Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)
What is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and why are we seeing so much of it in children as well as adults? Fatty liver occurs when the cells in your liver are replaced with fat cells. This means there is fat deposited within your liver. This means your liver can’t work as well as it should because it doesn’t have all the liver cells doing the jobs they should. Fatty liver is the number one cause of liver transplants. We all know that alcoholics end up with fatty liver. However, there are thousands of people who don’t drink alcohol who also end up fatty liver and this we call non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). And most of them don’t even know they have it until disaster strikes in the form of diabetes or a heart attack.
You need your liver cells intact
Why is an under functioning liver such as big deal? Because your liver does so many vital jobs in the your body, including:
Getting rid of escalating environmental toxins
Getting rid of spent hormones
Dealing with foods and directing them where to go
Helping viruses and other infections exit the body
What causes fatty liver?
The French have a delicacy called foie gras. This is a poetic way of saying ‘fatty liver’ and comes from the not so attractive practice of force-feeding ducks or geese - not fat - but sugar in the form of corn and starch. This extra sugar turns on a fat production factory in the liver called lipogenesis (i.e. making fat). This is the body’s normal response to sugar. So, you see, it is not fat that makes a fatty liver, but sugar and starch.
Fatty Liver Causes Diabetes and Heart Disease
Having a fatty liver sets off a whole cascade of unpleasant events. It ramps up inflammation in your body. This creates insulin resistance and pre-diabetes which causes your body to deposit fat, not just in your liver, but also around your organs and belly. Belly fat or visceral fat is a dangerous type of fat caused by sugar and starch because it is metabolically active and creates a vicious cycle of more inflammation. It causes you to have high triglycerides, low good (HDL) cholesterol and increased dangerous small LDL cholesterol particles that trigger heart attacks. This is why having a fatty liver puts you at greater risk for having a heart attack.
How do you know if you have a fatty liver?
Liver function tests and tests for cholesterol and triglycerides are a good start. If there are abnormalities, this is a real red flag to do something. However, even if your liver tests come back as normal, you may still not be out of the woods as these tests don’t always detect a fatty liver. Plus, standard reference ranges are often set higher because so many of the population are toxic and inflamed. Ultrasound or cat scan may be more useful in detecting fatty liver. However, if you eat a lot of sugar and starch, have a little belly fat and crave sugars, carbs and starch, the chances are you have some degree of fatty liver.
Patients are often told there is nothing they can do about fatty liver, just “live with it.”That simply isn’t true and this erroneous advice is doubtless a consequence of nutrition not being taught at conventional medical schools. If you have any degree of fatty liver, you can and should turn things around and so avoid diabetes, heart disease and a lifetime of medications.
Fix the Root Cause
So what do you do? Fix the root of the problem - it’s what you are eating - sugars and starch.
Stop eating sugars, starches, white flour products (even wholegrain may be a problem) and too much rice.
Stop eating high fructose corn syrup. The fructose in high fructose corn syrup triggers the lipogenesis process into overdrive. Look at labels on packets and jars. The average tomato sauce has more sugar in it than two Oreo biscuits. Make your own sauces instead.
Add some good stuff like vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, good quality lean proteins (chicken, fish, organic grass-fed beef).
Have good quality fats like avocado, olive oil, flax seeds, fish oil, coconut oil. The medium chain triglycerides (MCT) in coconut oil have been shown to reverse fatty liver in clinical studies with mice. The take home message here is that good fats heal and repair fatty liver. If your doctor tells you otherwise, remember he hasn’t been trained in nutritional medicine.
Eat superfoods for the liver i.e. the brassica family - broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, rocket and onions and garlic.
Do some gentle exercise.
Take some supplements which raise the levels of glutathione (an important antioxidant) in your liver, like N-acetyl cysteine and some herbs.
Fat heals a fatty liver
This may be a little difficult for you to get your head around as you are bombarded with just the opposite ‘low fat/high carb’ message by the media, government and supermarkets. But, unlike sugar, grains and carbs, dietary fat does not cause insulin to be secreted from the pancreas. So the fat you eat gets burned, not stored - unless you eat it with carbs, such as french fries, doughnuts fried in oil or deep fried Mars bars! That’s called ‘sweet fat’ and gives you french fried arteries.
Eating good fat actually turns off the fat production factory in your liver. When you eat the right fats (without sugar), you improve your metabolism, increase fat burning and turn off hunger.
The media and medical profession have been so focused on the evils of fat that we have spawned an industry of low-fat products while our Government urges us to eat more carbs and sugar. No wonder the statistics for fatty liver in the population are rising steadily and that children as young as twelve have been given liver transplants due to the amount of fizzy drinks and pizza that pass for a ‘normal’ young person’s diet. It is time to remove those vending machines full of addictive sugary carbs and drinks from our educational institutions.
If you have been diagnosed with fatty liver, high cholesterol/triglycerides, diabetes or heart disease and would like to do something to improve your health, please email the Good Health Clinic on goodhealthclinic@outlook.com or ring on 07836 552936.