Hello Hopeful425 it should be ok, but I do tell my patients you can’t get problems from drugs you are not taking…

Hello Austincr,

Thanks for sharing your experience and great to hear you’re feeling better.

Best of luck for your SVR12!

Hello Mike,

Relax, the evidence says smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol during treatment will not reduce the treatment success rate.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30944519

Sadly about 1 in 5 patients get some insomnia. Here’s my quick tips on how to deal with insomnia

https://fixhepc.com/blog/item/82-how-do-i-fix-my-insomnia.html

Weed’s not listed in the medication options but, hey, it’s natural and if it’s working for you…

Hello Kaju,

I’m sure everything will be fine.

Best Regards

James

Bacitracin is ok because it’s an antibiotic cream, rather than an antiseptic.

Antiseptics kill everything – killing the bacteria is fine, but killing the healing skin is not.

Antibiotics are targeted, so leave the healing alone.

Hello GaryC123,

The first page is referring to your Hep C Antibody level. This is positive because you have been exposed to Hep C. A person not exposed would be <1, you have been, you have a value >1 because you have been exposed to Hep C.

The second page is the Hep C PCR RNA test and the <15 level indicates the virus is not detectable. This is good, it means you do not currently have any Hep C virus in your body.

Either you have spontaneously cleared the virus (25% of people do), you are on treatment, or you are in the post-treatment SVR period.

Hello Howard,

It would be useful to see your full tests, but that said…

With alcohol, we normally see an isolated rise in the GGT liver enzyme with the AST and ALT enzymes typically being normal. In some patients who drink a lot we may see all of these rise but typically we are not talking moderate drinking, we’re talking bottle of scotch, 2-3 bottles of wine, case of beer a day level consumption.

One of the first things I do when presented with unexpected abnormal test results, somewhat as a knee-jerk reaction, is simply to order them again. It’s surprising how often the repeat bloods come back normal. If they do I just shrug, make a note to keep an eye on it for a while, and we move on with a “dunno what it was but it seems to be gone now”. If on the other hand the repeat comes back abnormal it depends on whether a) things are getting better in which case I would typically just monitor it to see it normalise or b) things are getting worse in which case I would start looking for the cause.

re_roll has suggested an HbA1c which is the 60 day rolling average of your blood sugar levels. This is probably less useful to you right this second because if your blood sugar has not been up for long this won’t be up yet – it needs a solid 60 days delay.

Repeating the blood sugar, and CMP nowish would be a useful first step. There are lots of other tests we could add in but if the repeat is normal(ish) a watching brief is probably on the cards.

Besides alcohol there are literally thousands of other things patients take that can impact the liver. “Healthy” supplements can be the cause, for example green tea extract is known to cause liver failure when taken in excessive supplement level quantities, so a key question would be

Besides starting to drink again have you added in any other “drugs” where this would include prescription, non-prescription and supplements – anything that goes through your mouth that is not routine food.

There have been outbreaks of Hepatitis A all around the world, often associated with frozen berries, so it could be you’ve got a dose of that from a berry smoothie…

Anyway, step 1 is repeat the CMP +/- the BSL so we can see if things are trending better, or trending worse.