Why Does Alcohol Damage the Liver?

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Doctor Bernardo Savariego. I'm a medical doctor specializing in addiction psychiatry in Miami, Florida. Okay, let's talk a little bit about how the alcohol damages the liver. The alcohol actually is metabolized by the liver, and the liver, if you drink too much the liver becomes overwhelmed by having to metabolize and oxidize the alcohol. It's really a problem of an oxidation stress. We're always talking about antioxidants being healthy, so what you're doing is just the opposite of taking an antioxidant. You're forcing the liver to oxidize in excess, and this affects, they say it affects the microchrondria. It's really not a hundred percent known exactly how it happens, but we know that it happens. We know that twenty to thirty percent of drinkers develop alcoholic hepatitis. We know that ten to twenty percent develop alcoholic cirrhosis. It's a milder form of liver damage, which is a fatty liver, which is as the liver becomes stressed, it starts building up fat in the liver. But this can be asymptomatic. But this is bascially, the liver is one of the biggest problems with alcohol."