Your Liver as the Villain

Where we left off...

FILTER, FACTORY, STORAGE, DISPOSAL, DETOX & BUILDER! OH MY!!

So

The liver is your body's Central Processing Plant & Clean Up Crew ALL ROLLED INTO ONE!

However, if you CONSISTENTLY OVERINDULGE

OR

You continue with your Bad Habit Villain Behavior...

you will end up with

NAFLD

So when your liver becomes Villainous, you have problems.

Fortunately, you CAN improve your liver function with some very BASIC steps - SKIP to the end to find the answers :)

NAFLD or NON Alcoholic Fatty Liver NAFLD or Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver is the most common causes of liver disease in the United States, at 24% of Adults.

Basically your body has so much sugar that it turns it into fat AND the body has soo much fat, that it stuffs it into your poor liver. Kind of like your teenager’s closet: everything is just STUFFED in there, and when you open the closet door, stuff is oozing out all over.

Seems pretty straight forward then: IF you are OVERWEIGHT OR DIABETIC, chances are HIGH that you are probably already one of those 24%. YOU JUST DON’T KNOW IT YET.

2 types of NAFLD Nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL), where fat collects in the liver without any inflammation, although it may get enlarged to the point of abdominal pain. Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) which DOES have inflammation and can lead to cirrhosis and liver failure if left untreated. This is the more advanced version.

WANT TO KNOW THE SHORTCUT?

Fructose is the main culprit.

While all sugars can contribute, fructose, a type of sugar found in fruits and high fructose corn syrup, is particularly linked to fatty liver development due to the way the liver metabolizes it. [1, 2, 3, 5, 6]

Check the last email in this series for these references.

FILTER, FACTORY, STORAGE, DISPOSAL, DETOX, BUILDER

Since we have already reviewed what a healthy liver does:

FILTER, FACTORY, STORAGE, DISPOSAL, DETOX, BUILDER

Can't you hear the Jingle?

You will remember your liver FILTERS toxins out of the bloodstream AND in its little FACTORIES, produces the greenish-yellow fluid, BILE, that breaks down the fat you eat (think fried chicken, buttered bread, olive oil) into little packets fatty acids, so that what started out as big chunks of fat, are now in small digestible and usable pieces.

NAFLD starts out with little to no symptoms. As it progresses, you may notice general symptoms like fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea and malaise. (Malaise is what it is called when you “feel like crap :) achey, tired, under the weather).

Symptoms so generalized that you won’t even think much of it. NAFLD could be progressing inside of your body, and you are “blissfully unaware”.

As your liver health and function continue to decrease, you may have slightly more specific symptoms like pain or discomfort in the upper right belly area - where your liver is actually located.

Put your right hand on your right, front lower ribcage. The liver is right under your hand and extends down past the bottom of our ribs. It is approximately the size of a Football.

If your, now unhealthy, liver function continues to downgrade, you are moving to a more significant version of NAFLD called NASH, or Non Alcoholic Steatohepatitis and then Cirrhosis, and severe scarring.

DISEASED

At this point you are “diseased”. Honestly, in the picture above, everything but the HEALTHY LIVER picture, is “DISEASED”. You are moving towards LACK OF HEALTH.

You may notice shortness of breath - because your lungs are now trying to push down on a harder liver. Your NORMAL healthy liver is spongy, wedge-shaped & reddish-brown.

You may notice itchy skin, Ascites (uh-SY-teez) which is the fancy name for abdominal swelling, potentially from an enlarged spleen.

You may notice vascular symptoms like Spider-like blood vessels just beneath the skin's surface or red palms.

As the liver health continues to downgrade, you may end up with Jaundice, yellowing of the skin and eyes.

Back to the statistics: about 1:4 adults in the US has moved OUT of the first picture: HEALTHY LIVER, down the right side.

The challenge is, since it is happening quietly in the background,

HOW DO YOU KNOW???

Well, ONE of the things you can pay attention to is:

YOUR POOP!

We will talk about THAT tomorrow!