4 Things Your Feet Could Be Telling You About Your Liver Health
It’s important to keep your liver in good condition if you want to stay healthy. Your liver performs over 500 important functions, including blood filtering, waste disposal, and bile production, making it the largest organ in the human body. Recognizing when your liver’s health has been harmed is critical, and certain indicators may appear in your feet if your liver is in trouble.
Keep reading to discover four ways your feet may give you a warning about the condition of your liver, as well as when to visit the doctor.
1. Swelling in your legs, ankles, feet
According to experts, one of the following related liver disorders might cause fluid accumulation in your legs, ankles, or feet: hepatitis B, hepatitis, C, cirrhosis, fatty liver disease, or even liver cancer.
The Cleveland Clinic says that if you have hepatitis B or hepatitis C, you have an elevated risk of liver cancer since these illnesses frequently progress to cirrhosis. Any cause of liver disease may progress to cirrhosis, increasing your risk of liver cancer.
Early consultation with your physician about your symptoms may help avoid future liver damage, they say.
2. Numbness or a tingling sensation.
Because of a hepatitis C infection or alcoholic liver disease, people with liver problems may experience tingling or numbness in their feet. Diabetes, which is more prevalent in those with liver issues since the liver controls glucose levels, may also lead to it. Peripheral neuropathy, which affects the nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord, is caused by all three conditions.
Any of the aforementioned symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic, would be adequate reason for a visit to a doctor. If you have persistent swelling that doesn’t improve at all after two to five days of home treatment, persistent pain that doesn’t improve after many weeks, or burning pain, numbness, or tingling particularly involving most or all of your foot, they suggest calling your doctor.
3. Pain in your foot joints.
Each of your feet has 26 bones and 33 joints, making them ideal places for arthritis. Liver disorders are among the possible causes of this foot discomfort, which has a broad spectrum of symptoms.
The Cleveland Clinic explains that both cirrhosis-related illness and cirrhosis itself may cause pain.
You may also have osteoarthritis and cirrhosis, which makes your bone and joint pain worse, their experts say, citing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease as an example.
In addition, cirrhosis generates an inflammatory condition throughout your whole body. General pain may be caused by inflammation and your body’s response to it.
4. Itchiness in your feet.
Some patients develop itchy skin on their hands and feet in advanced cases of hepatitis.
You may develop a condition called pruritus, which causes your skin to itch terribly. Itching can be isolated to your hands and feet, which is common.
Even without pruritus, side effects of treatment, may dry out your skin and cause itching. As a result, moisturizing techniques must be followed correctly.
