Jaundice: Symptoms and Treatment

What Is Jaundice?

Jaundice is a condition that is usually characterized by the skin and the whites of the eyes (sclera) turning yellow.

It cannot be classified as a disease since it is just a sign of more serious diseases. It is usually common in newborn babies but that does not mean that it cannot affect people of other ages since it may occur in older children and adults too. The condition is caused by excessive accumulation of a chemical known as bilirubin in the blood as well as the body tissue. This is usually as a result of a malfunctioning liver which might have been affected by conditions such as hepatitis, cirrhosis and gallstones. Therefore doctors administering jaundice treatment will majorly focus on treating the conditions that cause the malfunctioning of the liver rather than trying to treat jaundice itself. The yellow pigment in the skin and the white of the eye may vary depending on the level of bilirubin and when the amounts of the chemical are too high, the skin and sclera could appear brown as opposed to yellow. How to cure jaundice is therefore always dependent on the underlying disease.

Causes of Jaundice

Jaundice treatment is so much dependent on its cause than its symptoms. The main cause of jaundice is the presence of high amounts of bilirubin in the blood. The chemical originates from the red blood cells. When the cells are worn out, they naturally get destroyed. Hemoglobin, a substance which carries oxygen in the blood and is rich in iron content, produces the bilirubin once the cells get destroyed. Bilirubin is the chemical content that remains once the iron has been filtered. This naturally happens within a 120-day cycle.

The liver has a very important task of removing most of the chemical waste products in the blood. Since bilirubin is a waste product, it ends up in the liver where it is combined with a digestive fluid, from the gall bladder, known as bile.

The mixture of bilirubin and bile is supposed to exit the body through anal egestion as faeces. Bilirubin is the chemical responsible for the brown colour in faeces and the light yellow color in urine. I a situation where too many red blood cells are destroyed, the bilirubin produced in the process, may become too much for the liver to filter, and then jaundice occurs. Also, in a situation where the liver malfunctions and becomes unfit to filter bilirubin, the chemical ends up accumulating in the blood causing jaundice. This might be caused by an infection of physical damage of the liver. Jaundice treatment, in such a case should focus on healing the liver. Another possible cause of the accumulation of bilirubin in the bloodstream might be a blockage of the bile ducts hence hindering the normal flow of bilirubin and bile leading to their accumulation in the bloodstream. Therefore jaundice treatment must involve the removal of the accumulated bilirubin from the bloodstream.

Symptoms of Jaundice

Apart from the yellowing of the skin and the sclera, which are the most obvious jaundice symptoms, a person having jaundice may also experience yellowing of mucus membranes in the nose as well as in the mouth. The stools (faeces) excreted by such a person might also be pale in color while the urine might be dark in color due to the lack of the yellow tinge of bilirubin. If jaundice treatment is done successfully, the normal color of the stool is retained.

Some of the underlying complications that cause jaundice may have a feel like that of flu, and may be accompanied with chills, fever, stomach pain, itching as well as weight loss without a plausible explanation such as change of diet. The itching, also known as pruritus, may sometimes become so severe that the patient might not stop scratching his/her skin. All these make Jaundice treatment at home a bit complicated.

The other jaundice symptoms include insomnia and if a liver disease is the cause, the patient might experience a lot of fatigue, wasting of muscles, swelling of the ankles, bleeding into the intestine, accumulation of fluids in the abdominal cavity and in worst cases the patient may go into a comma. Whenever the blockage of the bile ducts is the cause, then the most likely thing to happen is that there will be no bile entering the intestine, which will in turn affect the digestion of fats and release of some vitamins within the small intestine.

How to Cure Jaundice

Jaundice treatment normally depends on the underlying cause of the condition.

In the treatment of pre-hepatic jaundice, the main focus will be to prevent the fast rate at which red blood cells are broken down, which is the actual cause of a build-up of bilirubin in the blood. If the pre-hepatic jaundice is caused by infection say that of malaria, jaundice treatment will focus on treating the underlying infection. However, blood transfusion to replace red blood cells might be necessary for blood disorders like sickle cell anemia.

Neonatal Jaundice Treatment

Neonatal jaundice affects infants. The most widely therapeutic measures in neonatal jaundice treatment include: phototherapy, exchange transfusion and intravenous immune globulin (IVIG).

Phototherapy

This is the main neonatal jaundice treatment for neonates suffering from unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia. Phototherapy was discovered rather accidentally in England in the year 1950 up to date, it is without doubt the most widespread jaundice treatment applied in newborns. The therapy actually makes use of light whereby bilirubin is exposed to certain intensities of light which triggers a series of complex reactions that break it down. Once bilirubin, the chemical responsible for the yellow color, is broken down, the yellow color disappears as shown in the photos below. Phototherapy is therefore one of the most effective methods of treatment of jaundice

Home Remedies for Jaundice

Just like many ailments, treatment of jaundice is possible at home using natural remedies. Some of the most common natural remedies that make Jaundice treatment at home possible include:

• Tomatoes: this home jaundice treatment is done by adding salt and pepper to fresh tomato juice the drinking each morning. A substance known as lycopene, which is present in tomatoes can significantly reduce liver damage and even aid recovery.

• Radish leaves: juice from green radish leaves can be extracted then drunk on a daily basis. The juice can help in regulation of abdominal discomfort as well as improve appetite. This can be done for about 8-10m days.

• Almond leaves: this one of the most common methods of natural jaundice treatment. It is done by soaking about 7-8 almond kernels in water throughout the night. In the morning, the almonds are then peeled, ground into a paste and consumed. Almonds can also be consumed alongside cardamoms and dried dates, in which case the cardamoms should also be soaked overnight.

• Snake gourd leaves: this is a simple jaundice treatment done by adding some dry snake gourd leaves into boiling water, after which coriander seeds are boiled in water till the water reduces to one third of the initial amount. The mixtures are then combined and taken thrice on a daily basis.

Conclusion

Jaundice symptoms may not be very dangerous. However, they are always a sign of a serious underlying disease that might especially be eating away into the liver. How to cure jaundice

has never been the main bother but the main issue is how to cure the underlying malady. Therefore, any signs of jaundice should be taken seriously and immediate medical action should be taken to discover the root cause and if possible commence jaundice treatment.