Dr John Ryan

All walks of life, all backgrounds are affected by alcohol harm.

What are the symptoms of liver disease?

So that's a problem.

You know, we I work closely with the Irish Liver Foundation, which is a volunteer run charity.

And basically one of our focuses is on to end late diagnosis of advanced liver disease because it's not picked up because there aren't any symptoms really till you're in trouble.

You know, if you're in

have advanced liver disease, a lot of people would present late and with things like jaundice or fluid on the tummy or bleeding.

And they're really kind of catastrophic things that can happen late on in the disease.

So, you know, in the first instance, it might be picked up routinely on blood tests with the GP where your liver blood test might be slightly elevated.

And then looking back, the risk might be alcohol.

But as you say, alcohol does cause the majority of people in hospital with liver disease, but lots of liver disease is caused by other things like fatty liver and diabetes, your diet, genetics, haemochromatosis, lots of other things.

Yeah, I think that from the point of view of, as the previous speaker was saying, you know, it's about awareness, people being aware about their alcohol consumption.

You know, there's no safe limit for sure.

We know that the more you drink, the more you're at risk of harm for sure.

You know, so reducing, there have been measures to try and reduce affordability, availability of alcohol that have the potential to impact positively on people's health for sure.

And people being aware of the amount they're drinking, when they're drinking,

Yeah, I mean, that's what I do day to day.

So I would see people with mild liver problems from alcohol all the way through to end stage kind of palliative care level, advanced liver disease.

So, you know, anyone with scarring in their liver or cirrhosis, advanced liver disease,

You know, alcohol, any alcohol is a disaster.