Kids And Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease...

Bryan...

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”

I stumbled upon Evolutionary Health Systems for the first time just the other day, and decided it should be recognized as our "Saturday Stolen Post". A huge portion of a trainer's job is dedicated to research, correction, and praise. Hopefully, a great trainer does nothing more than filter through the shit so you don't have to, fix the bad, and praise the results.

This post kinda speaks for itself...as if you didn't already have enough reasons to stop the Cocaine mis-labled as Sugar.

A disturbing conversation

While I was in the University Health Center for some routine blood work yesterday, I learned something interesting.

The doctor I talked with happened to be a national speaker on diabetes, which lead us in to a conversation on the nutritional treatment of diabetes. She mentioned how having her patients stop drinking sugar (soda, juice, sweet teas), had remarkably improved health with just this one change. I agreed, chiming in that the massive amounts of fructose and sugar must me wreaking havoc on their livers, as the liver is the only site where fructose can be processed. The next thing she told me blew my mind: 

Many of the children she sees as early as 5 years old are developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Either we have some seriously negligent parents who are letting their kids start swigging vodka right after they get off breast milk, or little kids are eating way too much sugar!

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease occurs when the liver is overloaded with more sugar than it can process. When this happens, the process of de novo lipogenesis starts - the conversion of carbohydrates in to "new fat", also known as triglycerides. As you may be aware, elevated triglycerides are not a good sign, and when this chronically happens at the liver, it can lead to hepatic cirrhosis (scarring of the liver).

The liver is a pretty important organ, if you know someone who's consuming tons of sugar, let them know that they are damaging it! The fact that we are seeing this in children as young as five is outrageous, as this condition is usually only seen in
diabetics or chronic alcoholics.

Recent studies

Research in the last 2 years (2,3) is showing that NAFLD is associated with increased mortality. A February 2010 Science Daily article reported on the new study that,

"findings suggest that for this study population, persistently elevated serum levels of liver enzymes was associated with an increased risk of death during the 28-year study period. Patients with NAFLD and NASH had a much higher risk of death than the general population but not as high a risk as for patients with chronic viral hepatitis or alcoholic liver disease."(1)

Apparently these findings are confirming what we already suspected: messing up your liver messes up your life. Decreased survival is not a good outcome...

Summary

Cut the soda, fruit juice, candy, and sugar out of your diet to live longer.

Update 11/23 : Preventing Fatty Liver

Sources:

1. Wiley-Blackwell (2010, February 1). Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease associated with high mortality rates. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 2, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127095924.htm

2. Paul Angulo. Long-term mortality in NAFLD. Is liver histology of any prognostic significance? Hepatology, 2010; NA DOI: 10.1002/hep.23521

3. Cecilia Söderberg, Per Stål, Johan Askling, Hans Glaumann, Greger Lindberg, Joel Marmur, and Rolf Hultcrantz. Decreased survival of subjects with elevated liver function tests during a 28-year follow-up.Hepatology, 2009; n/a DOI: 10.1002/hep.23314