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HEP C and Exercise

I have had Hep C for a long time.  My liver enzymes went sky high last year.  I started working on a regimen of herbs and diet improvement and they went back to normal this year.  Then, I did some backpacking trips this Summer and now they are sky high again.  I was unaware that strenuous exercise could cause this to happen.  Can someone explain why strenuous exercise causes liver inflammation to occur?  I will try to work the enzyme levels back down again, and I guess my backpacking days are over.  
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568322 tn?1370165440

"Can someone explain why strenuous exercise causes liver inflammation to occur? "


When exercising, the body needs extra energy or fuel (in the form of glucose)...so when your muscles use the glucose for energy, that causes your blood sugar to go down.

But intense exercise can have the opposite effect and actually increase your blood glucose levels. The body recognizes intense exercise as a stress and releases stress hormones that tell your body to increase available blood glucose to fuel your muscles.  That makes your liver produce large amounts of glucose (and when you have Hepatitis C, your liver is already putting out large amounts of it).....which causes high levels of insulin.....all bad for the liver.  
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Avatar universal
I also believe that both my symptomatic acute stage -- and subsequent relapses and recovery -- showed that my immune system reacted very hard to the virus, just not hard enough. I believe this is why I reacted so well to interferon. Almost 2 log drop at week 1. Under 600 at week 2. UND at week 6 and probably would have been UND earlier except fI had to go off riba for a week between weeks 2 and 3. I did read a study that showed  that a symtomatic acute stage is associated with SVR.
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Just to fill in some blanks I was infected almost 40 years ago. So that meant acute relapses during the first six years almost definitely due to exercise but no relapses due to solely exercise for the next 30 or so. YMMV.
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How do you define "sky high" in numbers? Any other symptons coincidental with the sky high enzymes such as dark urine, fatigue, jaundice, etc? How long ago do you think you were infected? Did you have a symptomatic acute stage meaning jaundice, sky high enzymes, dark urine, white stools, etc?
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My story in very brief:

I had a symptomatic acute stage. Symptons disappeared in a few months and enzymes dropped to high normal from sky high. Over the next six years I had 3-4 acute relapses. I'll define an "acute relapse" as sky high enzymes and some jaundice and extreme fatigue. In every case I could correlate the acute relapse with a period of very vigorous exercise. So, yes, vigorous exercise can cause sky high enzymes with some of us. My last severe acute reaction was around six years after I was infected. AFter that time, vigorous exercise did not cause another acute relapse. The one exception being around two years before I treated when my enzymes went from just above normal to around 1000. Exercise may have played a little role but we think it was more some herbs I took and/or the Hep B vaccine or some combo of the three.

-- Jim
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362971 tn?1201987034
  With some people that have HCV their Liver enzymes fluctuate normally. That is why under certain circumstances their Dr's didn't think they had HCV because the Liver enzymes may be elevated on one test and then a later test would show them normal.
   Not all HCV positive people are like this.  

  Extremely vigorous exercise can cause liver enzymes to go up slightly. That is because vigorous exercise breaks down the body before it repairs itself. But it is usually a slight elevation.

Bobby
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Avatar universal
The liver enzymes fluctuate. There is no diet plus herbal remedies that can prevent the liver enzymes from going up if you have HEP C. It's just not possible. So it may be unrelated to the exercise.
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Avatar universal
i never heard of that but i could be wrong i thought they wanted us to exercise
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