How much drinking damages the liver?
The medical experts say that 10 years of heavy drinking can cause a person to have cirrhosis. It does vary with people depending on many factors. There are some people that will be heavy drinkers for 20+ years and they still are not facing severe liver damage. Some of the factors would be how much you drink, what you drink, how well your body handles alcohol, if there are any underlying liver problems, etc. And the cirrhosis a person might have after 10 years would probably be just in the early stage of cirrhosis which means the person would not show any physical signs of disease. That means it would be asymptomatic. The only tip off would most likely be a blood test for liver function. Other than that, you would never even know you had cirrhosis. A biopsy is the only test that would leave no doubt there is cirrhosis present, but the liver enzymes would be elevated in a blood test for liver function which tips the doctor off to investigate with further testing. Physical signs for me di
