5 Surprising Daily Habits That Are Damaging Your Liver Without You Realising It

Your liver is among the largest and most important organs, which on a daily basis completes around 500 essential functions, which include cleansing the blood, eliminating toxins, storing minerals and vitamins, and transforming nutrients into energy.

However, there are many daily habits that you may not even know are inadvertently causing long-term damage to your liver. According to doctors, even if you may not know, liver damage can be gradual and may go unnoticed without any symptoms. But over time, these bad habits severely harm the liver. A few of these include:

Many people do not have the habit of drinking water till they are extremely thirsty. And especially in winter, your intake of water may go down a lot.

According to experts, you must drink at least eight glasses of water per day. While it might seem like a lot, your body is composed of approximately 66 per cent of water, which needs hydration all the time. If your liver gets dehydrated, it also tends to lose its longevity and is unable to care for the rest of the body.

Excess consumption of sugar not only leads to weight gain and obesity but also brings along a host of other conditions and diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart attack. According to doctors, too much sugar consumption puts a heavy burden on your liver. Eating sugary products, especially with fructose, can make your liver convert it into fat.

Over time, it leads to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease—a leading cause of liver damage across the world.

Having unsafe sex, mainly with multiple partners, could be a more significant danger to the health of the liver than you may think.

The most significant risk is that you may contract hepatitis because of not using adequate and ample protection. Doctors say hepatitis C—a viral infection that causes inflammation of your liver—can damage it in the long run. You can get the infection if you have exposure to the hepatitis C virus (HCV) after contact with blood that carries the virus. Hepatitis C can lead to cirrhosis, which leads to serious complications like liver failure and even cancer.

Sleep deprivation has some astounding dangers, including oxidative stress to your liver. According to various studies, those who suffer from sleep deprivation also suffer from an extensive range of health problems like type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and more.

Not getting sound sleep increases the amount of fat in the liver, due to the increased activity of genes that cause insulin resistance and fat content in liver cells. Doctors say chronic sleep disruption like social jet lag is also linked to an increased risk of liver cancer.

Yes, taking too many painkillers can cause liver damage, especially if you take them frequently or with alcohol—leading to a condition known as drug-induced liver injury. According to doctors, a few over-the-counter prescription medicines like acetaminophen are the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States.

Experts say if you take too much acetaminophen, you may have liver damage and not know it. Symptoms may not appear for days, and early symptoms mostly seem like the flu, like loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, and yellowing of the skin and eyes or jaundice.

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