How does the liver hurt?

Explain how the liver hurts is quite simple. Even to a person who is not initiated into medical terminology is clear - once there was a heaviness in the right hypochondrium and bitter taste in the mouth, one should suspect the onset of hepatic disease, without going into diagnostic details. Another prominent symptom indicating liver disease is jaundice. It can be strongly pronounced or have a slight manifestation, and in this and in another case, you should immediately check the work of the liver.

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Hepatic symptoms

It is very difficult to establish the onset of hepatic disease in the first days of its development, relying only on internal sensations. The fact is that pain begins to manifest itself 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. As long as the lesion is outside the parenchyma zone, practically no external symptoms are observed and the internal sensations are not so pronounced that you can suspect liver disease.

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

• constant unmotivated weakness and fatigue, not passing after a period of rest and rest;
• irritability;
• unpleasant fetid belching, reminiscent of the smell of a rotten egg;
• constant or periodic feeling of bitterness in the mouth;
• yellowish skin and eye sclera;
• pruritus without rash;
• heaviness in the right hypochondrium, aggravated after ingestion of fried, fatty, smoked, or spicy foods;
• aching or dull pain under the lower right rib. The pain may be constant or periodic, radiating to the lumbar region;
• bouts of acute pain in the liver.

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

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What does the liver say

By the way the liver hurts, by the nature of the pain syndrome itself, you can most likely make a diagnosis. Acute inflammatory diseases of the liver are characterized by dull pains, while chronic processes generally go away without any pain. In those cases when the pain is associated with problems in the liver, it is permanent, may be replaced by a feeling of severe heaviness in the right side, pulling sensation and sharp colic. The pain may be given to the lumbar region, worse immediately after eating or during sudden movements. The situation becomes easier at rest when a person lies on his right side and provides himself with warmth, but with the adoption of the vertical position, the pain resumes.

To understand how the liver hurts if a stone appears in the ducts, you need to imagine a narrow tube made of soft thin silicone, into which a spiked stone is inserted, its size completely coinciding with 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 when they are suddenly moved, they break. In the bile duct, the stone moves with the help of bile. If the bile passes badly, the pain is severe, but tolerable, if the outflow of bile is completely blocked, the hardest condition develops, accompanied by severe pain.

Depending on the size of the stone and the degree of blockage of the lumen of the bile duct, the pain may last up to several hours, and may 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 it hurts the liver, you can say about the severity of gallstone disease. Running gallstone disease can lead to rupture of the duct and the occurrence of dangerous complications.

With hepatitis, in the acute form of inflammation, against the background of a general feeling of 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 in the liver itself have already occurred, which have transformed it from the gland, by regenerating the liver cells, into a connective tissue organ that is not able to perform its previous functions.

Liver cirrhosis tends to last for a long time, deterioration of the body condition occurs gradually, with an increase in symptomatic indicators, from mild jaundice and pruritus associated with a strong increase in liver enzymes in the blood, until the onset of heaviness in the side due to enlarged liver, shortness of breath, provoked stifled lungs. Patients with cirrhosis of the liver are prone to frequent comorbidities, complications, due to impaired liver function, and the body’s immune defenses are reduced, which causes constant colds and inflammation throughout the body.

Do not stick to the liver

Every time the liver hurts, all the errors in diet and lifestyle should be remembered. Not always, though often enough, it is possible to put a sign equal between hepatic pain and a serious disease of this organ. The introduction of society to dependence on alcohol, unhealthy food and sedentary lifestyle leads to the fact that the liver does not cope with its direct responsibility associated with filtering all blood passing through it from harmful impurities, and another important function fails - participation in metabolism.

 As a rule, people know, or with a high degree of obviousness, guess the abuse of the “trust” of their body, and they are not very surprised that over time the liver begins to oppose such treatment. If precautionary measures were taken in a timely manner, after the first painful symptom in the liver area, there was a rejection of alcohol and a fat-fried diet and a transition to a benign regimen was made, further development of the pathological process in the liver can be avoided. But do not be deceived.

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