Are you looking at your blood tests and wondering what is the deal with elevated liver enzyme tests? My name's Dr. Terranella. And in this video, we're gonna look at and break down some of the liver enzyme tests, what the liver enzymes actually correspond to what they mean. And what some of the elevations and the numbers could be suggesting about what's going on in your body.
So in this video, we're gonna look at what the specific liver enzymes represent and what they might be suggesting when they are elevated. So the liver enzymes are classically referred to as AST, ALT and G G T.

These are the liver function tests that when elevated suggests there may be a problem going on with your liver. . Now the AST and alt are basically enzymes in your liver and to some degree in other tissues that help those tissues transfer amino.

And they do that through a process called transamination that's where the T comes from on the asst and alt the G GT is also involved in transferring amino acids, but it kind of has a more broad function where it can also help with production and breakdown of glutathione, which is important detoxification.

And the G G T also helps with elimination of toxins. These enzymes are most concentrated in the liver, but they can be found in other tissues when we're testing for your liver function tests. These are always the three liver function tests that are included.

The asst alt and G G T not everyone will do the G G T. It depends what type of panel is done and what all is being. Looked for, but I do recommend using the G G T as it can be helpful and understanding what you're exposed to. If your body is having a problem breaking down or eliminating toxins. And the GT is thought to be more sensitive at picking up toxic burden.

There's really no consensus on what. Each of the liver enzymes represent, for instance, if the AST is high, but the GT and alt are normal, does this represent some specific problem, like viral hepatitis or drinking alcohol or something like that?

And, so there's no consensus view or absolute statement that elevated AST represents problems from drinking, alcohol and alt. Is from a virus or some other nutrient problem, but there are some indicators that elevation in alt and G GT might be higher when there's more alcohol consumption and AST is more elevated when there's more a viral hepatitis going on again, it's not a super reliable thing to go off of, but if you are having ongoing.

Elevations in your liver. The main thing you should be looking to do is verifying that they are indeed elevated and looking deeper as to why they're actually elevated. And so with that further testing should be done to identify what the reason is. So with all that being. Alt is more specific to liver tissue. Whereas AST can be found in other tissues in more abundance than the alt but both can be found in muscle and heart and other tissues, but it's the alt that's gonna be most abundant. In the liver because of this, when AST is elevated in alt it is not elevated.

Or if there's just elevation in the AST, typically that's gonna be more indicative of a muscle issue. And that should be explored in conjunction with any exploration of what could be wrong with the liver itself. So the fact that these liver enzymes are elevated in your blood test means that there's some damage to the tissues that contain these enzymes.

Cause what's happening is. Cells are breaking open in the enzymes within those cells, whether it's coming from muscle heart or the liver itself are flooding out into the blood and raising the overall levels of these specific enzymes. And that of course is not good, especially if it's happening on a regular basis and ongoing anything above 25 international units per leader, I would consider.

Elevation, of course the higher, that number is the more problems it might be.

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