Living With HCV Or Chronic Liver Disease? Updated Videos From Advocate Karen Hoyt

Sometimes it's nice to have a place to call your own, a place that feels very much like home. Karen Hoyt has created such a place some six years ago, a safe haven with a candid look at liver disease from a patients prospective, called: I Help C.

Karen shares her own journey living with cirrhosis and liver cancer, to the emotional ups and downs of her lifesaving liver transplant. If you haven't found Karen yet, she is a master at providing patient-friendly diet and lifestyle tips for liver disease patients, filling a much needed void for people living with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and fatty liver disease.

While we have effective drugs to cure HCV, in little as twelve to eight weeks, across all six HCV genotypes, including treatment options for people with severe liver damage, such as compensated cirrhosis, not everyone - was or is - diagnosed with HCV before serious liver damage occurs. According to a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and presented at CROI 2015, a substantial number of baby boomers are living with advanced liver disease. In data collected between 2010-2013, researchers reported in 2013, close to half of people born during 1945-1965 had severe fibrosis or cirrhosis. In addition, in a prospective study presented at this months Liver Meeting, close to half of people with hepatitis C, who achieved SVR (cure), were found to have fatty liver disease. The article was recently published over at Medscape.

Karen's Been Busy 

A series of  new videos is now available on Karen's YouTube channel. You'll find each video informative; from haircare tips to serious topics such as ascites, hepatic encephalopathy and other liver-related complications. Not that haircare isn't a serious topic, nuff said!

To help guide you through a well-balanced diet, which is essential to help fight or curtail liver damage, Karen published: The Liver Loving Diet. The book is a labor of love, a huge undertaking for someone dealing with Hepatic Encephalopathy (HE), a serious disorder that can happen without warning if you have advanced liver disease, causing confusion, brain fatigue (brain fog) and problems with hand movements, making concentration and typing difficult. Get to know Karen better by reading an excerpt from her book: Emergency Room Diagnosis with Liver Cirrhosis.

In this uncertain world, there are few people who help others without expecting something in return. In her own modest way, with an open heart, Karen is determined to improve the lives of people struggling with liver disease, an act of kindness that does not go unnoticed.