How much alchohol is safe for your liver??

The festive season is nearly here – that means parties, catching up with friends and family, TV, food and drink. But exactly how harmful is over indulging on alcohol at Christmas for your liver and your health generally? And is the damage permanent?

Counting the Alchohol  units

The amount of alcohol in drinks can vary quite widely, and it’s worth looking for versions of your favourite drinks that have less alcohol, which can also be cheaper and often have less calories.

Check the alchohol units from below figures:

Safe daily limits of Alchohol use:

•    Men should drink no more than 21 units of alcohol per week, no more than four units in any one day, and have at least two alcohol-free days a week.

•    Women should drink no more than 14 units of alcohol per week, no more than three units in any one day, and have at least two alcohol-free days a week.

Pregnant women. Advice from the Department of Health states that ... "pregnant women or women trying to conceive should not drink alcohol at all. If they do choose to drink, to minimise the risk to the baby, they should not drink more than 1-2 units of alcohol once or twice a week and should not get drunk". 

Liver turns glucose into fat and store it to use it when needed. Alcohol affects the way the liver handles fat, so your liver cells just get stuffed full of it. This is fatty liver. If it happens, you may feel a vague discomfort in your abdomen because your liver is swollen. You might also feel sick and lose your appetite.

Fortunately, your liver is likely to recover. Fatty liver will go away again in someone who isn’t a heavy drinker because the liver will repair itself.

How alcohol affects the liver

1) When our liver tries to break down alcohol, the resulting chemical reaction can damage its cells. This damage can lead to inflammation and scarring as the liver tries to repair itself.

2). Alcohol can damage our intestine which lets toxins from our gut’s bacteria get into the liver. These toxins can also lead to inflammation and scarring. 

The problem is, you won’t know all this is happening. “People can spend 20 years damaging their liver and feel fine until it gets serious,” says Day. “But two or three heavy sessions a week for a year will increase the chance of liver damage.”

Other health effects of Festival Drinking

Other temporary effects you might have from infrequent heavy drinking sessions include:

•    Damage to your stomach lining which results in diarrhoea or sickness

•    Feeling shaky or anxious because of alcohol’s withdrawal effect on the brain

•    Negative effects on your mood, skin, weight and sleep.

You can usually address these with a return to a healthier lifestyle.  Some health consequences of heavy sessions however can be more severe. People who have had 15 units (about seven and a half pints of 4% beer) or more in one session are vulnerable to something called Holiday Heart Syndrome. This is when high levels of alcohol causes the heart to beat irregularly, which results in shortness of breath, changes in blood pressure and an increase in the risk of a heart attack, and even sudden death.

Longer-term heavy drinking sessions pose serious health problems. Your chances of getting liver, chronic pancreatitis increase.

If you are planning to drink this Christmas and New Year:

•    Stick to the daily unit guidelines and you’ll reduce the chances of negative consequences for your health.

•    Avoid drinking everyday over the Christmas period.

•    Limit the amount of time you spend at certain events that you know will involve heavy drinking.

Be aware of how much you’re drinking if you’re feeling hurt or upset because you could easily damage the relationships you should be celebrating at Christmas time.

If you drink most days of the week, you will increase your risk of developing liver disease.

Evidence about how much and how often you need to drink to increase your chances of developing liver disease is unclear. But all the research shows that the more alcohol you drink, the more likely you are to develop liver disease.

•    Men who drink more than 35 units of alcohol a week for 10 years or more

•    Women who drink more than 28 units of alcohol a week for 10 years or more (4)

Evidence suggests that other factors that increase your risk of developing liver disease include:

•    being dependent on alcohol – around seven in 10 people with alcoholic liver disease have an alcohol dependency problem (5)

•    being female – this could be because women develop higher levels of alcohol in the blood than men even if they’ve drunk the same amount of alcohol (6)

•    being overweight – excess weight can exacerbate many of the mechanisms of liver damage caused by excessive drinking (7)

•    genetics – certain genetic factors, including those affecting the liver’s handling of fat, influence the risk of a heavy drinker developing liver disease.

Excessive drinking can make your liver get fat – reducing your consumption can help it return to its normal size

Drink more than eight units a day (four pints of 4% lager) if you’re a man and over five units a day (a couple of 175ml glasses of wine) if you’re a woman, for two or three weeks and you’re likely to develop something called 'fatty liver’.

The liver turns glucose into fat which it sends round the body to store for use when we need it. Alcohol affects the way the liver handles fat so your liver cells get stuffed full of it.

If this happens, you may feel a vague discomfort in your abdomen because your liver is swollen. You might also feel sick and lose your appetite. A blood test may be able to show if you have fatty liver.

The good news: your liver will start shedding the excess fat if you stop drinking for two weeks and don’t exceed the lower risk guidelines after that. If you don’t change your drinking pattern, the bad news is that fatty liver is the first stage of liver disease.

The four stages of liver disease: Identifying the symptoms

People can spend 20 years damaging their liver and not feel any of the effects this is doing to them. This is because the liver has enormous reserves so that you can damage an awful lot of it and it can still do all of its jobs.

Early symptoms of liver disease can include:

•    fatigue

•    nausea

•    vomiting

•    diarrhoea

•    abdominal pains 

Later stage liver damage symptoms are more serious – and you’ll know about them.

They can include:

•    jaundice (yellow skin)

•    vomiting blood

•    fatigue

•    weakness, loss of appetite

•    itching

•    easy bruising

•    swelling of the legs ankles, or abdomen

•    liver cancer

•    bleeding in the gut

•    increased sensitivity to alcohol and drugs, both medical and recreational (because the liver cannot process them) (9) (10)

When you develop cirrhosis, cutting out alcohol is essential to prevent you from dying from liver failure which is when your liver stops working completely. In the most serious cases of cirrhosis, you will only be considered for a liver transplant if you do not drink alcohol for at least three months.