In the fight between your immune system and hepatitis, your liver takes some mighty blows. It becomes cirrhotic and faces scarring, preventing it from cleaning toxins from the blood. As a result, the production of protein drops and your digestion goes off-track. The liver is responsible for making sure these things happen, but hepatitis can throw its functioning off completely. It can further complicate your nervous system and general circulation and can even cause thyroid problems.

Depending on the type (acute or chronic) you could have major health crises at hand. As there are different strains of hepatitis, you must approach the treatments for each one differently. It is necessary to understand the differences between these types of hepatitis and how to treat each of them.

Hepatitis A

Hepatitis A is always acute. It’s also known to be infectious because you contract it easily from secondary sources. You can get it from food or liquids that are contaminated by human feces. Additionally, if you’re not careful, actions like kissing or washing hands improperly could also transmit the disease.

If it’s acute, you don’t need to worry as it disappears eventually. However, your symptoms could be severe, like diarrhea and nausea. It is crucial to get plenty of rest, hydrate yourself, and eat to fulfill your nutritional requirements. Since there is a vaccine for hepatitis A that blocks it from your immune system, you should get yourself administered as soon as possible.

Hepatitis B

In its chronic form, Hepatitis B is very serious. This is the most dangerous as you are susceptible to liver failure, liver cancer, and intense cirrhotic damage. It spreads through sexual intercourse, shared hypodermic needles, and from the mother to her newborn.

While acute hepatitis B doesn’t need treatment, chronic hepatitis B demands many rounds of antiviral medication. Regular trips to the doctor are important to make sure the treatment is effective. As with hepatitis A, there exists a vaccine that you must administer to your children within their first six months.

Hepatitis C

This hepatitis type also puts you at risk for liver cancer and failure if you contract a chronic virus. It spreads through intercourse, childbirth, shared needles, and even through improper blood transfusions and hemodialysis.

Both the chronic and acute versions of hepatitis C require strong antiviral medication. If you have chronic hepatitis C, you may even need antiviral drug therapy as well. Cirrhosis caused by this disease can damage your liver to the point where you may need a transplant.

Hepatitis D

Also called the delta virus, hepatitis D depends on hepatitis B for its survival. For it to be able to affect the liver, it needs a specific protein that hepatitis B produces. So when you’re infected with both types of hepatitis, it’s a lot harder to get treated. As a result, liver cirrhosis is extremely severe in this case. The proactive way to deal with this is to get a doctor to administer you with a hepatitis B vaccine.

Hepatitis E and G
Hepatitis E is more prevalent in third-world countries. In such places, it tends to be spread through contaminated water. On the other hand, as it is generally acute, you often don’t need treatment for Hepatitis E. Pregnant women, however, need to be extremely careful if they have this disease. Hepatitis G has only been discovered recently; as a result, research and cure are still underway.