(NaturalHealth365) Go ahead and place your hand on the upper right part of your abdomen. Right beneath your palm is a football-sized organ that plays an important role in detoxifying your body and helping with digestion. This organ is your liver – do you know if yours is healthy?

Turns out, liver disease signs and symptoms can be hard to notice – which is why Jonathan Landsman created the Fatty Liver Docu-Class, available now.

You may also be surprised to know that liver disease and other types of damage can occur due to unintended drug effects of medications, including the extremely popular NSAIDs.  Could our nation’s dependency on prescription and over-the-counter drugs contribute to the prevalence of liver transplant surgery?

Taking a popular pain reliever can damage the liver and INCREASE the risk of heart disease

In August 2019 a team of researchers published a paper in Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Therapeutics that set out to investigate the health risks associated with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs including ibuprofen (Motrin or Advil), aspirin, and naproxen (Aleve).

Here’s some of their findings based on a large pool of data from other studies:

• Side effects of these drugs are responsible for at least 100,000 hospitalizations and 17,000 deaths per year in the United States.
• More than half of liver failure events caused by drug overdose and 20 percent of liver transplant surgeries are caused by acetaminophen (about 8,000 liver transplants occur every year in the U.S.). Meanwhile, anywhere from 80 to 100 million Americans have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and don’t know it!
• NSAIDs (not including aspirin) are also linked with an increased risk for cardiovascular problems including stroke, heart failure, and electrolyte imbalances.
• Even the Food and Drug Administration has had to recently expand their warnings about NSAIDs and their potential role in contributing to cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Overall, the research on NSAID drug effects and the unintended harmful impacts they can impose on the body has a lot of holes, and the researchers of this paper understandably state that there needs to be more.

In the meantime, the authors call for “judicious individual clinical decision-making about the prescription of NSAIDs” and advise healthcare providers to “consider all these aforementioned benefits and risks, both CVD and beyond, in deciding whether and, if so, which, NSAID to prescribe.”

Curb your NSAID intake with these 5 natural pain relievers instead

Controlling and minimizing chronic pain can have a huge impact on the quality of your life and your ability to earn money, enjoy your hobbies, stay independent, and enjoy time with your loved ones.

If you’re tired of relying on expensive medications that are causing unintentional effects on your health and organ function, check out these natural pain-relieving options and find out how they can help you:

1. Turmeric, a powerful anti-inflammatory
2. Acupuncture and other holistic treatment options
3. Exercise: Just don’t overdo it
4. Aloe vera, which has both anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties according to the U.S. Pain Foundation
5. Mindfulness practices, including four square breathing, meditation, and progressive muscle relaxation

And remember: our team at NaturalHealth365 doesn’t provide medical advice, and we do not recommend making any changes to medication without approval from your physician, so be sure to chat with your doctor before starting or stopping any drug or supplement routine.

Sources for this article include:

Journals.sagepub.com
Medicalnewstoday.com
NIH.gov
Washingtonpost.com
USpainfoundation.org
Healthline.com
Liverfoundation.org
Eurekalert.org
CNBC.com
Healthfully.com