Healthy Liver vs. Diseased Liver

Travis Stork: But it is becoming more common in the general population.

Jim Sears: That is right. A lot people do not even know what their liver is. It
is essentially – it helps fight infection but it cleans the blood. It acts
as a big filter.

Most of the time your blood is pretty clean, pretty clear and it just
kind of filters the blood, no big deal. Blood goes through the liver
and it comes out nice and clean. But, if you got too many toxins in
your blood, too much alcohol, too much acetaminophen or too
much of any medication; the liver still is going to do its job
because you can see, it is still coming through clear. But the liver
has to work overtime and all those toxins will build up in the liver
and can lead to a scarred liver, a fatty liver or a liver that is just
really, really tired.

Lisa Masterson: Like a stressor on the liver.

Jim Sears: A big stress on the liver.

Travis Stork: This amazing organ that sits right up here in your belly, it filters
the blood. Well, this is a healthy liver, but what happens overtime
is these tissues can become fibrotic. And as they become fibrotic,
usually the liver gets much smaller. This one is actually not small
yet, but if you look really closely, you can see these little fibers
deposit and as the liver becomes more fibrotic, it leads to
something call cirrhosis.

By the time you get cirrhosis, your liver cannot filter any blood or
very little blood and blood does not get through it and it backs up
in your system and you develop so many secondary problems due
to that.

Andrew Ordon: And we saw that in that news piece.