How does the liver hurt?

Explaining how the liver hurts is quite simple. Even the most uninitiated in medical terminology person will understand that if there is heaviness in the right hypochondrium and bitterness in the mouth, one should suspect the onset of liver disease, without going into diagnostic details. Another bright symptom indicating liver disease is jaundice. It can be very pronounced or have a minor manifestation, in both cases - you should immediately check the liver function.

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Liver symptoms

It can be very difficult to establish the onset of liver disease in the first days of its development, relying only on internal sensations. The fact is that pain begins to manifest itself already at the stage of involvement in the inflammatory or destructive process of the parenchyma itself, the external thin film of the liver, only here there are pain receptors. Until the lesion is outside the parenchyma zone, practically no external symptoms are observed and internal sensations are not so pronounced that one could suspect liver disease.

There are a number of symptoms, the presence of which should alert a person and make him immediately consult a doctor:

• constant, unmotivated weakness and fatigue that does not go away after a period of rest and relaxation;
• increased irritability;
• unpleasant, foul-smelling belching, reminiscent of the smell of rotten eggs;
• constant or intermittent sensation of bitterness in the mouth;
• yellowish color of the skin and sclera of the eyes;
• skin itching without rash;
• heaviness in the right hypochondrium, which intensifies after eating fried, fatty, smoked or spicy foods;
• aching or dull pain under the lower right rib. The pain may be constant or intermittent, radiating to the lumbar region;
• attacks of acute pain in the liver area.

If diagnosis were possible only on the basis of patient complaints, the probability of making mistakes would be so high that most patients would never recover. The fact is that complaints of pain in the right hypochondrium do not always indicate problems with the liver itself. The
liver begins to hurt in cases of damage to other organs, for example, the pancreas, or pain is caused by the passage of a stone through the bile ducts, inflammation of the gallbladder. In each example given, there will be pain in the liver area, and a number of additional nuances that will prompt an attentive doctor to make the right assumptions for differential diagnostics. Receiving the results of tests aimed at identifying liver indicators puts everything in its place, in most cases.

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What does the liver say?

By the way the liver hurts, by the nature of the pain syndrome itself, it is possible to make a diagnosis with a high probability. Acute inflammatory diseases of the liver are characterized by dull pain, while chronic processes generally pass without any pain. In cases where the pain is associated specifically with problems in the liver, it is of a constant nature, can be replaced by a feeling of severe heaviness in the right side, a pulling sensation and acute colic. The pain can radiate to the lumbar region, intensify immediately after eating or with sudden movements. Relief of the situation occurs at the moment of rest, when a person lies on his right side and provides himself with warmth, but with the adoption of a vertical position, the pain resumes again.

To understand how the liver hurts when a stone appears in the ducts, you need to imagine a narrow tube made of soft thin silicone, into which a spiky stone is inserted, its size completely matching the diameter of the tube. If you try to move the stone, you can see how the walls of the tube are deformed under the action of its spikes, and with a sharp movement - they tear. In the bile duct, the stone moves with the help of bile. If the bile passes poorly, the pain is strong, but bearable, if the outflow of bile is completely blocked, a severe condition develops, accompanied by severe bursting pain.

Depending on the size of the stone and the degree of blockage of the bile duct, the pain can last up to several hours, or it can be limited to several minutes. Cramping attacks of pain in the right hypochondrium cannot be tolerated or ignored, especially when the attacks are repeated several times. Because the liver hurts, we can say about the severity of gallstone disease. Advanced gallstone disease can lead to rupture of the duct and the occurrence of dangerous complications.

In hepatitis, in the acute form of inflammation, against the background of general poor health, the presence of pain is almost constant. While in cirrhosis, pain joins only at a late stage of the disease, when serious destructive changes have already occurred in the liver itself, turning it from a gland, through the degeneration of liver cells, into a connective tissue organ, unable to perform its previous functions.

Liver cirrhosis tends to be long-term, the body's condition deteriorates gradually, with increasing symptomatic indicators, from mild jaundice and skin itching associated with a strong increase in liver enzymes in the blood, to the appearance of heaviness in the side due to an enlarged liver, shortness of breath caused by compressed lungs. Patients with liver cirrhosis are subject to frequent concomitant diseases, complications, due to weakened liver function, and the body's immune defense is reduced, which entails constant colds and inflammation throughout the body.

Don't put pressure on your liver

Every time the liver hurts, all the errors in diet and lifestyle should be remembered. Not always, although often enough, can one equate liver pain with a serious disease of this organ. The introduction of society to alcohol addiction, unhealthy food and a sedentary lifestyle leads to the fact that the liver does not cope with its direct responsibility associated with filtering all the blood passing through it from harmful impurities, and then another important function fails - participation in metabolism.

As a rule, people know, or with a high degree of obviousness guess, about the abuse of the "trust" of their body, and are not very surprised that over time the liver begins to resist such treatment. If precautions were taken in a timely manner, after the first painful symptom in the liver area, alcohol and fatty-fried diet were abandoned and a transition to a gentle regime was made, further development of the pathological process in the liver can be avoided. But you should not deceive yourself.

People who have a long history of drinking alcohol should be prepared for a long struggle to restore their health, and knowing how the liver hurts, it is necessary to fully study the mechanism of its recovery.