# Presentation: 510811

## Hepatitis Foundation International

*Proudly presents...*

## Your Miraculous Liver

_*“*__*TELLING THE STORY”*_
- 	The liver is about the size of a football in adults, the size of a grapefruit in children.  It is tucked up under your ribs on the right side of your abdomen for protection.

## What Your Liver Does For You!

- Your liver performs thousands of vital functions:
- Provides energy
- Controls cholesterol
- Helps digestion
- Processes vitamin
- Provides protein/amino acids
- Produces hormones and enzymes

## Energy Provider

- 	You wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed this morning if your liver hadn’t released some of the energy it stored from the meal you ate last night.
- You would be limp as a puppet; and
- You wouldn’t be able to sit up, think, talk, or walk

## Controlling Cholesterol

- 	It is commonly known that cholesterol can clog your blood vessels...but what does the liver have to do with it?
- 	The liver controls the production and excretion of cholesterol.

## Helping Digestion

- Your liver produces bile to break up the fats you eat into water soluble globules to enable you to digest your food properly
- Bile contains the debris from the normal breakdown of red blood cells. It washes away the fat deposits and the toxins that it filters from alcohol, drugs, and even from the chemicals you breathe or absorb in your skin

## Processing Vitamins

- 	Your liver processes vitamins to better protect.
- It helps night vision
- Manufactures clotting factors to keep you from bleeding to death from a small cut.
- Its immune factors protect you from germs and viruses.

## Providing Protein/Amino Acids

- 	Your liver has the ability to...
- Turn the food you eat into amino acids
- Helps to build your muscles
- Gets rid of surplus amino acids by changing them into urea, passing them along to your kidneys for excretion.

- Your liver is your internal **chemical powerplant** that
- processes almost everything you eat, breathe, and
- absorb through your skin.

## Production of Hormones/Enzymes

- 	The liver makes hormones and enzymes that affect practically every function in your body

## Powerplant Shutdown!

- 	When viruses, drugs or alcohol enter your body and reach your liver, they can destroy your liver cells – the workers in your personal powerplant.
- 	When liver cells are damaged, they are replaced with non-functioning scar tissue called **cirrhosis**.  As the liver tries to regenerate (make new cells), it does so in between the scar tissue and causes the liver to become hard and lumpy.

## Cirrhosis and Effects

- 	The scar tissue also blocks the blood flow through the liver and causes a back up of pressure in the vessels coming from the stomach and intestines to the liver.  These vessels become distended creating varicose veins in both the stomach and esophagus.  Unfortunately, neither the cirrhosis nor the varicose veins cause any pain.

## Cirrhosis and Effects

- 	The liver can be seriously damaged without showing any signs or symptoms.  The first, and often the only warning sign of a damaged liver, is fatigue.  With a diminished number of healthy liver cells, the body’s powerplant begins to slow down.

## Cirrhosis and Effects

- 	 In advanced stages of liver disease, there may be loss of appetite, swelling of the abdomen; spider shaped blood vessels on the upper part of the body, and even jaundice (yellowing of the eyes and skin).

## Cirrhosis and Effects

- 	 Continued assault to the liver by drugs, alcohol or hepatitis viruses causes more and more liver cells, the employees in your powerplant, to die causing cirrhosis.  This prevents the nutrients to be converted by your liver cells into thousands of elements the body needs to function...and removes toxins and waste products that your body doesn’t need.

## How to detect?

- 	To determine the extent of liver damage, you can take a:
- Blood tests
- Ultrasound examination
- Liver biopsy

## The KEY to Maintaining a Healthy Liver

- Drinking alcohol
- Mixing alcohol with other drugs
- Taking more medicine than is prescribed by the doctor or recommended on the bottle
- Body piercing or tattoos done with unsterile instruments
- Having unprotected sex with multiple partners some of whom may have a sexually transmitted diseases

- Eating raw shellfish harvested from contaminated waters
- Anal/oral contact
- Using razors, toothbrushes, or sharp instruments used by others
- Touching someone else’s rashes, sores or blood
- Breathing in toxic fumes or smoke
- Injecting drugs and needle sharing

- _Avoid_ liver damaging activities: