The REAL Cause of Fatty Liver (It’s Not What You Think) & Here's How You Can Try And Repair It!

So, here's something most people don't know. Your liver can be under strain for years with zero symptoms until one day it's not so quiet anymore. Now, here's the surprising part. We're hearing about fatty liver and you're now seeing commercials for drugs that can treat fatty liver. Now, I'm a general surgeon before I was a heart surgeon. And believe me, I've looked at a lot of livers and operated on a lot of livers in my lifetime. And I want to teach you about what we know about fatty liver. Now originally we thought that most people who developed the extreme form of liver damage which is called cerosis were alcoholics. And we believe that alcohol cause the liver to be extremely damaged and would cause the liver to basically shrink and become scar tissue. And I personally have operated on many people with liver cerosis who develop horrible life-threatening bleeding problems from varicosities in their esophagus. And I know a lot about that. But what most people don't know is that most people in the United States are suffering from what we now call fatty liver. And it's even got a [laughter] history of name changes. Originally, when we started seeing fatty liver in people, we called it non-alcoholic stattopitis, better known as nash. And it was because we were seeing this in people who barely drank at all. Well, what was the deal? We now know that livers can progress from normal to really fatty liver without you drinking at all. And it's all because of now we call it mash metabolic associated stato hepatitis. Stat is fat. So, let me talk to you about how we make fuagua. And I like to tell my patients about this. First of all, many of you have heard about this delicacy that's served in fine restaurants called fuagua. Now, fuagua is the liver of either a duck or a goose that's literally become pure fat. Now, how do we do that? It's really easy. We take ducks and geese and we forcefeed them either healthy whole grains, I kid you not, or healthy fruit. And what happens in their liver is that fructose and carbohydrates are converted in the liver to triglyceride. Now, every one of you has seen triglycerides on your cholesterol report. You usually see total cholesterol, LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, and triglycerides. And you really don't think anything about it. But triglycerides are really a manifestation of how much sugar or starches that you're eating that's being converted into in your liver into these fat molec molecules called triglycerides. Now triglycerides are carried out of your liver by moving bands for storage as fat. But if you're overproducing the fat and it can't be moved out of the liver, then it begins building up in the liver. And it happens so well in ducks and geese that you overfeed grains andor fruit that it becomes this delicacy, fuagua, duck liver pate, goose liver pate. And my patients go, "Ooh, that's where it comes from." And then I show them their lab results and they have fuagua for a liver and they go, "But I don't drink." I said, "I didn't say you did, but you've been eating large amounts of carbohydrates and more importantly, large amounts of fructose." So, here's the problem. You and I inherited a genetic mutation from great apes. That was one of the most wonderful things that ever happened to them and us. There is an enzyme that breaks down a compound made from fructose called uric acid. Now, many of us have heard of uric acid. It causes gout. It causes kidney stones, causes high blood pressure. But what most of us don't know is that uric acid is really good at producing insulin resistance. And if you've been paying attention either to the news media or me, you know that metabolic inflexibility, insulin resistance is one of the biggest problems for Americans. In fact, 50% of normal weight individuals have insulin resistance. 88% of overweight individuals have insulin resistance and 98% of obese people have insulin resistance. So, it's a really big deal in America. Okay. So, what? So this mutation allowed great apes to eat fruit and convert it into fat, cause insulin resistance, and store that fat. Why was it such a good thing? Because this happened about 10 million years ago when climate change was happening. Yes, climate change happens and forests began shrinking. Great apes could take the fruit that they ate and store it as fat, whereas monkeys couldn't. So, great apes won the battle as forest shrank. Now, fast forward, you and I inherited that genetic mutation from great apes. We used to call it the thrifty gene because we knew humans were really good at storing fat for the winter because there were hard times where we'd need that fat and it became useful because you stored fat when times were good. But it's that gene that takes fructose in fruit, converts it to triglycerides and uric acid, and you do it so well that it builds up in your liver because you can't move it out fast enough. And just like a duck or a goose, your liver is now fuagua. So what? We used to think that only alcohol could damage the liver, but it turns out the fat in your liver is just as good at causing cerosis as alcohol. In fact, it's even better. And what happens in cerosis is normally the liver cells are also a big part of the filtering ability of you. And what's weird about fructose is that fructose is a mitochondrial toxin. Yeah, you heard that right. Fructose is a toxin. Now, you'd think we eat sugar all the time. [clears throat] Sugar, table sugar is half glucose and half fructose. High fructose corn syrup or high fructose sugar has more fructose than glucose. So, what glucose is absorbed directly into your bloodstream. But fructose is so mischievous that fructose is not absorbed into your bloodstream. Instead, it's absorbed into a big vein called the portal vein and it goes directly to your liver where it's detoxified into triglycerides and uric acid. So, your poor liver is overloaded with our current diet, which is huge amounts of fructose. Plus, as I've stated over and over again, remember this was a great gene when you only saw fruit once or twice a year, or you only saw fruit in season because it was great for adding some fat for the hard times. But now we have 365 days of endless fruit season. And your liver does exactly what your genetic mutation tells it to do. And that is detoxify that fructose and store it as fat. And you make so much of it now it can't get out of your liver. And you literally have fuagua. And if that makes you scared, it should because that's cerosis we can't fix. So literally your liver should be the color of liver. And if you get a piece of liver at the grocery store, it's this kind of uh reddish brown color. And that's a nice healthy liver. But as it fills up with fat, it begins looking literally like this. Now, when you have some new blood tests that we can grade where this happens along the line, here's the bad news. Every American that I have tested has some degree of fatty liver. And sadly, a lot of my patients, they don't have this kind of liver. they have this kind of liver. Problem is, it's painless. You don't know it's happening and it's a process. So, how do you know it's happening? It's actually pretty easy. First of all, if you have high triglycerides above, quite frankly, maybe 60, I can guarantee you that this is happening in your liver. If you have an elevated fasting insulin level above 10, I can tell you this is happening in your liver. If you have an elevated homir, Hom-Irir, IR stands for insulin resistance above 2.0, I can tell you this is happening in your liver. or if you have an elevated uric acid. I can tell you that this is happening in your liver. Now remember, fructose is the primary driver of this problem. There's lots of hidden sources. Juice, smoothies, dried fruit, healthy snacks like trail mixes, anything that's sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Anything that's sweetened with sugar, remember table sugar is 50% fructose. And I hate to say it, one of my original sayings was give fruit the boot. Fruit was something that we only encountered maybe once, maybe twice a year. And that doesn't happen anymore. We now encounter fruit every day. And to call it nature's candy is the correct way of saying it. It is candy. It is the worst form of sugar because of the fructose. All right. So, how do we reverse this? Well, the good news is you can reverse this unless it's progressed much too late. So, first of all, cut fructose and table sugar first. Don't worry about fat. Eating fat does not give you a fatty liver. It's eating sugar and fructose that gives you the fatty liver. Secondly, your liver is busy trying to handle this load of fructose that you're eating. So give your liver a real overnight recovery window by limiting the time that you eat. The less digestion that's occurring [clears throat] in your gut, the less stuff that's flowing to your liver to detoxify. And that's why evidence shows that eventually getting your eating window from the time you start eating to the time you stop eating somewhere in the 6 to 8 hour range has amazing benefits to take pressure off your liver. Now secondly, you've got to lower your gut inflammation to take pressure off the liver. Here's the deal. The liver is a major filtering site for everything that's coming out of your intestines. And what we've learned, interestingly enough, about alcoholic liver disease, it wasn't the alcohol that was causing the problem in the liver. The alcohol was damaging the wall of the gut and bacteria and other things that you ate were leaking through the wall of the gut and they ended up in the liver where a battle was going on. And so all this inflammation in the liver that we were seeing in alcoholics, it turns out, wasn't directly from the alcohol. was actually from the alcohol damaging the wall of the gut and the battle in the liver caused all this fibrosis. Now there are absolutely supplements that can help heal the liver. Now there are numerous ones. One of them of course is milk thistle. Another one is artichoke extract. And yes, artichokes are really good at helping the liver. And that's why I'm amazed in Italy and France how much artichoke is on the menu. Whether it's raw artichokes that's been shaved like a salad, whether it's roasted artichokes, where it's boiled artichokes, artichokes are everywhere because of this effect. Now there's also a very interesting compound in the peel of oranges which is called dimmonine. Sounds like lemon but it's actually an orange peel. So when you're looking at a product to help your liver always look for milk thistle. Now the active ingredient in milk thistle is silly Marin. Look for artichoke extract and look for D limonine. I'm so impressed with those that I actually make my own liver repair product, complete liver support from Gundry MD. But you can get these separately, but they really help take the pressure off the liver. But the most important thing is the more you avoid simple carbohydrates, which are sugar, the more you really back off on fruit, even healthy fruit, the faster your liver will repair. And you'll notice on your next blood test, your triglycerides will fall, your fasting insulin level will fall, your homir will fall, your uric acid will fall, and that's when you know that your liver is actually in repair mode. Now, here's the bad news. We now test for fatty liver in every one of my patients with this new blood test. 100% of the patients I see have some degree of fatty liver. Usually, it's kind of in the mid-range. We see, unfortunately, many people in the end stage. It's fixable as long as we take away the things that are causing it. Here's the other bad news. Most standard liver tests do not detect fatty liver. Now, if you have elevated liver enzymes like AS, ALT, or GGT, you're in this crowd and you really need to do something about it right now. Please do not get the opinion that if you have a fatty liver, it came from eating fat. It's exactly the opposite. You can't make fuagua by feeding ducks or geese fat. You have to give them either grains or fruit or both. And that's how you make it. And that's how we're going to get your fatty liver back to normal. Now, the other thing, like I just mentioned, if you felt off despite normal labs, it's really worth a closer look. And if you can't get one of these modern blood tests, ask your health care provider to get either a liver ultrasound, where they bounce sound waves off your liver, or get a CT or an MRI looking for fatty liver disease. And I think you're going to be surprised what they