Big A knows best.
Here's some additional info.
Know your enemy! Education is your best defense.
Here's some info I came across and found VERY interesting.
The Hard-Liver's Guide to the Liver
It cleans the blood. It burns fat. And it tastes pretty good fried up with onions. You need another reason to treat it well?
By Zachary Veilleux | Men's Health
Oct. 8, 2001 -- Your liver is like a small chicken. Well, at least in terms of size and weight. Otherwise it's completely different. It receives 25% of the blood your heart pumps -- more than 2 quarts a minute. It can crank out 2 cups of fat-dissolving bile per day. Without it you'd be unable to digest a meal or process fat. Your blood would run thick with sewage, and your cholesterol reading would break sensitive laboratory measurement devices. And yet your liver grabs none of the recognition that big-name organs just inches away enjoy -- until something goes wrong.
Yours may already be in trouble. Like most men, you probably damage your liver almost daily and don't even realize it. Knock back a few too many on the weekends? Pop acetaminophen for every ache and pain? Chemical warfare against your liver. Keep it up and you could find yourself in a new battle -- with liver disease, a condition that affects twice as many men as women and is more likely to kill us than atherosclerosis or high blood pressure.
Need a new liver? Get in line. You may have to wait as long as 28 months. Or you can do something now to take care of the one you already have. Here's a plan to protect it from its scariest natural enemy -- you.
LOVE YOUR LIVER
* Stop at six drinks. You're trying to avoid "fatty liver," a condition that occurs when you flood your liver with more alcohol than it can process. First, your body's beer
filter swells with fat globules -- hence the name -- and then it turns a sickly yellow.
"It can literally develop overnight," says Raymond Koff, MD, a hepatologist (liver specialist) at the University of Massachusetts. Let your liver rehab for a few days and it'll usually recover, but keep bingeing and scar tissue will develop. And then you die -- of cirrhosis.
Want to cheat death? Cut out the benders. "A man's liver has an alcohol threshold of about 70 to 80 grams, or about a six-pack of beer," says Dr. Koff. "Drink less than that at one sitting and it's very unlikely that you'll get fatty liver." As for the damage caused by your pickled past, consider taking the herb
milk thistle and drinking
protein shakes (see below) to help patch things up.
* Lose 10 pounds. That cummerbund of fat you're wearing may be squeezing your intestines in such a way that you aren't able to digest everything you eat. When this happens, bacteria will cause the leftovers to ferment, creating a homemade still in your colon. The result: fatty liver without the pleasure of getting loaded. The solution: Lose weight and eat fat-free yogurt. "Eating a daily cup of yogurt has been shown to have an antibacterial effect in animals, and it could minimize humans' chances of developing fatty-liver disease," says Mae Diehl, MD, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
* Watch the acetaminophen. Every time you pop acetaminophen -- the active ingredient in Tylenol -- a harmful by-product is released. Your body can handle small amounts of the stuff, but large quantities all at once start destroying liver cells. "The problem with acetaminophen is that the toxic dose level is very close to the therapeutic dose level," says William M. Lee, MD, a hepatologist at the University of Texas Southwestern. Dr. Lee recommends that men take no more than 2 grams per day. (And that can come from other places besides four Extra-Strength Tylenol. To find out more, go to
www.menshealth.com.) If you go over that limit and experience nausea, head to a hospital.
And never use acetaminophen within 48 hours of drinking. If you need something, take ibuprofen instead.
* Check your medicines. If Tylenol can eat away at your liver, just imagine what a prescription medication can do. Depending on the drug, the by-products can be relatively harmless -- or violently toxic, says Adrian Di Bisceglie, MD, medical director of the American Liver Foundation. A few to watch out for: the antibiotic erythromycin, the antifungal ketoconazole (sometimes used to treat prostate cancer), and the high-blood-pressure drug Aldomet. If you're taking any of these or have been on any other prescription drug for an extended period of time, ask your doctor about scheduling a liver-function test.
* Wash before eating. Unless you're one of our IV-drug-using subscribers, there's pretty much only one way for hepatitis A to infect your liver: You have to eat crap -- literally. And you don't have to dine on contaminated food for that to happen; performing oral sex also puts you at risk. "Sex is a very intimate activity, and it's not unusual for fecal-oral exposure to occur," says Miriam Alter, MD, of the division of viral hepatitis at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Minimize your risk by showering together first. In the morning, hop out of bed and go get tested for hepatitis A. Not infected? Ask for the vaccine.
* Think before you ink. If you're sober and still want a tattoo, then consider this: University of Texas Southwestern researchers found that patronizing a tattoo parlor makes you nine times more likely to contract the devastating liver disease hepatitis C. "Hepatitis C is going to cause more American deaths in this century than AIDS," says Robert W. Haley, MD, the study author. You may find that some tattoo parlors claim to sterilize all their equipment in a device called an autoclave. Doesn't matter. There's still a chance that the
needle will become reinfected by the time the artiste is ready to begin mutilating your body.
THE THREE-STEP OVERHAUL
Your liver may be the picture of health (which is still pretty disgusting). Or it may look like Keith Richards'. Either way, giving it this makeover won't hurt, and it may heal.
* 1. Drop alpha-lipoic acid. It's not a hallucinogen; it's an antioxidant that turns up the production of glutathione, your liver's head janitor. Glutathione latches on to toxic gunk and makes it water-soluble enough to be flushed out through your kidneys. "We give patients who overdose on Tylenol a drug that stimulates glutathione production. It's the quickest way to rid the liver of toxins," says Savant Mehta, MD, director of the liver-transplant program at the University of Massachusetts. For maximum liver scrubbing, take a 50-milligram alpha-lipoic acid tablet (sold in drugstores) twice a day.
* 2. Swallow some
milk thistle. Popular in Germany -- a country that's tough on livers -- the herb
milk thistle is loaded with the compound silymarin. One research review published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology concluded that silymarin may help heal liver damage caused by excessive alcohol consumption, infection with viral hepatitis, or exposure to certain toxic chemicals. "About half the patients in my clinic are taking it, but its efficacy remains to be proved," says Dr. Mehta. If you want to give it a try, check your local health-food store for Thisylin by Nature's Way ($23 for 60 capsules); it's the brand used in most clinical studies.
* 3. Down a
protein shake. Muscleheads know that guzzling
protein drinks may help build bigger biceps. But how about building a really buff liver? According to a study review published in Nutrition, when rats were given a
protein supplement, their damaged livers started regenerating faster than those of rats not given the supplement. "The thinking is that this would also apply to humans," says Harihara Mehendale, PhD, a University of Louisiana professor of toxicology. Look for powders that get their
protein from
whey (not
soy) and that list the essential amino acid
glutamine as one of the ingredients.
Linear Mode
