Hepatitis is a disease that includes any type of inflammation of the liver, the result of a complex process that occurs when the liver suffers an injury. The condition can be self-limiting, healing on its own, or can progress to scarring of the liver. A group of viruses known as the hepatitis virus’s cause most cases of liver damage worldwide. Hepatitis can also be due to toxins (notably alcohol), other infections or from autoimmune process.
It may run a subclinical course when the affected person may not feel ill. The patient becomes unwell and symptomatic when the disease impairs liver functions that include, among other things, removal of harmful substances, regulation of blood composition, and production of bile to help digestion.

The inflammation that lasts less than six months acute hepatitis and inflammation that lasts longer than six months chronic hepatitis. While there are many causes of liver inflammation, clinicians divide them into two main categories:

• Viral hepatitis
• Non-infectious hepatitis.

Viral Hepatitis
When most people think of hepatitis, they're usually thinking about viral hepatitis. There are five viruses that commonly infect the liver, named using letters of the alphabet -- A through E. Since these viruses spread from person to person, so they are also called as infectious hepatitis.

Non-Infectious Hepatitis
Not all causes of hepatitis are infectious. Chemicals such as alcohol or medications can be harmful to the liver and can cause inflammation. In addition, other health problems like genetic and metabolic disorders, immune-related injury and obesity can damage the liver and lead to inflammation. Since these types of hepatitis cannot spread from one person to another, clinicians call it non-infectious hepatitis

The causes can be classified as
•     Acute
•     Chronic

Acute Hepatitis Causes:

• Viral hepatitis: Hepatitis A through E (more than 95% of viral cause), Herpes simplex, Cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr, yellow fever virus, adenoviruses.
• Non-viral infection: toxoplasma, Leptospira, Q fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
• Alcohol
• Toxins: Amanita toxin in mushrooms, carbon tetrachloride, asafetida.
• Drugs: Paracetamol, amoxycillin, antituberculosis medicines, minocycline and many Others: Ischemic hepatitis (circulatory insufficiency).
• Pregnancy
• Auto immune conditions, e.g., Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)
• Metabolic diseases, e.g., Wilson's disease

Chronic Hepatitis Causes:

• Viral hepatitis: Hepatitis B with or without hepatitis D, hepatitis C (neither hepatitis A nor hepatitis E causes chronic hepatitis).
• Autoimmune: Autoimmune hepatitis.
• Alcohol
• Drugs: methyldopa, nitrofurantoin, isoniazid, ketoconazole
• Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
• Heredity: Wilson's disease, alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency.
• Primary biliary cirrhosis and primary sclerosing cholangitis occasionally mimic chronic hepatitis.

Viral

• Hepatitis A
• Hepatitis B
• Hepatitis C
• Hepatitis D
• Hepatitis E
• Hepatitis F virus (existence unknown)
• Hepatitis G, or GBV-C

Note that the hepatitis viruses are not all related.

Other Viral Causes

Other viral infections can cause hepatitis (inflammation of the liver):
Mumps virus
Rubella virus
Cytomegalovirus
Epstein-Barr virus
Yellow fever
Other herpes viruses

Alcoholic hepatitis

Ethanol, mostly in alcoholic beverages, is a significant cause of hepatitis. Usually alcoholic hepatitis comes after a period of increased alcohol consumption. A variable constellation of symptoms, which may include feeling unwell, enlargement of the liver, development of fluid in the abdomen ascites, and modest elevation of liver blood tests characterize alcoholic hepatitis.
Alcoholic hepatitis can vary from mild with only liver test elevation to severe liver inflammation with development of jaundice, prolonged prothrombin time, and liver failure. Severe cases are characterized by either obtundation (dulled consciousness) or the combination of elevated bilirubin levels and prolonged prothrombin time; the mortality rate in both categories is 50% within 30 days of onset.

Drug induced Hepatotoxicity

A large number of drugs can cause hepatitis:

Metabolic Disorders

• Some metabolic disorders cause different forms of hepatitis. Hemochromatosis (due to iron accumulation) and Wilson's disease (copper accumulation) can cause liver inflammation and necrosis.
• Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is effectively a consequence of metabolic syndrome.

Obstructive

• "Obstructive jaundice " is the term used to describe jaundice due to obstruction of the bile duct (by gallstones or external obstruction by cancer). If longstanding, it leads to destruction and inflammation of liver tissue.

Autoimmune Hepatitis

• Anomalous presentation of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II on the surface of hepatocytes, possibly due to genetic predisposition or acute liver infection; causes a cell-mediated immune response against the body's own liver, resulting in autoimmune hepatitis.

Non-Alcoholic fatty liver Disease

• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the occurrence of fatty liver in people who have no history of alcohol use. It is most commonly associated with obesity (80% of all obese people have fatty liver). It is more common in women. Severe NAFLD leads to inflammation, a state referred to as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which on biopsy of the liver resembles alcoholic hepatitis (with fat droplets and inflammatory cells, but usually no Mallory bodies).

The diagnosis depends on medical history, physical exam, blood tests, radiological imaging and sometimes a liver biopsy. The initial evaluation to identify the presence of fatty infiltration of the liver is medical imaging, including such ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), or magnetic resonance (MRI). However, imaging cannot readily identify inflammation in the liver. Therefore, the differentiation between steatosis and NASH often requires a liver biopsy. It can also be difficult to distinguish NASH from alcoholic hepatitis when the patient has a history of alcohol consumption. Sometimes in such cases a trial of abstinence from alcohol along with follow-up blood tests and a repeated liver biopsy are required.

Ischemic Hepatitis

• Ischemic hepatitis is caused by decreased circulation to the liver cells. Usually this is due to decreased blood pressure (or shock), leading to the equivalent term "shock liver". Patients with ischemic hepatitis are usually very ill due to the underlying cause of shock.

The period of time between exposure to hepatitis and the onset of the illness is called the incubation period. The incubation period varies depending on the specific hepatitis virus.

• General malaise (a vague symptom where you feel uncomfortable and a little tired)
• Myalgia (muscle pain)
• Arthralgia (joint pain)
• Fatigue (extreme tiredness)
• Headache
• Sore throat
• Runny nose
• Cough
• Anorexia (having no appetite)
• Changes in your normal sense of smell and taste accompany anorexia (For example, smokers sometimes develop a temporary distaste for smoking)
• Unusual sensitivity to bright light (photophobia)
• Nausea and vomiting (these are very common symptoms)
• Diarrhea (less common)
• Constipation (less common)
• Fever (usually low-grade and most common in hepatitis A and E)
• Upper-right abdominal pain (pain in the upper belly on the right side, usually mild and constant)
• jaundice
• Dark-colored urine
• Light-colored stools

People who are most at risk for developing viral hepatitis are workers in the health care professions, people with multiple sexual partners, intravenous drug users, and hemophiliacs who receive blood clotting factors. Blood transfusion, once a common means of spreading viral hepatitis, now is a rare cause of hepatitis. Viral hepatitis is generally thought to be as much as ten times more common among lower socioeconomic and poorly educated individuals. About one third of all cases of hepatitis come from an unknown or unidentifiable source. This means that you don't have to be in a high-risk group in order to be infected with a hepatitis virus.

Patients infected with Hepatitis B and hepatitis C can develop chronic hepatitis. Doctors define chronic hepatitis as hepatitis that lasts longer than 6 months. In chronic hepatitis, the viruses live and multiply in the liver for years or decades. The viruses cause chronic inflammation of the liver. Chronic hepatitis can lead to the development over time of extensive liver scarring (cirrhosis), liver failure, and liver cancer.

Diagnosis of viral hepatitis is based on symptoms, physical findings as well as blood tests for liver enzymes, viral antibodies, and viral genetic materials.
Blood tests
Among the most sensitive and widely used blood tests for evaluating patients with hepatitis are the liver enzymes, called aminotransferases. They include aspartate aminotransferase (AST or SGOT) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT or SGPT).

Examples of tests for viral proteins and genetic material are:
1. Hepatitis B surface antigen
2. Hepatitis B DNA
3. Hepatitis B e antigen
4. Hepatitis C RNA

Other Tests
Ultrasound testing can be used to exclude the possibility of gallstones or cancer.

What is the Diet schedule for the patient suffering from hepatitis?
After being diagnosed with liver disease, some of the first questions that a person typically asks are concerning his/her diet and nutrition. Each person has her own individual nutritional requirements, and these requirements may change over time.

A few things to avoid for liver health:
1 Avoid excessive alcohol: Liver specialists suggest that more than two drinks a day for men – and more than one drink a day for women – may even be too much for some people.

2 Avoid drugs and medicines taken with alcohol Medicines – especially the seemingly harmless acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol and other over-the-counter medications) – should never be taken with alcoholic beverages.
3 Avoid environmental pollutants Fumes from paint thinners bug sprays, and other aerosol sprays are picked up by the tiny blood vessels in your lungs and carried to your liver where they are detoxified and discharged in your bile.
4 Watch the Calories
5 Watch Vitamins A and D
6 Avoid processed food

Foods You Can Eat!
1  Whole wheat bread
2  Whole grain cereals
3  Malt O Meal
4  Oatmeal
5  Cream of Wheat
6  Brown riceVegetables, (potatoes in moderation)
7  Beans, all kinds
8  Lots of vegetable juices
9  Lemonade made with fresh lemons
10 Organic Virgin Olive Oil
11 Flaxseed Oil
12 Homemade Vegetable Soup
13 Baked chips
14 Yogurt

The things that have been mentioned above have a broad criteria and every patient needs to consult a dietician so that a specific diet plan can be advised depending upon his/her nutritional requirements.

As described in the article above causes hepatitis can form a complex disease state Homoeopathy follows an individualistic approach towards patients suffering from hepatitis we believe that every individual is different and thus a full in-depth case study is the first step. Then referring to the stage of disease and individual response a particular line of treatment is adopted. A broad criterion of how the homoeopathic medicines act in cases of hepatitis is mentioned below. The response to treatment can differ from one individual to another patients are advised to consult so that the mode of treatment can be discussed pertaining to their particular case.

Homoeopathy medicines act by;
Relieves Symptoms like:

• Myalgia (muscle pain)
• Arthralgia (joint pain)
• Fatigue (extreme tiredness)
• Anorexia (having no appetite)
• Changes in your normal sense of smell and taste accompany anorexia
• Nausea and vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Fever (usually low-grade and most common in hepatitis A and E)
• Pain in the upper belly on the right side, usually mild and constant
• jaundice
• Dark-colored urine
• Light-colored stools
• Liver/spleen enlargement
• Ascites

Controlling and reversing the underlying Disease process:
Homoeopathic medicines have proven their efficacy in all sought of liver conditions and help by reviving the liver cells and helping in restoring their functions back to normal. It helps by increasing patients immune response thus reducing the virus load and improving the overall health of liver.

• If homoeopathic treatment is sought early it helps in preventing the progress of disease and preventing any complications (Liver cirrhosis, failure, cancer) from occurring, which are usually associated with the disease.
• We at DRSS provide our patients with diet charts, exercise schedules and guide them how to modify their lifestyle so that better results can be achieved.
• Our medicines can be started with conventional treatment depending upon the disease state and case.
• Homoeopathic medicines if taken under proper guidance from a well-qualified professional are extremely safe and have no side effects