Liver disease caused by excessive drinking

The government is being urged to help deal with liver disease. The causes are usually too much alcohol, obesity and lifestyles that are not healthy.

The problem most people face with binge drinking, or indeed with any compulsions is that they feel compelled to do the behaviour, so making the public aware of the health problems does not always work.

In England liver disease is up by 20% but down by 20% in European countries. Now I sound like George Orwell's book 1984. In the book statistics were read out each day, mostly propaganda.

How do people come to terms with their excess alcohol intake?

Think of cause and effect. What causes you to want to that kind of behaviour? In some ways we can understand binge drinking when you go out with friends and are keeping up with them and the amounts they drink. Even so, it is dangerous because often people don't know what they have done or even where they have been.

Drinking in isolation is more serious because it may be that alcohol covers up emotions that are hard to deal with. It is easier to get out of our head so to speak, rather than face up to life's problems.

And of course, when you sober up, you still have the problems waiting for you.

There are many ways of coming to terms with compulsions, and certainly hypnosis and all the techniques we use help to overcome the problems, so that you can deal with them in a more effective way.

Amazingly, the liver can repair itself most times unless of course you damage it repeatedly, and then it just gives up.

Is it time for you to stop drinking?