Liver and let liver

Yummy. Liver. Can’t imagine why so many people think it’s gross. You probably eat the stolen children to be of chickens without a thought. And what about pickles? Little cucumber just walking along and bam, forced to conform to life as a pickle. Exaggerating much? Sir yes sir. 

The liver is a fascinating organ (most are to be honest). It plays so many roles in the body and is linked to so many disease states. It’s so important it even gets two blood supplies and can regrow after insult, unlike my ego. I will do a few posts later on hepatitises. Is that hepatiti? But today, iron. 

The liver is an important storage site for iron in the body and also plays a role in the breakdown of red blood cells. Bilirubin is something you might hear of a lot, that is the product of the metabolism of heme from the blood. Increased bilirubin production and RBC hemolysis lead to a buildup of said bilirubin and causes the yellowing of tissues known as jaundice. Any time your body doesn’t oust substances it is supposed to, bad things can happen. Like CYP3A4 inhibitors and any medication that needs CYP3A4. 

The reality is that no part of the human body won’t break and end up being exceeds or recycled. And like recycling things get broken down so they can be reused. Some things also need to be broken down to allow their excretion via feces or urine. The liver is a huge part of that. I want to get in to some of the consequences of liver damage and all that in the future. Hepatic encephalopathy is something I find very interesting so that might be the next in the liver line. 

Am I just blubbering on about the liver? Yes I am. But why shouldn’t I? I just outlined one minuscule function of the liver and didn’t even scratch the surface. Stay tuned for some thoughts on liver diseases. But for now, just imagine the liver as a recycling/garbage center. 

References, can you tell what sources I like the most? It’s a great website for most topics.

Acute Liver Failure from the NIH National Library of Medicine 2023. 

Hepatic failure from the NIH National Library of Medicine 2022. 

Image from eClinPath  

Physiology, Liver from the NIH National Library of Medicine 2022. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What the H?

Image
As far as I can remember, I was never a medically minded person up until Christmas 2019. I knew what food poisoning was, blastomycosis, blood clots,  and cracked ribs were, but that was it. I'm sure I knew of others, but I never gave them a second thought as I was spared much in the way of illness. It's funny how such things shaped my life, and I never gave them any hold in my mind until much later. Not that these diagnoses were as profound as say, a cancer diagnosis, but they impacted me in many ways. All this to say, that was my breadth of awareness of the medical field, the corpsmen (God love them, seriously) were no help to teach me. I do remember vividly for some reason I can't explain, the time I found out about H. pylori, the "H" in the title. I had a buddy at the time with some gnarly, debilitating stomach pain. Boy did I not known what the hell to do about that. Ibuprofen? Acetaminophen? Nah, I know better now. And that. bug, and subsequent complications,...
Read more

Well S*#t

Image
We are just going to keep talking about GI subjects until I get tired of them. Probably after this but who knows? I get to take care of a lot of GI/GU patients at work with some of the "Greatest Hits" of the gut. Diverticulitis, intestinal perforations, colorectal cancer, pancreatitis, bowel obstructions, abscesses, bleeds, and the like. I won't ever be a GI specialist but I do love infections and the big dog at the moment is everyone's favorite, Clostridioides difficile  AKA Clostridium difficile maybe C. diff  or in this mess of words, CD.  CD is a Gram -positive, spore forming, obligate anaerobic, motile, "drumstick-shaped" bacillus. To expand on that, they need low-no oxygen environments (like the gut), create spores that are hardy and able to survive conditions that would kill the live bacteria, and CD creates toxins that cause many of the effects of a CD infection. Though we generally associate CD with the diseases it causes, sometimes called CDAD or C...
Read more

Bacitracin: Bacteria from Tracey

Image
Not even joking. No cap. The solemn truth. On the record. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but da truth. Bacitracin was named after bacteria from a lady named Margaret Tracey. How is that for useless knowledge taking up space in your brain? Before we get into that story, me thinks the three of you reading this have probably used, or had been the target of use for, bacitracin as a kid. The little packets are ubiquitous in first aid kits across the world. Got a cut? Bacitracin. Burn or scrape? Bacitracin. Ran out of toothpaste? Bacitracin. I really hope that sarcasm was evident, the lack of humor nowadays is stunning. Please don't eat bacitracin.  In 1943, a young girl named Margaret Tracy was seen at a hospital in New York, the precursor to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. She had been hit by a car earlier that day and suffered a compound fracture of her tibia, which collected dirt from the road. The doctors cultures the wound which grew Bacillus subtilis and Staph aureu...
Read more