liver function

[inertia]

when they say your liver and pancreas values are high what are they talking about?

thx inertia

[BOUNCER]

Buddy I'm not a doctor and won't pretend to be. In regards to your liver if means if not filtering out enough toxins from your blood. I know nothing about the pancreas. Apart from your skin your liver is the biggest organ in your body and does thousends of jobs a day. Troubles in other parts of your body can show up through LFT's too, honestly mate the liver is just too complicated to describe for the layman like myself.
One thing is sure, if your a heavy AAS user and suddenly start having shoulder troubles it's very dangerous to just assume the pain is down to rotator cuff injury without a medical examination because liver troubles often show up as a pain in your right, and least often left, shoulder.
Sorry I can't go into the pancreas, but I have a history of liver and kidney troubles over 10 years now so know alittle about both.

Bouncer

[ulter]

They measure certain chemicals (enzymes) that are used in your liver. If the level is up then your liver is working harder. It's really not a very accurate way to measure the health of the liver particularly for weight training people. Both weight training and protein make these values go up. Just use Tyler Liver Detox and R-ALA and your values should stay within normal range even when using AS.

[Rickson]

I will give you a quick run down of liver test and referance ranges. Doctors generally look at SGPT (ALT) results with referance ranges 2-60. SGOT (AST) reference ranges 10-41. GGT (liver specific and most important for BB) ref range 5-65. Other test include Creatine Kinase (when elevated can show signs of heart and brain damage-by fractioning the creatine Kinase in the lab you can find which tissue is causing the damage but this can be due to muscle trauma as well) Ref Range 55-170. It is important to understand that all these levels can be elevated due to tissue damage or muscle trauma (generally GGT is not making it an important indicator) which is quite common in people who lift weights. Also understand that just because values are high doesn't necessarily mean damage has occurred. Here is a study worth reading.


J Am Osteopath Assoc 2001 Jul;101(7):391-4

Evaluation of aminotransferase elevations in a bodybuilder using anabolic steroids : hepatitis or rhabdomyolysis?

Pertusi R, Dickerman RD, McConathy WJ.

Department of Medicine, University of North Texas Health Science Center, 3500 Camp Bowie Blvd, Fort Worth, TX 76107-2699, USA.

The use of anabolic steroids among competitive athletes, particularly bodybuilders, is widespread. Numerous reports have noted "hepatic" dysfunction secondary to anabolic steroid use based on elevated serum aminotransferase levels. The authors' objective was to assess whether primary care physicians accurately distinguish between anabolic steroid -induced hepatotoxicity and serum aminotransferase elevations that are secondary to acute rhabdomyolysis resulting from intense resistance training. Surveys were sent to physicians listed as practicing family medicine or sports medicine in the yellow pages of seven metropolitan areas. Physicians were asked to provide a differential diagnosis for a 28-year-old, anabolic steroid-using male bodybuilder with an abnormal serum chemistry profile. The blood chemistries showed elevated aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and creatine kinase (CK) levels, and normal gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) levels. In the physician survey (n = 84 responses), 56% failed to mention muscle damage or muscle disease as a potential diagnosis, despite the markedly elevated CK level of the patient. Sixty-three percent indicated liver disease as their primary diagnosis despite normal GGT levels. Prior reports of anabolic steroid-induced hepatotoxicity that were based on aminotransferase elevations may have overstated the role of anabolic steroids. Correspondingly, the medical community may have been led to emphasize anabolic steroid-induced hepatotoxicity and disregard muscle damage when interpreting elevated aminotransferase levels. Therefore, when evaluating enzyme elevations in patients who use anabolic steroids, physicians should consider the CK and GGT levels as essential elements in distinguishing muscle damage from liver damage