Liver

The Newsletter of the Hepatitis B Foundation / No. 29 / Fall 2000

Good Nutrition Can Enhance Liver Health

Today’s positive nutritional message to eat a well-balanced diet that emphasizes veggies and limits red meat, fats, sweets and alcohol may be extra important if you have hepatitis B. In fact, you may need to tweak what’s considered a healthy menu and take a few additional steps – watch portion size, become savvy about supplements, forgo food fads – in order to avoid overburdening your liver already weakened by disease. “People with hepatitis B should pay attention to everything they swallow, even some things generally considered healthy,” says hepatologist Melissa Palmer, M.D., who maintains a private practice in Long Island, New York and is the author of Dr. Melissa Palmer’s Guide to Hepatitis Liver Disease: What you Need to Know. For some people with hepatitis B, she says, the liver that normally functions as the body’s filtering system is not working up to par. The hepatitisdiseased liver is unable to break down potentially toxic molecules and byproducts from substances you ingest. With a faulty filtering system, dangerous levels of everything from alcohol to protein, fats and certain vitamins and minerals may accumulate in the body, with potentially serious adverse consequences to the liver. As Dr. Palmer puts it: “having a damaged liver could mean the rest of your body would slowly turn into the biological equivalent of a toxic dump.” This doesn’t mean you must eat a bland diet or obsess about every morsel of food. But by avoiding or moderating your intake of foods that may potentially harm the liver while choosing foods that help it, “your burdened liver won’t have to work as hard,” says Dr. Palmer. Chances are you’ll gain more pep – a major issue for people with hepatitis B — and prevent or delay complications of more serious damage to your liver. It’s even more risky if you ingest alcohol along with acetaminophen (Tylenol), she adds. This common...