What does our liver suffer from? I want to say that the liver is a very "silent" body. It "tolerates" a lot of negative impacts for a long time before it becomes known that something is missing. Thanks to its wonderful property - the ability to regenerate - the liver can be recovered. The peculiarity of chronic liver disease consists precisely that the ability of the organ to normal regeneration is disturbed.
Nowadays, the liver has to withstand a huge load in the form of exposure to diverse toxins. These are preservatives, and pesticides - according to statistics in the body of a city resident per year, up to five kilograms of such substances fall into the year. That is, the liver becomes more "overloaded" and sensitive due to several reasons.
First, a rabid pace of modern life: stress, breaking sleep mode, irregular and improper nutrition, overeating, dinner for the night, fast food, reduced physical activity. These factors contribute to obesity, which leads to fat rebirth of the liver (steatosis), and further to hepatitis and cirrhosis.
Secondly, the liver is vulnerable to hepatotropic viruses (causing sharp and chronic viral hepatitis), and thirdly, for drugs. Now self-medication is very common and, as a result, the abuse of various drugs. For example, painkillers, anti-inflammatory drugs for diseases of the joints, antibiotics and other drugs can cause liver damage. Also, the cause of the high drug load may be the lack of communication between doctors: the patient goes to the neuropathologist - he discharges five drugs to him, to the immunologist - six more, to the gynecologist - gets some more. Finally, he gets to a gastroenterologist who is trying to bring order in this huge amount of medicines and reduce the list of drugs.
Fourth, extremely negative impact on the liver and the whole body has alcohol. The damage to the heart, pancreas, stomach, nervous and hematopoietic systems are frequent consequences of alcohol abuse.
And finally, in fifth, a rare innate disease can be the cause of the liver damage, at which, for example, excessive amounts of iron or copper are accumulated, which have toxic effects on the hepatic parenchyma. Fortunately, such diseases are rare.
What can be taken to ensure the prevention of liver disease and the most effective treatment of patients? If we talk about prevention, then the speech is primarily about viral hepatitis. I urge not to give up vaccination against hepatitis, A and B - after all, precisely thanks to the vaccinations, the incidence of acute hepatitis in Russia decreased from 43 per 100 thousand people in 1999 to 2.7 in 2009. Vaccines for the prevention of hepatitis C is not yet, therefore, the timely identification of the disease is very important.
And of course, one of the topical issues is a propaganda of a healthy lifestyle. I never get tired of repeating both patients and your students that overeating (or starvation in order to reduce weight), obesity, lack of physical activity is the very real reasons that lead to a liver disease.
As for chronic liver diseases, the most effective treatment is aimed at eliminating the causal factor. For example, the exclusion of alcohol with alcohol liver disease, cancellation of hepatotoxic drug during medicinal hepatitis, weight loss due to diet and physical exertion.
Good helpers are also the so-called hepatoprotectors - a group of various drugs whose action is aimed at preserving the "life" and the functions of the liver cells. The feasibility of receiving one or another hepatoprotector is determined by its properties. For example, those that contain such amino acids, such as L-ornithine and L-aspartate, capable of cleaning the body from toxins are provided.