‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas’ is one of the most popular and frequently played songs over the festive period, and as a nation we seem to have adopted the concept of having a ‘Merry’ Christmas in many more ways than one!

With Christmas parties aplenty, our emergency services were blessed with not the usual one but two ‘black’ Fridays a few weeks ago when extra resources had to be ready to go in order to deal with all the consequences of a little too much Christmas cheer resounding around most of the UK at the time.

So it is no consequence that the British Liver Trust chose New Year’s Day to launch their campaign for 2012, heart-warmingly called ‘Love your Liver’. I don’t know about you, but just thinking about it makes me want to snuggle my liver up and tell it everything is going to be OK, and the good news is that as long as you generally look after yourself then it probably will be. There are countless causes of liver disease worldwide but the British Liver Trust have kept their focus on the easily preventable causes, essentially those that are a result of what we as a nation choose to eat and drink. It will come as no surprise to most that the first and most important thing they recommend if you are planning to send your inbuilt detoxification machine its equivalent of a Valentine card is to take a long, hard look at your alcohol consumption.

And what better time to bring attention to such a worthy cause, time of New Year resolutions, the clean sheet, the new beginning? Surely what is needed is a massive, month long detox to compensate for all the excesses of the festive season at the perfect time of year and all will be well? According to them, well.......no.

According to Dr Mark Wright, consultant hepatologist, who is supporting ‘LYL’ as it seems to be affectionately known, having a big alcohol detox for a month at this point – as so many of us apparently do – is ‘medically futile’. He argues that this could make the situation worse if anything, that taking a whole month off the booze gives us a false sense of security and a self-awarded license to drink with guilt-free abandon for the rest of the year, a practice that is ultimately self destructive. The message of the campaign is moderation at all times rather than a binge and bust approach and I have to admit it makes a lot of sense.

The main messages are all-too familiar, but I make no apology for repeating them because no fewer than 25% of adults in the UK are currently ignoring them:

* Women should drink no more than 2-3 units and men no more than 3-4 units per day
* At least 2 consecutive days each week should be alcohol free for recovery time
* Saving up several days’ allowance to drink all at once is not part of the plan

The message about taking two consecutive days per week to  abstain from drinking is a relatively new one to the general public, and it is based on evidence that the liver is very good at repairing itself given a little breathing space, and 48 hours is enough time without having to process toxins like alcohol for it to do some serious repair work – but remember, this is not an excuse to down extra tipples the rest of the time!

The other key message of the LYL campaign is less predictable, and it is essentially to avoid fatty foods and sugary drinks. This is because fatty foods and sugary drinks are the main things we choose to eat and drink that cause us to gain weight, and being overweight can place as much strain on the liver as alcohol does. Most people already know about the dangers of fatty foods so I won’t repeat that one yet again, but the dangers of sugary drinks are a lot less publicised for various reasons.

Sugary drinks contain a large amount of high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, and it is HFCS that is being blamed for a significant part of our current obesity epidemic. It was not really a part of our diet until 1970, and twenty years later we were consuming it in quantities that were at least 10 times as much, a number that is still increasing – in exactly the same way as our waistlines are expanding. Fructose, rather like alcohol, in small quantities – for example the amount of naturally occurring fructose we all eat in fruit and other foods as part of a healthy diet – is good for us. And just like alcohol, too much fructose is bad for us, and in more or less the same way as alcohol is bad for us. The liver treats fructose from HFCS in exactly the same way as alcohol, essentially as a form of poison – and mostly turns it into fat, the type of fat affectionately known as a ‘beer belly’.

The other problem with HFCS is that it does not have the same effects on the body as other sugar. When starchy sugar is eaten it sets off a whole chain reaction of events designed to burn it  -or store it safely, not in a beer belly – and to make us feel full and stop eating. HFCS does not have these effects, so a drink containing sometimes hundreds of calories will have little or no effect on our appetite and we just keep on munching. And gain weight. And this gives us the same problem as too much alcohol – a fatty liver (20% of us have one of those), and more rarely, hepatitis and ultimately cirrhosis.

So the British Liver Trust has very good reason to campaign to get these messages heard.  Find them at www.loveyourliver.org.uk if you want to know more. But remember, a MODERATE amount of alcohol is not just ‘not bad’ for you, if you have no major health problems it is actually positively good for you, just as the natural fructose in fruit is good for you - so please continue to ‘enjoy responsibly’.

Cheers!