The liver is likened to a "silent organ" because many liver diseases in the early stages almost do not cause obvious symptoms. Dr. Zhang Xingxing - Deputy Head of the Department of Liver Diseases, Medical Center No. 5, People's Liberation Army General Hospital of China - warns, do not assume that no symptoms are synonymous with a healthy liver.
Fatigue and lethargy after waking up are a sign that can attract many people's attention. If you regularly sleep enough but wake up in the morning still tired, lack energy and the condition is prolonged, patients should not rush to attribute it to "hepatic heat". Fatigue and loss of appetite may appear in people with liver disease, but these symptoms are quite ineffective and need to be assessed along with other signs.
Loss of appetite, bloating or discomfort with greasy foods can also appear in some people with liver diseases. However, these manifestations are also present in many digestive diseases, so they cannot be used to identify liver damage.
More notably are jaundice, yellow eyes, or dark urine. These are signs that need to be noted, especially when they appear for a long time or are accompanied by fatigue and loss of appetite. When the patient begins to experience jaundice or obvious symptoms, liver disease may have progressed more than the stage where there are absolutely no symptoms.
Professor Xu Xiaoyuan (Beijing University Hospital, China) said that symptoms such as fatigue and poor appetite in liver disease are often quite mild and easily overlooked. Therefore, waiting until clear symptoms appear to check the liver may cause patients to miss the time for early detection.
Experts also note that you should not buy "liver cooling" drugs or liver protection foods yourself when you see the above symptoms in your body. Dr. Truong Tinh Tinh said that people with normal liver function but arbitrarily using products advertised as liver protection can even increase metabolic burden and cause liver damage due to drugs.
Therefore, if fatigue, loss of appetite, jaundice or yellow eyes persist, patients should go for examination and check liver function instead of self-treatment. Testing and examination are the only way to determine if the liver is really having problems, instead of relying on the feeling of "hepatic heat" after waking up.
