Liver disease
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Hi. A quick question....is anyone able to tell me the rough timeline between alcohol related fatty liver disease and progression to the next stage of disease? I was diagnosed with stage 1 back in June 2018 and I have dramatically cut down my alcohol intake but I’m concerned it’s not healing. I was drinking too much. Seven days a week before diagnosis but now once a week maybe twice but certainly no more. If I continued this trend, how long would it take for my liver to become more damaged??
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Guest chris180477
Posted
Heavy drinking can cause a liver to get fatty in as little as 30 days or so, and many regular drinkers live with fatty liver for many years without problem. Winston Churchill (for instance) was known to drink heavily throughout his life. He undoubtedly had alcoholic fatty liver for over half a century. He worked till he was 80 and lived to be 90 years old, with no liver disease ever recorded in his medical records.
This said, a fatty liver can turn on you without warning, and once inflammation gets established, it can be difficult to resolve. How do you know when the liver is inflamed? Enzymes, particularly GGT are your best early warning.
In one of your previous posts, I believe you said you had popped GGT up to around 700? This is serious inflammation... Perhaps borderline acute alcoholic hepatitis. I drank heavily for over 30 years, & never popped my GGT much past 150.
Don't know what's going on, but your liver seems to have been sensitized to alcohol, and this may indicate even moderate alcohol consumption might be dangerous. From what I've read, GGT is the most sensitive marker for alcoholic liver inflammation. If you want to try to continue to drink moderately, I'd watch GGT like a hawk, for an indication of exactly how much alcohol my liver was willing to process without getting too angry.
If your doc will not check your GGT as often as you need to, you can actually get this test on your own, through some online testing options.
I'm not a doctor, but from what I've read, if you continue to pop GGT into triple digits (over 100) you may be playing with fire regarding progression of liver disease. A normal GGT = Happy Liver! If you can have a few cold ones on Saturday night, and keep GGT within normal range, then perhaps this is safe. The safest option of course is to remain abstinent.
You should ask your own doc about this and consider his/her opinion carefully.
chris180477 Guest
Posted
Guest chris180477
Posted
GGT normalizing (or near normal) fairly swiftly after alcoholic or other insult is a good sign of a liver that is not severely damaged and bouncing back well. You really don't ever want to see GGT into triple digits though.
Don't know about the pin-prick blood tests, but GGT should require only a single tube of blood. LifeExtension offers GGT for 20-25 dollars (search blood tests A-Z for gamma glutamyl transferase).
Speaking of blood, you might want to look at ferritin too. Male drinkers tend to accumulate excess iron, and this can sensitize the liver to alcohol. The upper limit for ferritin set by most labs is quite high (300+) but this is the threshold for clinical iron overload. Optimal ferritin is actually lower (80-120) and anything over 150 might be what's causing your liver to stress out over even moderate alcohol consumption.
Research: "The Role of Iron in Alcoholic Liver Disease" for more on this. If ferritin is elevated (150+), whole blood donation is the best way to lower this.