Alcohol effects your liver in two main ways Liver disease is the term used to describe damage to the liver and there are two types. Acute is when liver problems develop over a few months and chronic is damage over a number of years. There are lots of different causes of liver disease, including drinking alcohol to excess which causes ‘alcoholic liver disease’. Scientists are not sure exactly why drinking too much alcohol can damage your liver but the reasons include:

• Oxidative stress. When our liver tries to break down alcohol, the resulting chemical reaction can damage its cells. This damage can lead to inflammation and scarring as the liver tries to repair itself.
• Toxins in gut bacteria. Alcohol can damage our intestine which lets toxins from our gut bacteria get into the liver. These toxins can also lead to inflammation and scarring.

The liver turns glucose into fat which it sends round the body to store for use when we need it. Alcohol affects the way the liver handles fat so your liver cells get stuffed full of it. If this happens, you may feel a vague discomfort in your abdomen because your liver is swollen. You might also feel sick and lose your appetite. A blood test may be able to show if you have fatty liver.

Evidence suggests that other factors that increase your risk of developing liver disease include:

• being dependent on alcohol – around seven in 10 people with alcoholic liver disease have an alcohol dependency problem
• being female – this could be because women develop higher levels of alcohol in the blood than men even if they’ve drunk the same amount of alcohol
• being overweight – excess weight can exacerbate many of the mechanisms of liver damage caused by excessive drinking
• Genetics – certain genetic factors, including those affecting the liver’s handling of fat, influence the risk of a heavy drinker developing liver disease.

Evidence about how much and how often you need to drink to increase your chances of developing liver disease is unclear. But all the research shows that the more alcohol you drink, the more likely you are to develop liver disease.