Alcohol in America
The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence sponsors Alcohol Awareness (NCADD) month every April. As part of a growing health concern for American’s, I wanted to focus on alcohol awareness and natural treatment options that can help maintain or improve liver health. Alcohol abuse for a long term can have detrimental effects on the liver and can contribute to a fatty liver. Making sure that you are responsible when it comes to drinking can help prevent the onset of fatty liver and can help improve your quality of life.
The NCADD outlined ways to observe alcohol awareness month, and these include:
- Practice limiting consumption by keeping track of quantity consumed
- Become informed about how alcohol impacts the body
- Encourage discussion of alcohol abuse with children
- Healthcare providers can talk about options to decrease alcohol intake with their patients
Alcohol Metabolism and Liver Health
To become informed about alcohol and how it impacts the body, as suggested, it is important to understand the role of the liver in alcohol metabolism. Alcohol is not considered a nutrient needed by the body, and therefore has no official benefit or function in the body. One of the jobs of the liver is to get rid of this non-nutrient from the body. Regardless of how much a person consumes, the body can only metabolize a certain amount of alcohol every two hours. This amount varies among individuals and depends on many factors including liver size and body mass. When too much alcohol is consumed, the liver cannot keep up with the demand and damage starts to occur. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism states that 90 percent of people who drink heavily (past the point of regular metabolism in the liver), develop fatty liver. Out of these 90 percent, 20 percent will go on to develop the more severe alcoholic liver disease and liver cirrhosis.
It is important to understand how the liver is involved so that we can focus on the ways that supplementation can improve liver health and prevent fatty liver from becoming a more serious disease like cirrhosis.
Liver health supplementation is important because most of the nutrients that are protective and healthy for the liver are not found in our daily diet. NatureKue’s LiverSupport, contains natural herbs that have been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for hundreds of years, and are not readily found in the grocery store or in recipes and products. Therefore, choosing the right supplement is important to aid in liver health.
LiverSupport works by targeting those fatty cells that are deposited on the liver when damage occurs. The patented and clinically proven ingredient in LiverSupport is Deepure Tea, which can help regulate cholesterol and triglyceride levels to maintain liver fat deposits. In addition, it contains antioxidant properties that can help improve energy levels and improve the immune system response.
The takeaway
Alcohol can be detrimental to liver health, as this is the organ that is primarily involved in alcohol metabolism. When the liver gets overloaded due to alcohol abuse, it starts to become damaged and retains fat deposits (a nutrient that the liver also regulates). These fat deposits then lead to fatty liver and can develop into more serious diseases like alcoholic fatty liver and liver cirrhosis. To combat the effects of alcohol, supplementation can be used. LiverSupport by NatureKue is a great natural option to aid in optimized liver health. With herbs that target fat deposits in the liver, this supplement is clinically proven and patented to improve liver health.
References:
- US Department of Health and Human Services. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Alcohol Metabolism: An Update. Published July 2007. Accessed April 3, 2022. https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa72/aa72.htm#:~:text=Alcohol%20is%20metabolized%20in%20the,do%20develop%20alcohol%2Drelated%20cancers.