Understanding the silent threat: A potentially fatal illness you should be aware of

Alcohol is considered a harmful substance, no doubt about it. From a medical point of view, it is considered poisonous. If alcohol was created today, it would most likely not be allowed to be sold, let alone promoted the way it is in our current society.

I’m not trying to ruin anyone’s fun. I enjoy having a drink as well – and yes, there have been times when I’ve had a bit too much. However, as a medical professional, I find it surprising that alcohol is given such leniency, especially considering that many health issues we encounter in our clinics are somehow related to alcohol consumption.

When used carefully, alcohol can bring happiness and joy and enhance an experience. But it can also bring misery, illness, disability and death.

It’s not solely about the harm it causes to the liver, potentially leading to cirrhosis; alcohol is also associated with various other health issues, including cancer, stroke, and even dementia.

I believe our laissez-faire attitude to alcohol means too many people think it simply won’t affect them, or that they have plenty of time to address problem drinking before it will have any impact on their health.

Yet, as any doctor will tell you, this complacency is misplaced: over the years we have seen countless people struck down in their prime by conditions related to alcohol.

Last week, American actress Michelle Trachtenberg, who shot to fame in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, died aged just 39. It’s unclear exactly what caused her death and it’s likely that this will never be known, as the family objected to a post-mortem examination on religious grounds.

However, sources reported the actress recently underwent a liver transplant due to damage caused by alcohol addiction.

Unsurprisingly, such claims have been greeted with scepticism because of Michelle’s age. How could alcohol have caused so much damage that someone so young would need a transplant? And, of course, there are other reasons why someone might need a liver transplant, including disease and injury.

Actress Michelle Trachtenberg died recently aged just 39. Though the exact cause is unknown, she is alleged to have had a liver transplant due to alcohol addiction

Michelle (here seen in 2020) shot to fame in TV’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer 

But whatever led to Michelle’s untimely death, as a doctor I know that medical problems often strike far earlier than many people expect.

It’s a common misconception that alcohol is a poison that acts slowly, gradually damaging the body over many, many years, and it often comes as an awful wake-up call to realise this isn’t always the case.

Everyone is different, and while it’s true that some people can drink like fish and it doesn’t do any harm, many others are playing Russian roulette with their health and each drink is a risk.

I think this is part of the problem for many people. They believe that they’ll be able to address their drinking at some time in the future, so they put off making a change now, convincing themselves that they will be able to stop before they get old and the damage is irreversible.

Many years ago, I worked on a liver unit in Scotland and would see such a wide range of people who had destroyed their liver: young, old, rich, poor. Alcohol makes no distinction.

Don’t kid yourself you’ll be able to stop before it gets you. That’s because there are often few signs until it’s become serious.

In one alcohol service where I worked, we used to send patients for a fibroscan – a specialist ultrasound of the liver that measures liver stiffness (a sign of damage) and fat content.

When the liver is damaged it becomes inflamed, develops fibrosis and becomes more ‘fatty’ (alcoholic fatty liver disease is a precursor to cirrhosis of the liver). It demonstrated to people the damage already caused, often long before the classic signs such as jaundice, which tends to occur only very late.

We did this because it was a good way for patients to understand that although they might feel healthy and show no outward signs of damage, there was damage being done.

Many young patients would be utterly horrified when they got their results and saw in black and white the evidence that they were destroying their livers.

We would also do liver function tests, which look at chemicals in the blood that can demonstrate damage to the liver cells. Again, patients would often be shocked to realise they’d been kidding themselves that they had all the time in the world to address their drinking but were, in reality, already harmed. 

But by far the easiest and most useful way to establish if someone has a problem with alcohol is to look at what is happening to them psychologically.

There are a number of key things recognised as pointing to someone having a problem with alcohol – and that if they don’t address their drinking soon, then they’re likely to progress to full-blown alcoholism and physical dependency. These include:

Hiding your drinking.

Wanting to cut down but feeling unable to.

Feeling a craving or urge to drink.

Spending a lot of time thinking about, planning or obtaining alcohol.

Drinking impacting on other areas of life, such as work and family or social life.

Using alcohol in situations that are unsafe, such as driving or looking after small children.

Finding that more alcohol is needed to get the same effect.

Family or friends raising concerns about your drinking.

It’s not always easy to admit that you have a problem. It’s far easier to bury your head in the sand and convince yourself that it’s something you can address later on. But this approach risks people not doing anything until it’s far too late.

Do you need Davina’s gadget?

Continuous Blood Glucose Monitors (CGMs) have reshaped the management of diabetes in recent years. Several of my patients who have one say that it has transformed their lives.

But lately, CGMs have become wildly popular with people who don’t have diabetes, promoted by diet companies and sold to healthy people as a way to find foods that can cause a worrying blood sugar spike. Davina McCall and Steven Bartlett are fans.

Davina McCall is a fan of Continuous Blood Glucose Monitors – but do we really need them?

Yet a study at Bath University questions how useful they really are for those without diabetes. Experts found the devices vastly overestimated blood sugar readings and could, they said, lead to healthy people ‘misdiagnosing’ themselves with problems like prediabetes and causing them stress.

I’ve long been suspicious of the way tech that was designed to help make us healthier can, in fact, do the opposite. More tech is not always the answer.

I am horrified that the NHS is now advertising specifically for ‘corridor doctors’ to treat patients languishing there while they wait for a bed. Wes Streeting has been in charge of the NHS for almost eight months – it’s time we saw action from him.

 Dr Max prescribes…hand-washing

I know, we’re all sick of hearing about viruses. Please bear with me, though, as it’s vital we take norovirus – the winter vomiting bug – seriously. Cases of it are on the rise. It can kill the old and frail, and our healthcare system is at risk of being overwhelmed. 

Norovirus can be a killer – but washing hands with soap and water is a fantastic deterrent to this winter vomiting bug

The bug is killed by good old soap and water. Hand washing and avoiding contact with infected people is the easiest way to stay safe. We’ve done it once before – so let’s, please, keep it up. 

Time and again, when I talk to patients about taking various medications, they tell me: ‘It’s not natural. I don’t want chemicals in my body.’ 

The worst culprits, by a long way, are the younger generation who’ve been sucked in by the ‘wellness craze’ on social media and who seem to poorly understand science or the benefits that modern medicine has given us. 

Yet just a few generations ago, people died from things that today’s medicines have consigned to the annals of history.