Your liver's a ticking time bomb if you don't treat it well!

You might be feeling smug and healthy from saying no to alcohol over the festive season, and while this is indeed something to be proud of, it won’t keep you completely safe from liver disease.

It has been a long-known fact that diseases in the liver are attributed to alcohol, and also hepatitis. So abstaining from alcohol is certainly one way to keep your liver healthy. However, there is a disease called Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). As the name suggests, it is not caused by excessive alcohol intake, and there is no known exact cause. But people with high cholesterol, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, the works, tend to also be diagnosed with this disease.

Unsurprisingly, NAFLD is becoming a worrying trend in developed countries, including Singapore. The risk also increases with age and obesity level. It is found that Indians tend to be at higher risk of the disease, according to a study by SingHealthdoctors. Some noticeable signs of the disease may include fatigue, pain in the upper right abdomen, abdominal swelling, enlarged blood vessels just beneath the skin’s surface which can result in red palms, enlarged breasts in men, and jaundiced characterised by yellowing of the skin and eyes, according to Mayo Clinic.

Like all dreaded diseases, there are usually no apparent symptoms for NAFLD in the early stage. By the time symptoms are noticed, the disease would have reached an advanced stage when treatment would be more complicated.

It is thus recommended that those who exhibit risk factors of NAFLD go for regular health screenings to facilitate early detection. Lead a healthy lifestyle with sufficient sleep and physical activity, a balanced diet and abstinence from smoking. And continue having your alcohol in moderation or have none at all!



This entry was posted on Thursday, January 05, 2017 and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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