Your liver is not only the largest organ in your body, but it is also the most vital one. It plays a key role in digestion, helping you to digest fats, storing glucose, manufacturing proteins, and many other things.
The liver also plays a big role in removing toxins from your body, that gets accumulated due to alcohol consumption, smoking, bad food habits, and environmental pollution.
Unlike other organs, the liver can regenerate itself and recover from most damages it goes through. However, repeated damage and abuse to the liver can inflame it and lead to many diseases such as cirrhosis and scarring.
These diseases can shirk and harden your liver inhibiting its normal functioning.
Your liver can also be affected by a virus called hepatitis, and some types of hepatitis viruses can be deadly. To know more about hepatitis virus check out the link below.
It is fairly easy to ignore liver damage because it doesn’t give out any obvious symptoms until the condition reaches its advanced stage.
However, you need to be watchful if you have most of the following symptoms and get it checked immediately.
Symptoms and signs of liver damage are
Persistent fatigue or Chronic Fatigue
Researchers aren’t really sure why liver damage causes fatigue, but they believe it could be due to reduced supply of glucose to your body cells. As the liver plays a big role in digesting the food you consume and converting it to energy. Any damage to the organ could mean reduced energy production, which could lead to fatigue and tiredness.
Nausea
You might feel like something is going wrong with your body, but you aren’t sure. This kind of nauseated feeling occurs when your body has too much built up of toxins in the bloodstream. When the liver is not functioning well, it cannot effectively filter out the toxins and these toxins can build up in your bloodstream giving you that uncomfortable feeling.
Pale or Bloody or Dark Stools
Stools get their color through the bile salts and bile fluid which your liver produces to process fats and lubricate the colon. When your stools appear pale, it is a sign that your body is not producing enough bile or there is a problem with the liver.
Dark or Bloody stools is a strong sign of the advanced stage of liver damage, which is passing blood through the gut. This condition needs immediate diagnosis and treatment.
Yellowish skin and eyes
Another strong sign of severe liver malfunctioning or liver damage is yellowing of eyes and skin. This is a common symptom of jaundice that is caused due to hepatitis viral infection. Jaundice will lead to bilirubin build up in the blood.
Itchy skin
This is a symptom of liver cirrhosis when the bile salts are not properly processed by the liver, it can get deposited in the skin leading to itching. However, itching can be caused due to a variety of other reasons as well, so if you have persistent itching make sure you have it along with other symptoms and signs that indicate liver damage.
Easy Bruising
Your body needs a vital nutrient called Vitamin-K to activate coagulation factors which promotes blood clot formation at times of bleeding. Vitamin-K is a fat-soluble vitamin which gets absorbed only when your liver produces enough bile fluid.
Any problems with liver will lead to decreased production of bile fluid resulting in a deficiency of fat-soluble vitamins and in this case Vitamin-K.
If your body runs short of Vitamin-K it could lead to uncontrolled bleeding or delay in the clotting process. This can lead to easy bruising.
Red palms
Many people with liver cirrhosis condition develop a condition called palmar erythema. This condition causes redding of your skin, mainly the palms.
Dark Coloured Urine
Though there are other reasons as to why your urine might appear dark in color. One of the common reasons is liver damage. Damage in your liver will lead to an increase in the level of bilirubin in the blood leading to dark colored urine.
Excessive Water Retention or Ascites
Ascites or excessive water retention is caused due to two major reasons working in combination, which are too much stress or pressure in the veins reaching the liver and decreased the functioning of the liver itself.
This could a sign the liver is starting to fail or advanced stage of liver cirrhosis.
Note: Ascites can also be caused due to kidney problems, cancer, and heart failure.
