Fatal & Mutual Attractions of Liver Disease and Diabetes

Uncontrolled diabetes can damage your liver. Steroids are sometimes used to treat liver diseases, and can elevate blood sugar levels. There is therefore a noxious connection between liver diseases and diabetes. Prescription medicines to control the complications of one of these two conditions can cause the other.

Your primary care physician is the best person to prevent diabetes from affecting your liver, and to prevent a liver condition raising your blood sugar above the normal range. Remember to ask about such risks if you are prescribed medicines to reduce cholesterol, (which is common as part of diabetes management), or if you are asked to take steroids by mouth or as injections, to treat a liver condition. However, it is not medicine alone which is to blame, because long-standing diabetes and obesity can also combine to destroy the liver.