Fatigue and primary biliary cirrhosis
And, just in case you were thinking, “so what if my liver is overburdened?” This study looked at patients with primary biliary cirrhosis–their livers were losing the ability to move things out of the body into the GI tract for elimination–and found that these patient’s fatigue may be related to brain damage from increased manganese levels. Manganese elimination is via the bile, so these patients have a reduced ability to get rid of manganese and it accumulates in the brain. Really makes you appreciate just how interactive the human body systems truly are. As a side note, manganese has been implicated in violent behavior in institutionalized criminals.
Gut — Abstracts: Forton et al. 53 (4): 587 –
