Alcohol consumption and liver function research question

[StevenSaeedi]

Hey guys,

tl;dr: I’m looking for scientists/doctors/med students or anyone in the physiology field to help me with my university science fair project. I am investigating whether or not “excessive alcohol consumption can be damaging to the liver”, and need you guys to email me some ‘answers’ to this ‘question’. My email is: stevensaeedi@gmail.com

My name is Steven, I am a first year biomedical sciences student. I am currently doing a project on the human liver.

I am investigating the notion that “excessive alcohol consumption can be damaging to the liver”. It’s fairly simple, nothing too complicated.

I thought a good place to start would be to ask experts in this field. At this level I’m not looking for hepatologist or renowned physiologists, I’m simply looking for doctors (of any kind), med students, scientists or basically anyone in anyway related to physiology.

I’m looking for someone to contact me via emails. Basically I’m just looking for 100 words (less is fine, more is great) to ‘answer’ my hypothesis. Something along these lines would be more than helpful: “Hey Steve, yes indeed alcohol is damaging to the liver, even in moderate. Here is what alcohol does to the liver…….” or “Hey Steve, no alcohol is not damaging to the liver because the liver can repair itself. but alcohol does damage the ………”.

I am also investigating these questions : “Does infrequent alcohol consumption do damage to your liver? What is the difference to daily alcohol consumption? What is the effect of different alcoholic drinks? Does your age play a factor in this?”.

If you could in anyway help me out I would be very appreciative. As I said before, I am investing whether or not excessive alcohol consumption is damaging to the liver. We are not allowed to do any experiments ourselves, we are basically only meant to do targeted reading to answer our hypothesises.

I hope I’m not asking for too much.

Please message me if you need something clarified.

Also, I realise some people are uncomfortable with giving out information to strangers on the internet, so feel free to use an alias, I Just ask you to write your job title and/or university/hospital, e.g.: John M.D, University of California.

My email is: stevensaeedi@gmail.com. If you end up emailing me can you also comment that you did, I’d like to thank you in comment, it’s the least I can do.

PS: Just to keep things clear, I am not asking you to my homework for me. The project is due in 3 weeks time. I am going to be doing a lot of research but before beginning I wanted to have some direction, and to show my lecturer that I have taken the initiative to contact other experts. Also I’m happy to take some suggestions, like other forums to try or other people to contact. Do you guys think if I found some contact emails of actual hepatologist they would have the time to answer my emails? Or if I emailed physiologists or physiology lecturers in other universities they would email me back? I don’t want to bother people and I know how busy they are.

Thanks heaps.

[DrP]

Hi Steven,

 

Try typing 'alcohol liver damage' into google - there are pages of stuff about the subject. Much more than anyone will give you in an e-mail. But, yes, it seems that there is a connection between liver damage and alcohol consumption.

 

PS - I am not a medical doctor so you can't use my credentials as a reference - but you shouldn't need it - it is well know that there is a correlation as a quick search will confirm.

Edited October 4, 2016 by DrP

[Sriman Dutta]

Hi Steven, you have repeated your topic of project several times as I see.

Anyway, as far as I know excessive alcohol consumption causes liver cirrhosis.

[StringJunky]

It has a very well-established and pretty much irrefutable answer: yes. Seems strange to be asked to do research about something that is not difficult to query and show the affirmative.