications:

Proper medicines can help reduce inflammation and can improve the liver condition, but only over time and mostly mild fatty liver.

Lifestyle Change:

Lifestyle change can also be very effective to deal with fatty liver. Positive changes like quitting smoking, maintaining a healthy diet, and daily exercise, etc. can also improve the liver condition.

For patients with a serious condition, the doctor advises extensive medications. But if there is not much improvement happens, they may recommend undergoing liver surgery.

On this alcohol awareness month, Varanasi Hospital encourages the individual to quit alcohol and resume a healthy lifestyle.

May 23, 2018

How Smoking Affects Your Health?

Smoking affects the entire body, increasing the risk of many life-threatening diseases. Which includes lung cancer, emphysema, liver diseases leading to operation and heart disease. Smoking also contributes to many cancers and diseases of the digestive system.

The liver, pancreas, and gallbladder are the solid organs of the digestive system. The digestive system helps the body digest food, which includes breaking food down into nutrients the body needs. Nutrients are substances the body uses for energy, growth, and cell repair.

Smoking has been found to increase the risk of cancers of the:

Mouth
Esophagus
Stomach
Pancreas
Liver
Colon
Rectum

Smoking contributes to many common disorders of the digestive system, such as heartburn and gastroesophageal reflux disease, peptic ulcers, and some liver diseases. Smoking increases the risk of Crohn’s disease, colon polyps, and pancreatitis, and it may increase the risk of gallstones too, but the liver endures the most damages.

The liver is the largest organ in the digestive system. The liver carries out many functions, such as making important blood proteins and bile, changing food into energy, and filtering alcohol and poisons from the blood. Research has shown that smoking harms the liver’s ability to process medications, alcohol, and other toxins and remove them from the body. In some cases, smoking may affect the dose of medication needed to treat an illness.

Smoking may worsen some liver diseases, which may lead to a liver operation. Smoking can turn your healthy body the victim of primary biliary cirrhosis, a chronic liver disease that slowly destroys the bile ducts in the liver. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition in which fat builds up in the liver.

Liver diseases may progress to cirrhosis, a condition in which the liver slowly deteriorates and malfunctions due to chronic injury. Scar tissue then replaces healthy liver tissue, partially blocking the flow of blood through the liver and impairing liver functions.

Smoking also affects the pancreas. Excessive smoking increases the risk of developing pancreatitis. Pancreatitis is inflammation of the pancreas, which is located behind the stomach and close to the duodenum. The pancreas secretes digestive enzymes that usually do not become active until they reach the small intestine. When the pancreas is inflamed, the digestive enzymes attack the tissues of the pancreas.

Gallstones can occur as the result of smoking. Some studies have shown that smoking may increase the risk of developing gallstones. Gallstones are small, hard particles that develop in the gallbladder, the organ that stores bile made by the liver. Gallstones can move into the ducts that carry digestive enzymes from the gallbladder, liver, and pancreas to the duodenum, causing inflammation, infection, and abdominal pain.

Apart from these, smoking can cause so many other severe problems. Excessive use of tobacco can lead you to liver operation with other diseases too. On 31st May, we observe World Tobacco Day, so let’s take a resolution to quit smoking for the good of our own good.