Alcoholic liver disease is a liver disease caused by long-term heavy alcohol consumption, the full name of alcoholic liver disease. In China, with the improvement of people’s living standard in recent years, more and more people are suffering from alcoholic liver, and the trend is younger. For alcoholic liver, people still have many misconceptions. Myth 1: Why can’t you drink alcohol if your liver function is normal? An alcohol can not only make healthy people drink into cirrhosis or liver cancer, but also accelerate the process of transforming viral hepatitis such as hepatitis B into cirrhosis. So there are two types of people who cannot drink, one is alcoholic liver, and the other is viral hepatitis patients. Patients with liver disease should have their liver function checked at least once every six months. The liver has a strong compensatory capacity, in the insidious development of the disease, liver cells are not damaged to a certain extent, liver function tests can be normal. At this time, if you continue to drink alcohol, it is like “adding insult to injury”. When the “abnormal” appears, it is often too late to regret. Myth 2: Every other day on the wine scene, will not get alcoholic liver actually drink a lot of wine, drink how long will cause alcoholic liver? Some people think: “I’m only on the last drinking scene every other day, it’s fine.” Is that really true? The formation of an alcoholic liver is related to the degree of alcohol contained in the wine. The general male liver’s capacity is 40g of alcohol per day, less for women. 40g of alcohol is equivalent to about 100ml of brandy, 120ml of whiskey, 250ml of Shaoxing wine and 1000ml of beer. if you continue to drink more than this amount for 3 to 5 years, alcoholic liver and cirrhosis of the liver will follow. Misconception three: not hepatitis, why transaminases will rise Alcoholic liver is clinically divided into three stages: mild, moderate and severe. Mild is mainly manifested as alcoholic fatty liver. Most of the patients are young and often have no conscious symptoms, only feeling bloated and weak; in the middle stage, they have decreased appetite and aversion to grease, and elevated transaminases can be found in laboratory tests, among which elevated aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and glutamyl transferase (GGT) are more prominent. Mild and moderate alcoholic liver is completely curable, but severe lesions can develop into cirrhosis, leading to ascites and hemorrhage. Myth 4: What remedies are available to stop drinking For early to mid-stage alcoholic liver, stopping drinking is the only treatment. Generally, mild alcoholic liver can improve symptoms after three or four weeks of abstinence, and those with abnormal liver function can use some liver-protecting and detoxifying drugs, such as reduced glutathione, thioponin, etc., and transaminases will slowly decline after six months. But it’s easy to quit drinking. The main method of quitting alcohol is psychological and behavioral treatment. First of all, the patient should firmly believe in quitting alcohol, take the initiative to take measures to gradually reduce the amount of alcohol and change the original lifestyle. These include drinking one or two less a day, changing from white wine to beer or wine, eating something or drinking a non-alcoholic beverage before drinking, avoiding gatherings with alcoholic friends as much as possible, cultivating a variety of hobbies, and psychological suggestion, etc. Myth 5: You can’t eat meat after suffering from fatty liver For alcoholic liver patients, doctors always admonish them to pay attention to balanced nutrition and eat more vitamin-rich vegetables, fruits and lean meat, fish and milk. But early alcoholic liver patients are skeptical: I have a fatty liver, still dare to eat meat? In fact, this is also a misunderstanding. Because there are three main causes of fatty liver: obesity, alcohol consumption, and diabetes. Alcoholic fatty liver is not caused by obesity with excess nutrition, but drinking alcohol damages liver cells and causes disorders and deposits of liver fat metabolism. So you should eat some lean meat, milk and other low-fat, high-protein foods to improve the nutritional status of the liver and slow its development toward cirrhosis. Myth 6: Alcoholic liver is contagious Many people think that alcoholic liver is contagious, but this is not true, alcoholic liver is not a disease caused by hepatophilic virus, it is mainly due to the patient’s long-term heavy drinking caused by the lesion, so it is not contagious.