Love your liver all year round, argues liver expert

January is Love Your Liver month, the annual national awareness campaign from the British Liver Trust aimed at promoting education on liver health and the impact of lifestyle.

According to the charity, we are currently in the grip of a health epidemic, fueled by the rising obesity crisis and our lifestyle choices. Most worryingly, most of those at risk of liver damage may be completely unaware that they are even unhealthy or unwell.

Liver cancer currently stands as the ninth most common cause of cancer death in the UK. Yet the incidence of liver cancer is undoubtedly rising. Since the late 1970s, liver cancer incidence rates have more than tripled (236% increase) in Great Britain. Further, incidence rates for liver cancer are projected to rise by 38% in the UK between 2014 and 2035, to 15 cases per 100,000 people by 2035.

Mr Nicola de’Liguori Carino, Consultant Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgeon at BMI The Highfield Hospital in Rochdale, has shed light on 10 lesser known, essential facts about the liver and its functioning.

10 things you didn’t know about your liver:

• The liver is the largest internal organ in your body. It is the workhorse of the body – almost all digested food products go through the liver, it is responsible for detoxifying the blood, and for breaking down substances and chemicals.
• You can’t feel your liver and it doesn’t usually ‘hurt’ when it is inflamed or scarred.For many people the first symptoms come when the liver fails and patients become life-threateningly unwell.
• Continuous long-term damage can lead to cirrhosis; damage and scarring of the liver can prevent it working properly and can lead to liver failure or liver cancer.
• We all know that drinking too much alcohol is bad for the liver but alcohol isn’t the only thing that can cause liver disease. The liver is also damaged by fat from an unhealthy diet or from lack of exercise.Fat and alcohol together are probably more damaging than either alone.
• Certain viruses can also damage the liver.These are very common but if identified can be controlled with medication or even cured altogether.
• You can’t live without a functioning liver. If the liver fails, the only potential treatment, at present, is a liver transplant.There are medical reasons why many people who need a transplant can’t have one and for others, the wait for an organ might simply be too long.
• Because there aren’t any warning symptoms, the first signs of a problem with the liver are likely to come from screening tests.Abnormal results from liver blood tests which are often done routinely, should trigger investigations to understand the cause and extent of any liver damage

Today, young people are at risk of liver damage and liver disease. Children, adolescents and young adults are more overweight and obese than ever before.Unfortunately this means that even young adults can have significant liver disease without knowing it, and parents and young adults need to be aware of lifestyle effects and liver screening.

Simple tests can estimate how much scar tissue there already is in the liver. More scarring makes the liver stiffer. Doctors can use these readings to give you information about your liver and offer advice as to what you can do about it.

Your lifestyle is essential for your liver health. The liver is a forgiving organ and responds very well to changes in lifestyle and diet. So if you do have any liver damage, or if you just want to love your liver, reducing the amount of alcohol you drink, enjoying a healthy diet and taking more exercise can reduce the amount of fat and the irritation in the liver.Some scientific studies suggest that keeping this healthy lifestyle up over many months can even cause scarring to start to disappear.