Alcoholic Liver Disease
What is alcoholic liver disease?
Excessive consumption of alcohol, as stated in paragraph anteriro, can damage multiple organs in the body, but especially the liver. The incidence of alcoholic liver disease in a population is measured by assessing the mortality rates from liver cirrhosis.
The risk of cirrhosis increases proportionally to the degree of consumption, but never exceeds 50%. In recent years there has been an increase in women’s consumption, and an increasingly early onset of alcohol consumption by young people.
How much alcohol is harmful?
The risk of alcoholic liver disease is very variable for each individual and very difficult to establish a priori, but there are a number of circumstances in which delineate groups with a higher risk:
There is an inherited genetic susceptibility to the harmful effects of alcohol.
Women are more sensitive to the harmful effects of alcohol than men.
Drink daily or fasting is harmful to the liver than drinking only on weekends. However, the cumulative consumption of one or two days easily causes acute alcohol intoxication, which can have large consequences.
The risk of ALD increases proportionally with the amount consumed.
credit to: Dr. José María Ladero Quesada, Dr. Matthews Warren, Dr. Christopher P. Day