Hepatitis Foundation International

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Hepatitis Foundation International

• Proudly presents

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Your Miraculous Liver

• TELLING THE STORY
• The liver is about the size of a football in
  adults, the size of a grapefruit in children. It
  is tucked up under your ribs on the right side of
  your abdomen for protection.

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What Your Liver Does For You!

• Your liver performs thousands of vital
  functions
• Provides energy
• Controls cholesterol
• Helps digestion
• Processes vitamin
• Provides protein/amino acids
• Produces hormones and enzymes

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Energy Provider

• You wouldnt have been able to get out of bed
  this morning if your liver hadnt released some
  of the energy it stored from the meal you ate
  last night.
• You would be limp as a puppet and
• You wouldnt be able to sit up, think, talk, or
  walk

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Controlling Cholesterol

• It is commonly known that cholesterol can clog
  your blood vesselsbut what does the liver have
  to do with it?
• The liver controls the production and excretion
  of cholesterol.

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Helping Digestion

• Your liver produces bile to break up the fats you
  eat into water soluble globules to enable you to
  digest your food properly
• Bile contains the debris from the normal
  breakdown of red blood cells. It washes away the
  fat deposits and the toxins that it filters from
  alcohol, drugs, and even from the chemicals you
  breathe or absorb in your skin

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Processing Vitamins

• Your liver processes vitamins to better
  protect.
• It helps night vision
• Manufactures clotting factors to keep you from
  bleeding to death from a small cut.
• Its immune factors protect you from germs and
  viruses.

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Providing Protein/Amino Acids

• Your liver has the ability to
• Turn the food you eat into amino acids
• Helps to build your muscles
• Gets rid of surplus amino acids by changing them
  into urea, passing them along to your kidneys for
  excretion.

Your liver is your internal chemical powerplant
that processes almost everything you eat,
breathe, and absorb through your skin.
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Production of Hormones/Enzymes

• The liver makes hormones and enzymes that affect
  practically every function in your body

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Powerplant Shutdown!

• When viruses, drugs or alcohol enter your body
  and reach your liver, they can destroy your liver
  cells the workers in your personal powerplant.
• When liver cells are damaged, they are replaced
  with non-functioning scar tissue called
  cirrhosis. As the liver tries to regenerate
  (make new cells), it does so in between the scar
  tissue and causes the liver to become hard and
  lumpy.

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Cirrhosis and Effects

• The scar tissue also blocks the blood flow
  through the liver and causes a back up of
  pressure in the vessels coming from the stomach
  and intestines to the liver. These vessels
  become distended creating varicose veins in both
  the stomach and esophagus. Unfortunately,
  neither the cirrhosis nor the varicose veins
  cause any pain.

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Cirrhosis and Effects

• The liver can be seriously damaged without
  showing any signs or symptoms. The first, and
  often the only warning sign of a damaged liver,
  is fatigue. With a diminished number of healthy
  liver cells, the bodys powerplant begins to slow
  down.

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Cirrhosis and Effects

• In advanced stages of liver disease, there may
  be loss of appetite, swelling of the abdomen
  spider shaped blood vessels on the upper part of
  the body, and even jaundice (yellowing of the
  eyes and skin).

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Cirrhosis and Effects

• Continued assault to the liver by drugs,
  alcohol or hepatitis viruses causes more and more
  liver cells, the employees in your powerplant, to
  die causing cirrhosis. This prevents the
  nutrients to be converted by your liver cells
  into thousands of elements the body needs to
  functionand removes toxins and waste products
  that your body doesnt need.

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How to detect?

• To determine the extent of liver damage, you can
  take a
• Blood tests
• Ultrasound examination
• Liver biopsy

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The KEY to Maintaining a Healthy Liver
Avoid liver damaging activities

• Drinking alcohol
• Mixing alcohol with other drugs
• Taking more medicine than is prescribed by the
  doctor or recommended on the bottle
• Body piercing or tattoos done with unsterile
  instruments
• Having unprotected sex with multiple partners
  some of whom may have a sexually transmitted
  diseases

• Eating raw shellfish harvested from contaminated
  waters
• Anal/oral contact
• Using razors, toothbrushes, or sharp instruments
  used by others
• Touching someone elses rashes, sores or blood
• Breathing in toxic fumes or smoke
• Injecting drugs and needle sharing