Rather Than Binge Drinking

Is Biggest Risk Factor

In Serious Liver Disease,

New Study Finds

Science(Mar. 20, 2009) — Long-term daily drinking, rather than weekly binge drinking, is by far the biggest risk factor in serious liver disease, according to a new report from the University of Southampton.

The study, published in the journal Addiction this week, concludes that increases in UK liver deaths are a result of daily or near daily heavy drinking, not episodic or binge drinking, and this regular drinking pattern is often discernable at an early age. It also recommends that several alcohol-free days a week is a healthier drinking pattern.

In the study of drinking patterns, dependency and lifetime drinking history in 234 subjects with liver disease, 106 had ALD (Alcohol-related Liver Disease) – 80 of whom had evidence of cirrhosis or progressive fibrosis – the team found that 71 per cent of ALD patients drank on a daily basis.

In contrast to the patients with alcohol-related cirrhosis or fibrosis, patients with other forms of liver disease tended to drink sparingly with only 10 subjects (8 per cent) drinking moderately on four or more days each week.

The study also explored lifetime drinking histories of 105 subjects and found that ALD patients started drinking at a significantly younger age (on average at 15 years old) than other subjects and had significantly more drinking days and units than non-ALD patients from the age of 20 onwards.

Lead author of the study Dr Nick Sheron, consultant hepatologist and senior lecturer at the University of Southampton, comments: “If we are to turn the tide of liver deaths, then along with an overall reduction in alcohol consumption – which means tackling cheap booze and unregulated marketing – we need to find a way to identify those people who are most likely to develop alcohol-related illnesses at a much earlier stage, and perhaps we need to pay as much attention to the frequency of drinking occasions as we do to binge drinking.

“The transition from a late teenage and early 20′s binge drinking pattern to a more frequent pattern of increased intake may prove to be a useful point of intervention in the future, and the importance of three alcohol-free days each week should receive more prominence.”

With Lower Risk For

Alcohol-Related Liver Disease

Science (June 13, 2006) — Drinking coffee may be related to a reduced risk of developing the liver disease alcoholic cirrhosis, according to a report in the June 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Cirrhosis progressively destroys healthy liver tissue and replaces it with scar tissue. Viruses such as hepatitis C can cause cirrhosis, but long-term, heavy alcohol use is the most common cause of the disease in developed countries, according to background information in the article. Most alcohol drinkers, however, never develop cirrhosis; other factors that may play a role include genetics, diet and nutrition, smoking and the interaction of alcohol with other toxins that damage the liver.

Arthur L. Klatsky, M.D., and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, Oakland, Calif., analyzed data from 125,580 individuals (55,247 men and 70,333 women) who did not report liver disease when they had baseline examinations, between 1978 and 1985. Participants filled out a questionnaire to provide information about how much alcohol, coffee and tea they drank per day during the past year. Some of the individuals also had their blood tested for levels of certain liver enzymes; the enzymes are released into the bloodstream when the liver is diseased or damaged.

By the end of 2001, 330 participants had been diagnosed with cirrhosis, including 199 with alcoholic cirrhosis. For each cup of coffee they drank per day, participants were 22 percent less likely to develop alcoholic cirrhosis. Drinking coffee was also associated with a slight reduction in risk for other types of cirrhosis. Among those who had their blood drawn, liver enzyme levels were higher among individuals who drank more alcohol, indicating liver disease or damage; however, those who drank both alcohol and coffee had lower levels than those who drank alcohol but did not drink coffee, with the strongest link among the heaviest drinkers.

Tea drinking was not related to reduced risk in the study, suggesting that it is not caffeine that is responsible for the relationship between coffee and reduced cirrhosis risk. “Previous reports are disparate with respect to whether the apparently protective coffee ingredient is caffeine; in our opinion this issue is quite unresolved,” the authors write.

The findings do not suggest that physicians prescribe coffee to prevent alcoholic cirrhosis, the authors continue. “Even if coffee is protective, the primary approach to reduction of alcoholic cirrhosis is avoidance or cessation of heavy alcohol drinking,” they conclude. “Assuming causality, the data do suggest that coffee intake may partly explain the variability of cirrhosis risk in alcohol consumers. Basic research about hepatic coffee-ethanol interactions is warranted, but we should keep in mind that coffee might represent only one of a number of potential cirrhosis risk modulators.”

(Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:1190-1195. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.)

This study was supported by a grant from the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute. Data collection from 1978 to 1985 was supported by a grant from the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation, Baltimore, Md.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Reduced Risk Of Liver Cancer

Science (Aug. 2, 2007) — After lung and stomach cancer, liver cancer is the third largest cause of cancer deaths in the world. A new study on the relationship between coffee drinking and the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) confirmed that there is an inverse association between coffee consumption and HCC, although the reasons for this relationship are still unresolved.

At least eleven studies conducted in southern Europe and Japan have examined the relationship between coffee drinking and the risk of primary liver cancer. The current study, led by Francesca Bravi of the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri in Milan, Italy, was a meta-analysis of published studies on HCC that included how much coffee patients had consumed. Researchers combined all published data to obtain an overall quantitative estimate of the association between coffee consumption and HCC.

The results showed a 41 percent reduction of HCC risk among coffee drinkers compared to those who never drank coffee. “Moreover, the apparent favorable effect of coffee drinking was found both in studies from southern Europe, where coffee is widely consumed, and from Japan, where coffee consumption is less frequent, and in subjects with chronic liver diseases,” the researchers state.

They point out that animal and laboratory studies have indicated that certain compounds found in coffee may act as blocking agents by reacting with enzymes involved in carcinogenic detoxification. Other components, including caffeine, have been shown to have favorable effects on liver enzymes. Coffee has also been related to a reduced risk of liver diseases and cirrhosis, which can lead to liver cancer.

“Despite the consistency of these results, it is difficult to derive a causal inference on the basis of the observational studies alone,” the authors note. It may be that patients with digestive tract diseases, including liver disorders, naturally reduce their coffee consumption, even though avoidance of coffee is not routinely recommended.

Also, they note that the assessment of coffee intake was based on patients’ self-reporting, although recall of coffee drinking has been shown to be accurate. The fact that the inverse relationship between coffee drinking and HCC was shown in both southern Europe and Japan suggests a lack of bias in these studies. Allowance for other confounding factors, such as hepatitis B and C, cirrhosis, social class indicators, alcohol use and smoking, also suggests that such factors did not influence the results.

“In conclusion, the results from this meta-analysis provide quantitative evidence of an inverse relation between coffee drinking and liver cancer,” the authors state. “The interpretation of this association remains, however, unclear and the consequent inference on causality and worldwide public health implications is still open for discussion.”

The results of this study appear in the August 2007 issue of Hepatology, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

Article: “Coffee Drinking and Hepatocellular Carcinoma Risk: A Meta-Analysis,” Francesca Bravi, Cristina Bosetti, Alessandra Tavani, Vincenzo Bagnardi, Silvano Gallus, Eva Negri, Silvia Franceschi, Carlo La Vecchia, Hepatology; August 2007; (DOI: 10.1002/hep.21708).

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

If your organs had a personality, your liver would be the strong, silent type. No matter how hard it works at filtering out toxins like alcohol and drugs, it doesn’t complain until it’s on the verge of collapse. And when we say drugs, we don’t mean the illegal kind. We’re talking about the dozens of meds with liver-damage potential. The weight-loss aid called orlistat — aka Xenical and Alli — is the latest med that has to include liver cautions on its label.

Luckily for us and you, the liver has a remarkable ability to give itself a makeover. So if you do have a DILI (drug-induced liver injury), stopping the med and treating your liver right — no alcohol, for starters — usually will restore it to health, as long as it was in good shape to begin with.

But since the liver isn’t a whiner, the trick is to spot the damage before it makes your skin itch and turns your eyeballs yellow, your pee dark and your poop pale. Some DILI-defending tips:

Read the fine print. You know those package inserts with the tiny type. Get out your magnifier and read it. Cautions about liver damage will make you more alert to warning signs (below).

Don’t ignore vague symptoms. Nausea, poor appetite, malaise and just not feeling great — especially shortly after starting a medication — can precede the obvious symptoms.

Get the tests. Liver-function tests are advised even before treatment begins with some meds, such as terbinafine (e.g., Lamisil), the nail fungus drug. Don’t blow them off.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha 7th June 2010

National Cancer Institute Says Coffee Helps Hepatitis C Sufferers

Coffee consumption may benefit Hepatitis C sufferers.

Thought your brain was the only thing perked up after your morning cup of joe?  Well according to a new study published in the journal Hepatology, your liver likes it a whole lot, too.

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute recruited over 760 volunteers with Hepatitis C, assessing their overall health, diet and the state of their liver (if not caught early, hepatitis C causes serious damage to the liver, including scarring, liver cancer, even liver failure).  Biopsies of their livers were taken twice during the four-year long study to see how, or if, there were signs of progressive liver damage.

Seeing as how some of the patients with hepatitis C had it for longer than others, the degree of liver damage varied among the 700+ participants.  But it also varied based on how much or how little coffee they drank.

When the researchers assessed the damage of all the participants’ livers and how much coffee they usually drank, they found that those who drank as much as 3.5 cups of coffee per day (eight oz. cups) had the “healthiest” livers, that is to say the progression of liver damage wasn’t as significant as those who drank less than three cups.

The degree of progression was particularly stark when compared to those who didn’t drink coffee at all, finding that the three-a-day coffee crew were 53 percent less likely to have their liver disease advance over those four years.

“Although we can not rule out other factors that go along with drinking coffee,” said the study’s lead author in a press release, “results from our study suggest that patients with high coffee intake had a lower risk of disease progression.”

The study’s authors point out that their findings only apply to people who are living with hepatitis C, not otherwise healthy people.

Becoming infected with hepatitis C can only be done by coming into contact with infected blood.  This puts people that work with potentially-infected needles (e.g., phlebotomists, medical technologists, tattoo artists), people given blood transfusions before 1992, and people that use or have used illicit drugs at the highest risk.

Approximately three million people in the U.S. have hepatitis C, a disease that kills an estimated 10,000 people every year in the U.S. alone due to liver complications.  Hepatitis C usually has mild, flu-like symptoms, but because the symptoms are so mild, hepatitis C often goes undiagnosed.

If you have any combination of symptoms that include fever, nausea, muscle soreness, or pain in your right side (where the liver is located), see your doctor immediately.  He or she will perform a blood test, and perhaps a liver biopsy to rule out whether or not more invasive treatment is necessary.

Sources:
mayoclinic.com
health.msn.com

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 6th December 2009

Other names: Silymarin, Marian Thistle, Mediterranean Thistle, Mary Thistle, Holy Thistle, Silybum Marianum

Milk thistle is a plant native to Europe. It has a long history of use as a folk remedy for liver and gallbladder disorders. The active constituent of milk thistle is thought to be silymarin, a flavonoid found in the seeds.

Why Do People Use Milk Thistle?

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 21st Sept 2009

Detoxifier

Your liver isn’t just a place to filter tequila.

Although it never gets the attention your heart, eyes or other body parts get (know of any odes to your liver?), it performs biological miracles daily. All blood that has visited your small intestine flows through the liver, where it gets detoxified and where all the nutrients go before they get passed to the heart for generalized distribution. A big job, but something has to do it. So help your liver help you with these four strategies:

1. Live clean. Reduce your personal pollution so that there’s less to filter out. Drink filtered water, eat unprocessed foods, choose veggie protein over red meat and practice safe sex. And yes, keep the mojitos to a minimum.

2. Add crunchy veggies. Cruciferous produce (like broccoli and cabbage), B-rich foods (like whole grains) and high C items (like citrus fruits and leafy greens) assist the liver’s detoxifying process.

3. Consider a supplement. Lecithin (egg yolks and soybeans are good sources) and zinc (turkey) support liver function, and you may want to consider supplementing your diet with them if you don’t get much naturally (men should get 550 mg and women 425 mg a day of lecithin; 15 mg a day of zinc). Herbs like milk thistle and dandelion may help liver function, too, but consult your doctor before taking them.

4. Don’t take too much vitamin A. If you do, you risk liver problems, including cirrhosis.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 8th Sept 2009

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Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 25th June 2009

New Research Uncovers Amazing Brain Saver!

Clogged arteries prevent blood supply to the brain. Oxygen-deprived brain cells become damaged or even die.

But when scientists induced strokes in laboratory rats and treated them with an amazingly simple nutrient—a remarkable discovery was made. Here’s what happened…

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In a follow-up experiment, everything was the same, except this time, researchers injected a powerful antioxidant into the rats before blood and oxygen was restored. After a 24 hour period—only 25% of the rats died. The remaining 75% made a full recovery. Further study concluded the brain of the antioxidant-treated rats showed no signs of a stroke at all!

The name of this stellar brain saver?
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Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 25th June 2009

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