What damage does alcohol cause to the liver

It is important to pay attention to the following problem: among people suffering from alcoholic liver disease, almost the vast majority of them have the habit of drinking or even alcoholism. This suggests that the incidence of alcoholic cirrhosis is closely related to drinking. For the sake of our own health, try to drink less or not at all. If you have a habit of drinking and have bloating and pain in the upper right abdomen, or have problems such as loss of appetite, you must go to the hospital to check your liver in time. Let’s take a look at the harm of alcohol to the liver.

Because the human liver has no pain nerves, it is generally difficult to detect liver problems in time. However, once a problem is discovered, it is often in the late stage. People who drink frequently know that alcohol can directly damage the liver. After people drink alcohol, ethanol can directly enter the human blood circulation and then be oxidized and decomposed by alcohol dehydrogenase in the body, thus forming acetaldehyde, which is extremely toxic to the human liver. A neurosurgeon at Tangdu Hospital pointed out that under normal circumstances, acetaldehyde can be broken down into non-toxic substances by acetaldehyde dehydrogenase in the human body and excreted from the body.

If the patient has liver disease, the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase in the liver has been greatly reduced, and some acetaldehyde cannot be completely decomposed and can directly enter the liver to damage liver cells. Moreover, the more alcohol a person drinks, the higher the acetaldehyde content in his body and the more serious damage to his liver. When alcohol enters the human body, it inhibits the regeneration of liver cells. Another thing is that liver cells have a strong regenerative ability. Although the livers of patients with liver disease have varying degrees of pathological changes such as liver cell swelling and liver cell necrosis, those liver cells with normal functions will continue to regenerate in order to repair the damaged liver. Moreover, after alcohol enters the human body, it can significantly inhibit the repair function of liver cells and aggravate the degree of liver damage in hepatitis patients.

After people drink alcohol, most of the alcohol is detoxified in our liver. If we drink too much, in more serious cases it will cause direct replacement of liver cells, which can easily lead to alcoholic hepatitis. If the drinking habit has not changed, it will lead to alcoholic fibrosis of the liver over time, and finally directly lead to cirrhosis. The consequences are very serious, so you must quit drinking in time.