Liver damage can lead to widespread issues in your body. Your liver, located under your rib cage on the right side of your abdomen, filters blood from your gastrointestinal tract, aids in metabolizing food, medications, and chemicals, eliminates toxins and waste products, and produces important proteins. (Updated Feb 19, 2025)
When your liver is injured to the point where it can’t function effectively, it leads to liver damage. This can ultimately progress to liver failure, which requires prompt medical attention.
The most common causes of liver damage include overconsumption of ultra-processed foods, alcohol abuse, certain medications, viral infections, obesity and autoimmune conditions.
Severe liver damage often develops over many years, progressing from inflammation to scarring, known as fibrosis, and then to cirrhosis, when the liver hardens with scars and nodules, and finally to liver failure.
Common diseases of the liver include nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), cirrhosis, drug-induced liver disease, alcohol-related liver disease, hepatitis and liver cancer.
Today, we look at 14 signs of liver damage if you develop cirrhosis, going from early to advanced symptoms.
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My 9-year-old daughter baked 300 Easter cookies for the homeless — the next morning, a stranger showed up at our door with a briefcase full of cash. My daughter, Ashley, has always had a heart too big for her chest. Since my wife died, we’ve barely been making ends meet. We spent everything we had trying to save her from cancer. But when Easter came this year, Ashley told me she’d been saving up her own money to buy ingredients. “For the homeless,” she said. Her mom used to be one of them. She was thrown out by her parents when they found out she was pregnant with Ashley. When I met her, she had nothing — but she had the brightest smile and the sharpest mind I had ever seen. I fell in love with her. I took her and Ashley in. And from that moment on, Ashley became my daughter in every way that matters. So when Ashley said she wanted to help people like her mom once was… I didn’t stop her. For three nights straight, after school and homework, she baked. Her little hands worked nonstop. She found her mom’s old cookie recipe. She rolled every piece of dough herself. She decorated every cookie. She made three hundred cookies. On Easter, she handed them out one by one. She looked people in the eyes. She wished them a Happy Easter. Some of them smiled. Some of them cried. I stood there thinking it was the proudest moment of my life. I thought that was the end of it. The next morning, I was washing a mountain of dishes when the doorbell rang. I opened the door. An older man stood there in a worn-out suit, holding a scratched aluminum briefcase. His eyes were locked on Ashley. Before I could ask anything, he set the case down and opened it. I froze. Stacks of hundred-dollar bills — more money than I had ever seen in my life. “I saw what your daughter did yesterday,” he said, his voice shaking. “I want to give all of this to her.” My heart skipped. Then he added: “But you have to agree to ONE CONDITION.” My chest tightened. “What condition?” I asked. He stepped closer. He lowered his voice. And what he asked for in return made my blood run cold.
