Here’s the data in alcohol. In one study, just 21 binge sessions produced early stage liver disease. When we are talking about binge drinking sessions, we are talking about more than five drinks within a two-hour period. And when we are talking about a drink, let’s define a drink, that is point six ounces of pure alcohol, which would be equivalent to a can of beer, eight-ounce malt liquor, or a five ounce wine, or a 1.5 ounce shot of liquor. So if you did five of those 21 times in a row, that could potentially push you right into an early stage liver disease. Also, one session of binge drinking increases your liver enzymes.
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What happens when you drink?
What happens when you drink is that about 25 percent of the alcohol gets absorbed in your stomach into the bloodstream and then the rest gets absorbed in your small intestine. As it goes through the bloodstream, it goes through your liver, and now your liver is going to break it down and deal with this toxic material. In this process of the stages of breakdown of alcohol, the first stage is pretty toxic to your liver cells.
That’s where you’re going to get inflammation and eventually you’re going to be getting scar tissue that’s called cirrhosis, but on average, when you drink just one drink, it takes about an hour with all the different enzymes in your liver to break it down into a less toxic material. But what happens over time when you continue to do this is you start to lose the enzyme network that breaks down this toxic material, and then the toxic material builds up and it creates a lot of damage within your liver, your pancreas, etc.
What initially happens first is that you start developing fat in your liver and then that fat can create inflammation, which can then lead to scar tissue and also the fat can create insulin resistance, which can now increase inflammation, so it’s kind of a never-ending cycle.
The inflammation in the liver called hepatitis usually starts within five years of heavy drinking on a regular basis. As far as cirrhosis or scar tissue, that usually takes between five to ten or more years because if we keep that liver in a constant state of inflammation, the body is going to start healing with scar tissue because we also have the immune system involved.
Symptoms of liver damage
What’s interesting is that this whole period of time you don’t have many symptoms. You might have some fatigue, you might look down and see your belly, but not necessarily all the time because you can also have skinny fat words throughout the organs. But definitely, if your belly is sticking out, that usually means that your liver is fatty. There is also a condition called ascites, which is not necessarily fat, but it’s a protruded belly because your liver is so bad, it’s leaking fluid into a sac around your stomach. So that situation is a fluid-filled sac in your gut because your liver is very very sick. That’s a very advanced stage of liver disease.
As things progress, then you start developing more and more symptoms: arthritis would be one itching through the body, especially in the bottom of your feet, you may have jaundice yellowness around your eyes or your skin. You may have a spike in estrogen and a lowering of your testosterone and start developing man boobs. You’re definitely going to feel lethargic kind of tired, you might have bad breath, a loss of muscle, but other than that you’ll be perfectly fine.
Factors that determine how alcohol affects the liver
There are some other variables, that affect how alcohol affects your liver. The first is the concentration of alcohol that you’re drinking. So you have diluted drinks, or you have more concentrated, or stronger alcohol, so we have the concentration, if it’s carbonated or not. Apparently, carbonation increases the negative effect on your liver then you have, if you’re consuming any food with that alcohol, the food buffers the negative effect of alcohol on your liver.
But what happens is you have a tremendous amount of oxidation in the liver, and you’re getting a lot of free radical damage, and the ability to counter that with all these enzymes becomes less and less and less. Then we lose the liver function, and we can’t detoxify, and we can’t digest like we should, and there’s DNA damage and even a risk of liver cancer.
But people with cirrhosis used to be diagnosed in their 40s, or 50s, or 60s, but nowadays it’s younger and younger 25 year olds are now being diagnosed with cirrhosis. In fact, between 1999 and 2016 the deaths from cirrhosis have increased by 65 percent, so more and more younger people are drinking and experiencing the negative effects from that.
Other things that cause liver damage
There’s a couple other things that you need to know about liver damage. Consuming sugar has roughly about the same effect as consuming alcohol, especially if you’re drinking fructose as in high fructose corn syrup. So just because someone’s not drinking alcohol, doesn’t mean they can end up with any type of problem with the liver, and that is called non-alcoholic liver disease.
Also, a lot of the medications that people take also cause a lot of liver damage. Alcohol, sugar, medications are the top three things that can destroy the liver as well as viruses. If you decide to drink a lot and become alcoholic, it’s very important to eat healthy at the same time to minimize the damage that’s going to occur on your liver.
Can the liver regenerate?
The liver is the only organ that can completely 100% regenerate, if you stop doing the things that are causing the destruction. In fact, if you have a fatty liver, you can remove 50% of that fat from the liver just within two weeks of avoiding those things that cause the fat. However, there’s going to be a point of no return where you’ve developed so much scar tissue that it’s going to be irreversible.
I lost a great friend at age 35 to cirrhosis of the liver. Thanks for bringing awareness to how bad alcohol can be