I have a close relative who I cannot convince to quit drinking… is there anything at all they can take (supplement, vitamin, herb, drug, etc…) to at least help a little in mediating permanent liver damage?
Sorry, missed my 5 minute window.
which=that
who=whom
Antabuse.
Sorry, but there is no magical vitamin to help daily liver poisoning.
I think there just has to be something which can help a little bit.
A few percentage points of chance of postponing cirrhosis even over a period of years is better than nothing.
Why do you think this?
Not to be snarky, seriously, but don’t you think if something like that worked there wouldn’t be any liver damage because everyone would be taking it?
"Treatments
Because of the severe link between alcoholism and death, the person must stop drinking before treatments will be of any use. For some patients, changes in diet as well as vitamin supplements will be very useful in treating the alcoholism effects on body organs. Diet and vitamin supplements can go a long way in helping the liver recover."
From this page.
Pre-emptive Grammar Nazi deflector shields up, Captain! 
Also,
11.5 years between posts???
Sorry I don’t have more to offer you.
I’m on my phone, and will post links later. Look up drinking coffee, taking coq10.
A study of coffee alone found four cups a day reduced cirrhosis among alcoholics by 80%. Google coffee cirrhosis alcohol.
I seem to recall thiamine deficiency playing a major role in alcoholic breakdown. Despite the usual negativity towards vitamin supplements, a good multivite can’t hurt for heavy drinkers. Definitely in the can’t hurt/could help category.
The coffee angle is surprising but as the study (very large) was among Chinese subjects, I would want to see a corroboration within a more traditionally coffee-drinking population. I could see coffee-drinking Chinese being a skewed subset with other different and affective habits.
Maybe milk thistle. It has been used as a medicinal herb to help with liver function for thousands of years. Modern research has mixed results with some studies saying that it works wonders and others saying that it doesn’t do anything at all. There are some positive results that show it protects the liver against alcohol induced damage. You can buy it fairly inexpensively OTC from Amazon. Read the reviews because the brands vary a lot in how much active ingredient (silymarin) they contain.
Thiamine deficiency is the cause of Korsakoff’s syndrome (aka Korsakoff’s dementia) which frequently accompanies alcoholism, apparently from failure to eat proper foods. I have a fifty year old former colleague, a first rate logician who is now in a nursing home–for the rest of his life–as a result.
What about glutathione or glutathione precursors? Here’s some informationabout glutathione’s role in preventing lung diseases.
Well, stop drinking comes to mind as something that will at least halt or slow down the damage progression…
I offer these for information only. I used cysteine to good effect when I was drinking a couple of decades ago, but I haven’t used it recently. I believe there are some potential hazards wrt to kidney stones.
There is actually pretty good epidemiological evidence to support the notion that coffee protects against many types of liver disease. What there is not (to my knowledge) is any appropriately powered randomized trial to prove the point.
And, one should beware treatments based strictly on epidemiological considerations. Two examples come to mind where in each case randomized trials showed a net negative health effect despite overwhelming and rather compelling epidemiological evidence that suggested the contrary.
- estrogen for postmenopausal women
- vitamin E to prevent cancer
How does “epidemiological” not equate to “anecdotal” in this usage?
I suppose that in some sense you could view ‘epidemiological’ as simply being organized and collated anecdote. However, unlike anecdotal date, epidemiological data should lend itself to some in-depth analysis (looking for various relationships, trends, ‘dose effects’), and regression (looking for potential underlying drivers), and more.
And, almost by definition (IMO), epidemiological data has more data points than mere anecdotal data. As such, it is, by definition, more robust than anecdotal data although clearly not in the same league as that obtained from large, randomized, controlled trials.