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Lipoic Acid With Liver Disease

Liver disease (also called hepatic disease) is a broad term describing any single number of diseases affecting the liver. It is dangerous and often deadly. There is hope, though. Success has been observed through the treatment of alpha-lipoic acid.

  1. Liver Disease

    • The liver is necessary for life -- there is currently no medical procedure that allows for a human to live without their liver. Half of it can be removed in a transplant or removal, but with serious complications and lifelong medication and care. The liver's major function is to detoxify ingested products. It also synthesizes proteins and produces biochemicals that aide in digestion. Liver disease is any number of diseases that affect the liver process. Many are accompanied by jaundice, which makes the skin look yellow by increasing levels of bilirubin in the body. Normally, the body breaks up the hemoglobin of dead blood cells that increase bilirubin, which the liver removes and detoxifies. Liver disease stops that detoxification process.

    Symptoms of Liver Disease

    • The symptoms of liver disease are many and varied. They deal mostly with the look of the patient; the outward signs include bad breath, bad body odor, a coated tongue and itchy skin. Red, swollen, itchy eyes with dark circles underneath can present themselves, as well as rosy-cheeked, splotchy acne (acne rosacea), with other brown blemishes on the skin. There are many other symptoms, including jaundice, depending on which form of liver disease the patient has.

    Lipoic Acid

    • Lipoic acid is an organosulfur compound that is an essential factor in many enzyme compounds. In the 1990s, lipoic acid began being used as a dietary supplement (typical doses are 100 to 200 milligrams a day). The use of lipoic acid has not been proven definitively to reduce weight, but it is safe, in that it has been shown to be non-cancer-forming and has not shown any evidence of organ toxicity. It has also been found to be an effective antioxidant, preventing the symptoms of vitamin C and vitamin E deficiency in patients. It has also been successful in the treatment of liver disease.

    History

    • Dr. Fred Bartter, chief of endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health, was one of the first to become interested in the healing powers of lipoic acid. Bartter found that the acid lowered blood sugar levels, and thought that perhaps it might be used for diabetes in the same vein. It wasn't until Bartter published an article on the subject that another doctor, Burton Berkson, MD, MS, PhD, started testing it on liver disease patients in 1977. Having seen the stages of the disease in many of his patients, he decided to try this very experimental process and found that it worked in some.

    What Lipoic Acid Does for Livers

    • Berkson says this about lipoic acid: Alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) is the "rate-limiting factor for the production of energy from carbohydrates." In other words, according to NaturalNews.com, "Without alpha-lipoic acid, we could not obtain energy from the food we eat and we could not stay alive." In many of Berkson's clinical tests, ALA treatment, along with the use of selenium and silymarin, has not only stopped the destruction of the liver, but in many cases the liver has recovered most, if not all, of its function. Patients went on to live healthy, disease-free lives. While this treatment isn't foolproof and doesn't work for everyone, there is an incredible success rate, and it is definitely good news for liver-disease sufferers.

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