When we often hear about liver disease, we hear about what’s called cirrhosis of the liver. And when we hear that term, most of our patients think of nothing but alcohol. And yes, this used to be the most common reason why people have cirrhosis. Now the most common cause of cirrhosis of the liver or even liver disease in general is not alcohol,

but it’s what’s called fatty liver disease. And the scary part is that it can present with no signs or symptoms whatsoever. In today’s video I’m going to explain to you exactly what is fatty liver disease. I’ll explain how your liver goes from normal to fatty to eventually cirrhosis. I’ll discuss the different forms of fatty liver disease. We’ll discuss who is at risk for fatty liver disease.

And at the very end of the video, I’m gonna give you five tips on what I recommend today to prevent that progression from normal to cirrhosis when it comes to fatty liver disease. And if you’re wondering how we diagnose fatty liver disease, wait till the end, we’ll give you another video recommendation on how we actually diagnose somebody with fatty liver disease. Guys,

let’s talk about food. How y’all, Dr. Islam here, a k a, your proof pure. Try to give you the best sips and tricks so you can live your best life from the top all the way down to the bottom. If you hovered already, don’t forget to smash that light button like here and subscribe so you get more videos like you’re watching in today’s video.

So lemme start off with a patient of mine named Jasmine. Now Jasmine came to see me because she was found to have what’s called fatty liver disease and she had no idea. In fact, she had no idea that she had anything going on with her liver. Her liver blood tests were checked on a normal physical exam. She was shocked to find out that her liver was inflamed and actually was about to head onto what’s called cirrhosis now.

So when I talked to her, she had no idea that fat can actually cause liver disease, much less liver cirrhosis and it freaked the heck out of her. Now luckily we caught her liver disease just in time. We made changes to her diet, her lifestyle. She went to a plant-based diet, started to exercise, she lost weight. And guess what happened?

Her liver disease, her fatty liver disease went back to normal again. Yay, we did it. And we can do this commonly for a lot of our patients when it comes to fatty liver disease. Now there are two main reasons why people develop fat in the liver. Number one is alcohol. Now we won’t talk about this in detail, but alcohol over time can also cause fat to accumulate in your liver.

And if you have that plus the toxic effect from alcohol, that can lead to cirrhosis. The other reason is called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or NL D. This occurs that individuals who are not heavy drinkers, this occurs from fats from any other reason, including having a big belly can accumulate in your liver because inflammation and irritation and this cause is the most common cause for liver cirrhosis in the United States.

Now normally your liver can have a healthy amount of fat, not a big deal. But what happens that over time that fat can actually cause damage to your liver, to the point where your liver wants to react and develop scarring across that liver. And once you start to help scarring across the liver, you go from nyl D to what’s called nash, non-alcoholic STI hepatitis.

And that’s when I as a liver doctor really get concerned cuz we are seeing a more and more individuals who have NASH that have a high risk of developing what’s called cirrhosis. Now by the time you hit cirrhosis, it’s game over because you’ve already crossed that bridge. Your liver is scarred over when you have cirrhosis and there’s no going back. So when you get up to nash,

you have the option of going back and reversing your liver. But by the time you actually have cirrhosis, you’re already scarred over and you cannot go back to having a regular liver. So my goal as a liver doctor is to prevent all patients I can with fatty liver disease from progressing onto cirrhosis. So let’s go into the more details about the stages of what happens when you have regular liver fatty liver disease all the way up to cirrhosis.

And there are three main stages for this progression. Number one, it’s called STI hepatitis. This age is very early on when you actually have fat in the liver that actually causes damage. We can see this either on imaging or blood tests in which your liver enzymes become high or becomes inflamed. Now typically you will not have symptoms from this. We usually see this on routine blood testing that your PCP or your normal doctor will check.

But over time as that fat accumulates, you can start to develop that scar tissue and that’s when you have what’s called nash, non-alcoholic STE hepatitis. It’s that fibrosis and scar tissue that makes us worried that you’re going to head on to later stages of delivery including end-stage liver disease. But if you don’t make any interventions at that time, NASH will progress onto what’s called cirrhosis in which you have fibrosis and scarring of your whole entire liver.

And that leads to cirrhosis or nage liver disease. And by that point in time it’s already too late. You can’t go beyond where that’s at. And eventually once you have cirrhosis, you liver softs to work, you don’t detoxify, you don’t produce nutrients, lose the capability to synthesize certain vitamins or chemicals. You develop problems with your legs, with edema,

with what’s called ascites. You get confused because of the build of auto toxins and eventually over time you’ll end up dying from liver failure. Our goal is to prevent that progression from fatty liver disease to cirrhosis. So who exactly is at risk for developing fatty liver disease? One number one is obesity. Obesity by far is the biggest risk factor for developing fat in the liver and leading to fatty liver disease.

So the bigger that you are, the higher chance you have of having fatty liver disease. Number two, having other conditions associated with weight gain including diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, and diseases like that. These are all diseases associated with being obese. And the more likely that you have these other conditions, the higher chance it’s going to be that it’s going to affect your liver as well.

Number three, fat across the abdomen. Now there may be other people who are obese but don’t have specifically fat around their belly. But if you are a pear shaped person and you have a lot of abdominal visceral fat around your belly, that substantially pieces your wrist for developing liver disease and liver cells. Also, if you drink alcohol on top of ob,

being obese, it’s like having a double whammy to your liver. That combination will cause irritation of your liver and cause a lot of damage to occur. Alright, so now that I scare the living, but Jesus outta you when it comes to fatty liver disease, what can you do today to reverse it? Because remember, our goal is to change your liver from going to what’s called nash or almost cirrhosis to make it back to normal and your liver’s one of the very few organs you can reverse.

Here are my recommendations. Number one, maintain a healthy weight. We know that liver disease, especially fatty liver disease, is a disease of obesity. So maintain that healthy weight, do what you can. Maybe it’s medical therapy, maybe it’s exercise, maybe it’s diet, or maybe you need some type of surgical therapy to help you lose weight. This will help you to reverse the damage to your liver.

Number two, get off the couch and go for a walk. Even if you exercise without losing weight, the physical act of exercising, going for a walk, doing something will change the amount of inflammation in your body to reverse the damage going on inside your liver. Number three, get rid of alcohol. I’m not even saying limited, get rid of it.

You want to do everything you can to minimize the toxicity and the damage to your liver. If you have fatal liver disease, you’re having inflammation of your liver, just get rid of alcohol. I’ll tell you, you will not miss it. And I’ll tell you, your liver will be high. Number four, try to go onto more of a plant-based diet.

We know that food that’s high in meat, high in processed food, high in fast food is damaging to your liver in addition to making you obese. So try to go on a plant-based diet. Then lastly, number five, embrace black coffee. There are studies after studies suggesting that black coffee, either decaf or caffeinated, can decrease the amount of inflammation in your liver and reverse the damage going on.

The good news is, when given the chance your liver has the opportunity to reverse itself and go back to normal, give your liver a chance. My call to action to you this week, if you have fatty liver disease or you know somebody who does show them this video and implement these steps to improve your liver, get you feeling better, make your liver happy so you can reverse the damage that is going on inside your body.

And if you’re interested in learning more about fatty liver disease, don’t forget to click on this video. We’re gonna give you more information on my approach when it comes to fatty liver disease. My question today for you, do you suffer from fat liver disease? Has it caused damage to your liver? What have you done to help this out? Calm it down below.

I will love to hear what you guys have to say. Wanna thank you for watching. Don’t forget to smash that like button live shirt and subscribe to getting more videos like your learning in today’s video. And don’t forget, guys, let’s talk about poop. Thanks everybody.