What Is the Probability That Hepatitis B Progresses to Liver Cancer or Cirrhosis? Should Hepatitis B Be Treated?
What should you do if you have hepatitis B? Should hepatitis B be treated? Can hepatitis B be cured? How many hepatitis B patients eventually progress to cirrhosis or liver cancer? If hepatitis B is cured, will it not progress to cirrhosis or liver cancer? I believe these are questions every hepatitis B patient cares about, because they concern their health and their very survival. Roughly one third of hepatitis B patients in our country eventually develop cirrhosis or liver cancer, and to this day, hepatitis B remains an unsolved problem for the world's medical community.
China has roughly 100 million hepatitis B patients, and I am one of them. I remember back then, when many of my classmates were found to have hepatitis B, everyone panicked and sought treatment everywhere, hoping to cure their hepatitis B. I myself did not rush around; the reason was that my family's financial circumstances were not good at the time. Among the classmates who did seek treatment, I never heard of anyone being cured; at most, someone shifted from big three positive (大三阳) to small three positive (小三阳). Yet the medication left them listless, and their overall condition was terrible.
Over the years I have gradually come into contact with many liver cancer patients, most of whom developed liver cancer from hepatitis B. Whether big three positive or small three positive, plenty have progressed to liver cancer. Among them are not a few patients whose hepatitis B had been "cured" for years yet who still developed liver cancer. The liver damage caused by hepatitis B is irreversible, so even if tests show the hepatitis B has been cured, it is still hard to escape the nightmare of cirrhosis and liver cancer.
If hepatitis B patients want to live longer, it is not treatment they should rely on but self-care. They must be moderate in life: tobacco and alcohol should be kept at a distance, for alcohol is most damaging to the liver, especially long-term drinking. They must also avoid aflatoxins and algal toxins. Aflatoxins and algal toxins are the substances most harmful to the liver, and these two toxins are widely present in the foods we encounter most often.
Aflatoxin is an extremely toxic substance with a powerful destructive effect on human and animal liver tissue; it is an important trigger of liver cancer. As early as 1993, aflatoxin was classified by the World Health Organization's cancer research agency as a Group 1 carcinogen. Moreover, aflatoxin is widely present in the cooking oils, grains, animal and plant foods of daily use—such as peanuts, corn, rice, wheat, beans, nuts, meat, milk, dairy products, and aquatic products.
The toxicity of aflatoxin far exceeds that of the much-feared cyanide; aflatoxin is 68 times as toxic as arsenic (arsenic trioxide), and is the most toxic of all known mold toxins. Aflatoxin can cause direct death and is the most important liver cancer-causing substance; at the same time it can also induce gastric cancer, renal cancer, lacrimal gland carcinoma, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer, and more.
Because aflatoxin is ubiquitous in soil, basically any spoiled food may be contaminated by it. Moldy foods and fungi (most edible mushrooms are cultivated on cottonseed meal, and cottonseed is a hotbed of aflatoxin contamination) are especially prone to aflatoxin contamination. Therefore, hepatitis B patients should stay away from moldy foods and eat as few fungal foods as possible.
Algal toxin is another known toxin that is very damaging to the liver. It is widely present in various marine aquatic products. China's liver cancer high-incidence areas are almost all coastal regions, which is closely related to the residents of those areas having marine aquatic products as a major part of their diet.
In addition, water pollution and deficiency of the trace element selenium are also important triggers of liver cancer; drinking clean water is very beneficial to the liver. Staying up late is another factor that damages the liver. The human liver is able to repair itself during nighttime rest, which is an important self-protective pathway. Chronic late nights cause liver damage that is difficult to reverse, so for hepatitis B patients, avoiding staying up late is far more meaningful than taking medication.