Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Good luck to both of you.

Wellllll....I don't have fatty liver disease, but I am overweight and have chronic hepatitis. I am starting treatment in the new year and it was suggested I drop a few pounds and get fitter prior to starting. The dietary receommendations for most inflamed liver issues are generally the same-and they really push for non-processed foods.

The weight loss is slow for me, part of that is from years of being sedentary from fatigue associated with liver diease. But I worked with a dietician and we set a goal of 1200-1400 calories a day with lots of fresh produce, protien in the a.m. to give me an energy boost and load and loads of water.

If you have a fatty liver your doctor should be able to refer you to a dietician that will help you set up an eating plan. Mine isn't overly strict-there really is nothing I can't have in moderation, but it helped me to see what I needed to cut back on and to increase.

I agree you can get good dietitian Help if you just talk to your Doctor about it! And write down all your questions you want to ask before you go because they most of the time will give you a basic sheet and send you on your way but they do like to answer questions and if you tell them you want specific Diet plan to follow they should be more then happy to help other wise they will give you general info on your condition and the best way to eat with it! I say this because I have a type of Hemophilia that makes my blood clot and there is alot of food that I shouldn't eat because they contain Vitamin K which thicken the blood and can lead to blood clots especially while trying to loose weight.. I went in un- prepared and had to end up going back a week later for help!

When I went to the specialist they thought I had Fatty Liver Disease; but I didn't I have an auto-immune condition and so I have to take immune-suppressants to keep me from attacking my liver (sort of like having a liver transplant without the operation ) Fatty Liver is still a concern and is part of the reason why I have to lose weight. It will also make monitoring my liver easier for the ultra-sound technicians. Until I was diagnosed with this I never appreciated how many things impact the liver. Now I can’t even take an ant-acid without reading the label.

The only "food" class that I was warned about (by the Hematology Clinic) was alcohol, and I specifically asked about other "foods". I would suggest that "eating healthy" is the best advice, and personally I would avoid any "extreem" diets. I've also been told that too rapid weight loss can stress the liver.

I agree that healthy eating is the best. But ... exactly what do you know about the metabolic pathway of fructose and sucrose vs the metabolic pathway of glucose?

Liver disease
"The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar," says Meira Field, PhD, a research chemist at United States Department of Agriculture, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."[59] While a few other tissues (e.g., sperm cells[60] and some intestinal cells) do use fructose directly, fructose is almost entirely metabolized in the liver.[59]
"When fructose reaches the liver," says Dr. William J. Whelan, a biochemist at the University of Miami School of Medicine, "the liver goes bananas and stops everything else to metabolize the fructose." Eating fructose instead of glucose results in lower circulating insulin and leptin levels, and higher ghrelin levels after the meal.[61] Since leptin and insulin decrease appetite and ghrelin increases appetite, some researchers suspect that eating large amounts of fructose increases the likelihood of weight gain.[62]
Excessive fructose consumption is also believed to contribute to the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.[63]

The biochemistry is explained in agonizing detail in the youtube reference above. If I had liver disease, I would think twice about eating sugar.

Before you accept the diagnosis of fatty liver, you need to make sure that your healthcare provider has done all of the appropriate tests to rule out genetic, infectious, and metabolism causes of elevated liver function. Once that is done, then yes as everyone has mentioned moderate restrictions of sugar and alcohol are actually your best bet. The majority of fatty liver comes from insulin resistance (known in the lay public as pre-diabetes) and thus weight loss, increasing exercise (which helps the body use its sugar and insulin better), and making dietary modifications are all good things to help with this process.

My husband has the same type of blood clotting disorder. Its very frustrating for him to have to watch the vitamen K.

UGhh it can be very very frustrating while loosing weight because they say eat lots of green leafy stuff and they are the #1 thing with Vitamin K in them! Taking Blood thinners can only take you so far,,, You still have to watch what you eat!