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What’s the color of your eyes?
This is a question you likely know the answer to. Even though we’re not the ones who see our eyes most often, we still see them regularly through pictures and mirrors.
What would you do if, one day, you looked into the mirror and saw that your eyes had a yellow tint to them?
While the yellowing of eyes is a condition most common in newborns, with more than 50% of newborns experiencing it at least once, it’s something that can happen in adults, too. The yellowing of your eyes is a serious sign of something more going on within your body. Our team here at Serenity Lane has seen this happen time and time again, and we want to help prevent it from happening once more. That’s why today our blog is talking about alcoholism and yellow eyes – the connection, the cause, and more.
Alcohol use, both short-term and long-term, impacts your health in many ways. Most people, when thinking about alcohol use, picture liver damage and brain damage as the two biggest concerns.
While this is true, they’re not the only ones. Other organs like your heart, digestive tract, and even your eyes are also regularly affected.
During regular alcohol consumption, many people report their vision becoming blurry. This is just one of the ways that alcohol impacts your vision. Although this is temporary, this vision shift is caused by how alcohol relaxes the muscles in the body.
Over a longer history with alcohol, you will develop an increased risk of macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is when you lose the central part of your vision, due to retina damage. It can get worse over time, leading to permanent vision loss.
Yellow eyes, specifically related to the whites of your eyes, are also a condition that can stem from alcohol use. If someone has yellow eyes, they’ll also have a yellow tint to other parts of their body like their skin and the beds of their nails. This is from a condition known as jaundice.
Jaundice is a sign of serious liver damage and failure. If you notice someone with yellow eyes, it’s prudent to seek medical help immediately.
Our bodies intake a lot of substances that aren’t innately healthy to it. This is where the liver helps out, its job is to process foreign and poisonous substances so they can be safely filtered out of the body.
If your liver is damaged, its processing capabilities decrease. If your liver is unable to process something that comes into the body, it begins to leak into other parts of your system.
For jaundice, specifically, the yellow tint comes from bile that isn’t being filtered through the liver. This bile then spreads through the body, causing the yellow tint that’s associated with jaundice.
Alcohol-related liver damage won’t appear out of nowhere. At the same time, the early stages of liver damage are nearly undetectable. Let’s break down the different stages and symptoms that come along with liver damage due to long-term alcohol use.
The overall condition is formally known as “ARLD” or Alcohol-Related Liver Damage. It comes in 3 stages: alcoholic fatty liver disease, alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis.
Alcoholic fatty liver disease is a straightforward condition – it’s the build-up of fats within the liver. When someone drinks large quantities of alcohol, even for just a few days, this build-up will occur. While this condition is overall benign, it’s the first step into worsening liver damage. It can be reversed, however, if someone stops drinking alcohol. Over time, the fat build-up will decline until your liver returns to normal.
The next stage, alcoholic hepatitis, is unrelated to infectious hepatitis and is strictly caused by long-term exposure to alcohol in your liver. This is commonly the stage where people begin to suspect that something is wrong as symptoms such as tenderness, loss of appetite, and bloating in your lower abdomen become apparent. This stage of liver damage can also be reversed, over a long period of time, if caught early.
Finally, cirrhosis occurs if the other two stages are left untreated and alcohol consumption continues. Alcoholic hepatitis causes scars to form inside the liver. Cirrhosis develops as scarring damages more of the liver. Cirrhosis shares many of the same symptoms as alcoholic hepatitis, with some symptoms becoming more noticeable or intense.
Not all liver damage will be easily identifiable which is why many people won’t realize how damaged their liver is until it’s too late to reverse it. Being aware of these small symptoms can make a big difference in if you’re able to prevent permanent damage to your body.
While jaundice is always the cause of yellow eyes, alcoholism and liver damage aren’t the only sources of jaundice. Jaundice can occur to anyone, at any age, due to a variety of health conditions. Regardless of the source, if you notice the signs of jaundice you should always seek medical help.
Other common causes of jaundice include:
Yes, yellow eyes are something you can address through medical help. They’re not permanent. In fact, if left untreated it could cause serious problems including brain damage.
When seeking medical help, your doctor will run through a series of tests and questions with you to identify the source of the jaundice. The exact treatment and timeline for addressing your jaundice will vary depending on what source is identified.
You cannot treat yellow eyes at home without medical input. It’s not safe to try and determine the source on your own without the capabilities and tests that medical professionals can provide.
Seeking treatment for alcoholism is pivotal if you want to help heal your liver and even reverse the damage done by alcohol to your organs. We understand how daunting a life change like this can be, but you’re not alone. Hundreds of thousands of others have walked through recovery facilities and left with a new lease on life and a bright road ahead of them.
There are many facilities available here in Oregon that are dedicated to your health and long-term recovery. They provide you with a full continuum of care and ongoing support so you can reach your healing goals.
There’s no wrong time to get started, so why not start today? Our team here at Serenity Lane has years of experience, with master’s level physicians who will provide hands-on support as long as you want it. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 800-543-9905.
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