This information is very useful because knowing how to recognize the symptoms of liver disease can save you or someone else's life. As with so many disease and illness, if the liver disease is spotted early enough, it can be treated and cured (the causes will be identified and avoided in the future) and your liver can fully recover, replace the old damaged tissue with new healthy tissue. This is only if the disease has not progressed enough so that is one more reason why you should learn the warning signs for liver disease.
A GLAND AND AN ORGAN
The largest internal organ that you have in your body is your liver (and also the largest internal gland). A normal liver in a healthy adult will weigh approximately between 3 to 3.5 pounds and it plays a crucial role in many of the body system function.
THE FUNCTIONS OF THE LIVER
The key function of the liver are to enhance your digestive system by creating bile and to detoxify your blood, which helps to break down the fats that you consume into small pieces, making them easier for your small intestine to absorb them. But that is nor all. Here is a quick summary of what your liver does for you.
- It stores glucose
- It stores some of your body's iron and vitamins.
- It detoxes your blood, filtering out any unwanted and harmful substances like alcohol and drugs.
- It eliminated old red blood cells, which produces fecal matter which is normally brown in color. This is why when your stools
are discolored (i.e. not brown) it means that there is something wrong with your liver function. - It converts ammonia into urea, an essential ingredient for healthy metabolism
- It processes insulin, hemoglobin and a variety of other hormones
- It converts glucose into sugar that the body can use when the body's sugar levels become depleted.
Any holistic health lifestyle without a healthy liver, will become severely compromised and depending on the severity and the nature of the disease, cold be fatal, which is why it's so important to be able to interpret and detect the early symptoms of liver disease.
HEPATIC DISEASE
In some articles you might encounter hepatic disease, that is almost the same as liver disease. When a significant increase in liver function can be detected, that's when any type of hepatic disease affects up to three quarters of your liver tissue.
THE CAUSES OF LIVER DISEASE
Liver disease can be caused in a number of different ways.
- The tissue of the liver may be damaged and attacked by toxins
- A build-up of cholesterol may occur.
- The passage of bile may become obstructed, as in cholestasis.
- The flow of blood to the liver can be damaged.
THE SYMPTOMS OF LIVER DISEASE
- Skin and eyes that appear yellowish (jaundice)
- Abdominal pain and swelling.
- Swelling in the legs and ankles.
- Itchy skin.
- Dark urine color.
- Pale stool color, or bloody or tar-colored stool.
- Chronic fatigue.
- Nausea or vomiting.