Episode One: Alcohol-Associated Liver Disease With Elizabeth Lee

An educational production by Liver Awareness Foundation, Mind Your Liver® was created to empower young adults with liver health knowledge, break stigmas, and bring greater awareness to the silent threats of liver disease.  Created from lived reality and recovery, the podcast brings lived experience together with clinical perspectives to explore liver disease through conversations that are open, accessible, and grounded in the realities people face.

In the first episode of Mind Your Liver®, specialist clinician Elizabeth Lee, Vice President of Liver Awareness Foundation, joins host Vanessa Wojtala, Founder and President, for an open conversation about alcohol-associated liver disease.
Drawing from her clinical experience, Elizabeth Lee discusses alcohol-associated liver disease, commonly missed early symptoms, and the realities of caring for people with advanced liver disease.

The conversation explores how liver disease can progress quietly, what someone may experience early on, and how gaps in recognition can affect the path to diagnosis and care.

Born From the Liver Clinic

Vanessa Wojtala and Elizabeth Lee first met in 2023 at Toronto General Hospital’s Francis Family Liver Clinic, where Vanessa received care following severe alcohol-associated liver disease and liver failure.
Their shared experience in the liver clinic helped shape the foundation for Episode One. Vanessa brings lived experience with advanced liver disease, liver failure, and recovery, while Elizabeth brings her clinical experience caring for people affected by liver disease.

Together, Vanessa Wojtala and Elizabeth Lee discuss missed warning signs, liver failure, recovery, stigma, and the gaps in awareness that can leave young adults learning about their liver only after something has already gone seriously wrong.
Mind Your Liver® was born from the liver clinic, from lived experience, clinical insight, and a shared belief in the importance of earlier liver health education and awareness.

Changing The Conversation on Liver Disease

Liver disease is still surrounded by assumptions about who develops it and why. For alcohol-associated liver disease in particular, stigma can make already difficult conversations about health, alcohol use, and seeking care even harder.
Mind Your Liver® was created to help change that.

Through conversations with clinicians, researchers, and people with lived experience, the podcast aims to make liver health easier to understand while creating space for discussions that are informed, inclusive, and free from judgment.
Because changing liver health awareness requires more than providing information.

It requires changing the conversation around it.

This is Where Silence Among Young People Ends.

Mind Your Liver® is an educational platform built specifically for a new generation of liver health. Created for young adults, it brings together lived experience, clinical expertise, and open conversation to make liver disease easier to understand, easier to talk about, and harder to ignore.

The platform was built to address the conversations young people are often missing about liver health, from risk and early warning signs to stigma, diagnosis, recovery, and prevention.

This is not a typical health podcast. This is where silence ends.
It is time to make liver disease loud.

🎧 Watch Episode One at mindyourliverpodcast.com

Mind Your Liver. It Needs You.®