What is Hepatitis C?
Hepatitis C is a viral infection that is known for causing a lot of inflammation in a person's liver. This means that a person will have a lot of serious damage to their liver as the disease starts to progress.
It will spread to other people through blood that is contaminated. Most of the time, a person is not even going to know that they have been infected because there are not a lot of symptoms in the early stages of the disease.
In fact, the person might not realize that they have it until the liver is so damaged that the damage will not be easily fixed.
How to prevent Hepatitis C?
There are several things that you are going to be able to do to prevent the spread of Hepatitis C. The first thing is to make sure that you never share your needles.
The second thing is to avoid the exposure to blood or blood products that you know might be contaminated with the Hepatitis C.
The third thing is to make sure that you are not sharing any of your personal care items.
The fourth thing is to choose the tattoo parlors or piercing places as carefully as you possibly can by doing some research of the place first.
The fifth thing is to make sure that you are always practicing safe practices with your partner.
What are the symptoms of Hepatitis C?
There are several symptoms of Hepatitis C that you are going to experience. In the early stages of the disease, you might have a fever, not have a good appetite for food, and feeling tired for no reason at all.
Once you have had the disease for a long period of time, then you are going to have more serious symptoms like stomach pain, muscle or joint pain, nausea or vomiting, yellowing of the eyes and skin, and abnormalities in your bowel movements or urine.
Sometimes you are going to experience these symptoms within two weeks of having the infection. But with other people, they might have a delay in the symptoms that they are going to experience. This means that it can take up to 6 months or 10 years before they even know that they have the disease.
What are the treatment options for Hepatitis C?
There are not a lot of treatment options for Hepatitis C. The main thing that you are going to be given is the antiviral medications. This is something that you will be given to clear the virus from your body.
Most of the time, the doctor is going to recommend that you take this medication with a combination of two or three different medications. You will take them for 12 to 24 weeks or longer based on the stages of the disease.
The doctor will need to do plenty of blood tests so that they can monitor and evaluate how the treatment is working for you and helping to cure the disease.
