BackTake care of your liver!
The liver is the largest gland in our body. It performs a number of important functions, the main of which is detoxification or neutralization. The fact is that harmful or even toxic substances often enter the body with food. Once in the intestine, they can be absorbed into the blood and penetrate into any organ. This is what the liver prevents. It neutralizes toxins and removes them, along with bile, back into the intestine. The bile produced by the liver is necessary for normal digestion.
The foods we eat must be carefully processed to benefit the body. Bile takes an active part in this process. The liver produces it constantly, and as needed, after meals, and in the right amounts. If we eat light food, little bile is needed. But when we arrange a "cheat meal" for ourselves, it turns into overtime for the liver. It should be noted that processing meat and fatty foods requires much more bile. If the liver is healthy, everything goes as it should. If you need more bile, please. And unclaimed bile is reserved in the gallbladder. Worse, when due to various reasons the process of bile secretion is disturbed: there is stagnation of bile or, on the contrary, its rapid release. A change in the pH of the bile medium can lead to the formation of stones. In any of these cases, the liver passes into the category of diseased organs and cannot function normally.
Under the influence of various factors, including the unfavorable state of the environment, malnutrition, alcohol abuse, smoking, as well as diseases of the digestive system, the liver begins to "give up". The treatment of this complex organ, of course, should be handled by a doctor. But even before liver disorders force you to consult a specialist, you can analyze your condition yourself. For example, a precursor of serious liver diseases is a functional disorder such as biliary dyskinesia. Its symptoms: a feeling of heaviness in the right subcostal area after eating, nausea between meals, lack of interest in favorite foods, bitterness in the mouth, belching, bad breath with healthy teeth, sleep disturbance, which indicates a failure in the biorhythm of the liver. All these symptoms increase after eating fried, fatty, canned, smoked food. These processes can last for years, contributing to the formation of sand, stones, leading to inflammatory processes in the liver and, as a result, to cirrhosis of the liver. Signs of liver disease may not appear for a long time. It is good if, after the first alarm bell, a person goes to the doctor. But most often there are other urgent matters, and a visit to the doctor is postponed, and the disease develops and passes into a chronic stage, when irreversible changes are formed in the liver. This is why early diagnosis is crucial in the treatment and prevention of liver diseases. Various laboratory analysis and tests are used for this purpose. They all reflect some form of liver function and have important diagnostic value.
For the convenience of patients and doctors, specialists of the OLYMP CDL have developed a diagnostic profile "Liver examination", including 10 biochemical indicators reflecting its condition.
The tests included in the profile make it possible to identify and characterize the degree of damage to liver tissue cells, assess the state of excretory and protein-synthesizing liver functions, and make assumptions about possible causes of pathology.
ALT (alanine aminotransferase), AST (aspartate aminotransferase)(together they are usually called "transaminases") - these enzymes enter the blood from cells. The release into the blood increases with cell damage, and the determination of their activity in the blood serum is aimed at detecting cell damage.
Gamma-GT(GGTP) is a very sensitive marker of liver disease. Gamma-GT activity is particularly sensitive to the effect of prolonged alcohol abuse on the liver.
Alkaline phosphatase.Its activity increases most markedly with the development of hepatitis complications from the biliary tract and mechanical jaundice (cholestasis).
LDH (lactate dehydrogenase) is an enzyme that reflects damage to liver cells, especially in toxic effects (alcohol, drugs, etc.)
Total bilirubin.Its definition, as well as the definition of direct bilirubin, is aimed at assessing the excretory function of the liver. Pathology of liver cells caused by exposure to a virus or some toxic agent causes disturbances in bilirubin metabolism in hepatocytes (formation of conjugated form of bilirubin - direct bilirubin), decreased transport of bilirubin by liver cells into bile and increased concentration of total bilirubin in serum. An increase in the total bilirubin content in the blood can also be caused by a mechanical decrease in the outflow of bile in conditions of inflammation or in the presence of gallstones.
Direct ("conjugated" or "bound") bilirubin. Its determination and comparison of its content with the concentration of total bilirubin makes it possible to differentiate the causes of hyperbilirubinemia: damage to liver cells, mechanical disorders of bile outflow or, for example, increased hemolysis of erythrocytes.
Amylase, a hydrolytic enzyme, decomposes starch and glycogen to maltose. Amylase is formed mainly in the salivary glands and pancreas, then enters the oral cavity or the lumen of the duodenum, respectively, and participates in the digestion of carbohydrates in food. With inflammation of the pancreas – pancreatitis, this enzyme enters the bloodstream. Pancreatitis often accompanies liver diseases, so the determination of amylase is an important diagnostic test.
Total protein and albumin. These indicators allow us to assess dysproteinemia (changes in the protein composition of the blood), which develops in liver diseases. In acute hepatitis, changes in the protein spectrum may be poorly expressed. In severe and prolonged liver diseases, hypoalbuminemia develops.