HEALTH: 6 Main Causes of Liver Damage

The liver plays a vital role in the body by regulating most chemical levels in the blood. It’s involved in many vital roles including cleansing and detoxification processes in the body, and therefore must be in top performance for optimum health.

A healthy liver relies on a healthy diet, regular exercise, lots of rest, and avoiding things that can cause liver damage.  Too much alcohol consumption is a culprit that has been known to cause extensive liver damage. In addition to this, here are habits that can damage the liver:

1. Too much eating. Your body needs foods, but too much consumption, especially carbohydrate can cause fatty buildup in your liver and add to liver dysfunction.

2. Consuming too much preservatives, additives, food colouring, and artificial sweetener.

3. Consuming unhealthy cooking oil. As much as possible reduce cooking oil when frying, which includes even the best cooking oils like olive oil.

4. Consuming overcooked foods. Overcooked foods have lots of free radicals (molecules that can cause damage to the body), as well as toxins which then puts the liver under undue pressure to detoxify this built-up toxin.

5. Consuming too much medication. There are thousands of drugs and chemicals that are capable of causing injury to the liver. Many over the counter (OTC) drugs that people usually consume can do more harm than good on the long run. All medications are processed through the liver to some degree. It is the liver’s job to detoxify substances that are potentially harmful to the body and if it can’t handle it, the toxins will accumulate which will cause damage to the liver cells.

6. Alcohol and Acetaminophen combination: Never take acetaminophen with alcohol. The combination is potentially hazardous to your liver cells. An example of a brand of acetaminophen in the market is Tylenol.