No, not one glass of alcohol a day. If you suffer from obesity, you should know that alcohol consumption, even the smallest amount per day, affects your liver, so much so that the chances of suffering from fibrosis skyrocket.
This is indicated by an international study in which almost 11,000 patients from Spain and the United States participated and which makes it clear that “alcohol and obesity help each other to cause liver disease,” as explained by Dr. Ramón Bataller, hepatologist at the Hospital Clinic, one of the leading experts in research into the effects of alcohol on the liver and who has led this research.
The work clearly shows that people with metabolic syndrome and obesity have a greater risk of suffering from liver disease when they consume any amount of alcohol daily, even if it is moderate or low, said Bataller, who presented his work at the 49th Congress. of the Spanish Society for the Study of the Liver, which brings together more than 900 specialists in Madrid.
That obesity and alcohol consumption cause steatotic liver disease (accumulation of fat in the liver) is not unknown. But there is the impact of different levels of alcohol consumption on the prevalence of significant fibrosis in patients with fatty liver associated with obesity. To do this, the researchers crossed the results of two cohorts, one for derivation (included 6,738 adults in Spain) and another for validation (with 4,218 participants from the United States). “The conclusion has been clear: alcohol consumption, even low to moderate, is associated with increased fibrosis or liver damage in patients with fat accumulation in their liver associated with obesity,” says Bataller.
This partly explains the high rates of liver disease that are being recorded, so much so that researchers are talking about a new disease that they have called MetALD (Metabolic-Alcoholic Disease). “We are very concerned about its impact on the liver health of the entire population and particularly among young people, where it is associated with very harmful and yet increasingly normalized lifestyles,” says this expert. Hence, hepatologists consider alcohol and obesity, both together and separately, as “the great enemy to beat” for the liver health of Spaniards and particularly young people, he explains.
The hepatologist points out that, once liver diseases caused by viruses have almost disappeared thanks to new treatments (hepatitis C), the two main causes of liver disease have to do with obesity and alcohol consumption, two factors that far from slow down continue to increase. Therefore, they predict a future with many liver patients, who will develop fibrosis, cirrhosis and cancer.
Hepatologists have welcomed the announcement by the Ministry of Health of a draft to prevent and combat alcohol consumption in minors, “the public enemy to beat for liver health and is already behind more than half of liver cancers,” they point out.
