The liver is a football-sized organ that sits in your abdominal cavity, just above and to the right of the stomach and below the diaphragm. Performing more than 500 functions, the liver is vital to the health of your body. It helps to clean the blood of toxins and contaminants, converting nutrients and medications to usable forms for the rest of the body. When the liver stops functioning properly, chemicals and toxins remain in the blood causing significant, and sometimes deadly, problems. A variety of disorders can affect the liver, one of them being chronic liver disease or cirrhosis.
Early Stages
You may not experience any symptoms related to chronic liver disease at first, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (see link in References). Over time, as the disease gets worse you may feel fatigued, loss your appetite, start dropping weight and feel sick to your stomach.
Bleeding
If the early symptoms of liver disease are left unchecked, you may begin to notice other changes that can be attributed to complications that are not necessarily related to the liver. You may get nosebleeds that are more frequent and, because the liver is responsible for blood clotting, you will bleed more.
Swelling
You may see and/or feel a swelling or bloating in the legs and abdomen. This is due to a build up of fluid in those areas.
Jaundice
Your skin and eyes may start turning yellow, a condition known as jaundice. Jaundice is caused by a build up of bilirubin in the blood, a by-product of old red blood cells.
Confusion
Because the liver is no longer filtering the blood effectively, waste product builds up in the blood and the brain. This can cause confusion and difficulty in thinking. Similar to the jaundice, these waste products take the form of bilirubin left behind by old red blood cells.
Portal Hypertension
Portal hypertension is the elevation of blood pressure in the artery that leads to the liver. Because the liver is not processing effectively, it is not able to take in and store blood like it normally would.
Enlarged Veins
The veins of your esophagus and stomach may become enlarged, causing leakage and bleeding that often results in the vomiting of blood or blood showing up in bowel movements.
