The liver is an organ that sits to the right of your stomach. It’s considered the biggest gland in your body, weighing in at around three pounds, and it plays a big role in keeping you healthy. The liver has many jobs, but the three most important things that it takes care of in the body is producing bile for your intestines, create proteins to help your blood clot, and detoxify any potentially dangerous chemicals that end up in the body.
Liver failure happens when your liver becomes too damaged with scar tissue to fully heal itself and fails to complete its jobs for the body. This is called cirrhosis of the liver. Liver failure is considered a medical emergency, but it’s not always apparent when liver failure is happening because the failure can span for many years.
1. Abdomen Pain
Abdomen pain caused by liver failure is most commonly felt on the right side of the abdomen, under the ribs. The pain is normally dull in nature, but it is possible for the pain to be severe in nature. The pain can radiate outward and feel like it’s coming from your back or right shoulder. You may experience onset of pain after a heavy meal of fatty foods or after drinking alcohol. These thing cause pain because a damaged liver can not do its job of filtering alcohol or produce enough bile to help your body break these down. This kind of pain is a hallmark of liver failure, and you should set up an appointment with your doctor if you experience it. Pain originating from the liver is a serious symptom, and you should not ignore it.
If you experience abdominal pain is other areas of the abdomen, especially if it is severe or ongoing, then you should still consider scheduling an appointment with your doctor. Severe or ongoing abdominal pain can one of many signs and symptoms of an underlying health issue. Your doctor will be able to guide you through proper diagnosis and a viable treatment plan, if needed.
2. Fatigue
Fatigue is a feeling of extreme lethargy that is not helped with adequate sleep. You may or may not experience fatigue if your liver is failing. Some do, and some don’t. Fatigue can be debilitating. It is much more than simple tiredness. It can make completing daily tasks without taking frequent breaks near impossible. Fatigue affects people mentally and physically. If you are fatigued then you may find yourself forgetting things and feeling like you’ve got a foggy brain. You may struggle to focus on things like your daily work or find yourself forgetting things that used to come to you quickly.
3. Loss of Appetite
Loss of appetite is one of the first symptoms that your liver is failing, but because this sign is frequently seen in other health issue, you and your doctor may not suspect the true cause right away. Loss of appetite brings with it the chance of malnutrition if you don’t remember or don’t feel like eating. This can exacerbate an already damaged liver and make the failure progress even faster because your body isn’t getting the nutrients that it needs. If you’ve had a prolonged loss of appetite, you should contact your doctor about the possible causes and treatment plans.
4. Bloating
Everyone experiences bloating now and again, but bloating from liver failure tends to be different. Normal bloating is caused by buildup of gases during digestion, and it is relieved by passing gas or burping. Bloating caused by failure of the liver is called ascites. Ascites is caused when fluids leaks out of the liver and intestine into your abdominal cavity. This fluid builds up in the abdominal area and can cause you to bloat. It causes discomfort and sometimes pain and shortness of breath. Ascites, when it happens in relation to liver failure, is most often caused by alcohol abuse or hepatitis.
5. Nausea
Nausea is a feeling of discomfort or unease in your upper abdomen area. People often feel nauseous before vomiting, but vomiting does not always occur when someone is nauseous. This symptom is seen in many different health issues, so you and your doctor may not realize its actual cause right away. The reason you might feel nausea when your liver is failing, is because the liver plays an important for in the digestion process. It creates bile that gets transported to the intestine in order to help break down food. When the liver becomes too damaged to function in the manner that it should, the process of digestion suffers.
6. Mental Confusion
Mental confusion is a symptom seen in severe cases of liver failure. One of the liver’s jobs is to filter toxins from the body, so the harm they do is reduced. When your liver is too damaged to fulfill its duties, those toxins don’t get properly filtered from our body. The toxins end up in our blood stream and eventually make their way to our brain. Once there, they can cause permanent brain damage. You might experience mental confusion gradually or rapidly. This is on of many signs of a liver that has almost entirely shut down. You should seek medical attention immediately if you experienced marked mental confusion.
7. Yellow Skin
Yellow skin and eyes are called jaundice. Jaundice sets in when overabundance of bilirubin is in the blood. Bilirubin is a caused when the part of your blood cells that carry oxygen breaks down. When the body is healthy, these old cells get filtered through the liver where they get mixed in with bile and sent to the intestines to be expelled from the body. If the liver isn’t working properly, then bilirubin can’t get flushed out of the body, so they stay in the bloodstream. Jaundice is a sign that something serious is wrong in the body, so contact your doctor immediately if you’re experiencing it.
8. Bad Breath
Bad breath caused by liver failure is called fetor hepaticus. It is generally described as smelling musty sweet in nature, occasionally accompanied by the scent of fecal matter. It has also been described as a pungent fruity smell, similar in nature to rotting fruit. This smell is thought to be caused by a chemical called dimethyl sulfide. People with liver failure have a high rate of this chemical in their bloodstream, but the causes behind it are not fully understood. Fetor hepaticus is considered a medical emergency, and you should seek medical attention immediately if your bad breath smells like the above descriptions.
9. Bleeding
When the the tissue of the liver becomes damaged and scarred, it makes it more difficult for blood to pass through. This is called portal hypertension. Once portal hypertension occurs the veins in the surrounding area have to accommodate this extra blood. The extra blood causes the surrounding veins to enlarge, which makes the walls of the veins thinner and more prone to ripping and bursting. If one the the veins rips or bursts, it causes internal bleeding and can be life threatening. Once your veins burst, even if they are properly repaired, they are always at a higher chance or bursting again.
10. Itching
Itching is a symptom that can happen in tandem with jaundice. If the bilirubin has mixed with bile, then that bile gets transported throughout the body by your bloodstream. As the bilirubin is deposited in the skin so is the bile that was transported with it. The bile is what causes the itching. You may notice the itching before the bilirubin has built up in your system enough to cause your skin and eyes to yellow. If you experience itching and jaundice, you should make an appointment with your doctor to discuss the underlying causes, such as liver failure, and what treatments are available.
