Fatty Liver

A liver biopsy is an invasive operation that is used to remove a sample of a liver tissue.

The most common reason for doing a liver biopsy is when the level of your liver enzyme, ALT, is at normal range, but on the other hand, a liver ultrasound scan suggests the existence of a non-alcoholic fatty liver.

This scenario isn’t very common, but it does happen to some people.

The fact that your ALT enzyme level is at normal range doesn’t mean you have nothing to worry about.

If you have any evidence, specifically a liver ultrasound, that suggests you have a fatty liver, there is a need for further diagnosis, and a liver biopsy is the only way to accurately see not only the amount of fat, but also if there is an inflammation, scar tissue, and necrosis (deal liver cells).

Again, despite having normal liver enzyme level, you need to proceed to a biopsy if there is no evidence of a fatty liver in an ultrasound scan.

In addition, patients with Insulin Resistance (a pre-diabetic state), or other problems related to Glucose Metabolism, are at higher risk for the development of an advanced liver disease.

A abdominal or liver ultrasound plays a crucial role on diagnosing many liver diseases, including a fatty liver. To get an accurate results, it’s very important to understand and know how you should prepare for a liver ultrasound.

A typical scene from a Liver Ultrasound room

Liver Ultrasound Preparation guidelines

• Do not drink or eat at least 6 hours before the test.
• On the day before the test, do not eat – fresh fruits and vegetables, fried and oily food, milk, eggs, bread.
• What you should eat – cooked vegetables, puree, marmalade, honey, roasted bread, soup, and rice.
• No medications are needed to be taken before the ultrasound.

The liver ultrasound scan is completely painless. Here is its estimated procedure:

• Lying onto an ultrasound table.
• A special gel will be spread upon your abdomen.
• The tester will move a tool called “transducer” (looks like a small wand) over the gel, that will create and capture the most relevant images.
• The tester will process and look at the images, and will enter his conclusions.

Total estimated time of the test: 20-30 minutes.

Learn more about liver ultrasound, and take a look at fatty liver pictures.

In a case of a fatty liver disease, where there is an extra unwanted fat around the liver, it could lead to a more complicated liver diseases.

These disease are severe, and usually take years and even decades until a fatty liver patient develops one of them.

It is also true that a fatty liver could have no complication at all; but the chance of fatty liver progression to a more severe liver disease is around 30%, which is considered a lot in medical terms.

Most common liver diseases developed as a result of an untreated Fatty Liver are:

Hepatitis - A viral virus that damages the liver.
Cirrhosis - A severe liver condition, that kills liver cells and leads to a liver failure.

This is why it is so important to treat a fatty liver as early as possible, and avoid these kind of complications. A non-alcoholic fatty liver disease treatment usually does not involve any kind of medications, but only involves a change of eating habits, getting more physically active, and loss weight.

An alcoholic fatty liver disease treatment usually only includes a strict limit to the consumed amount of alcoholic drinks.

Fatty Liver Progression

Lemon juice has some benefits for your liver, mainly because it helps digesting the food you eat.

The main reason for this is because lemon juice has certain components that stimulate your digestive juices to process your food a better way.

Further more, lemon juice can help to prevent entrance of undigested food into the bloodstream.

The filtering of the undigested food is actually the job of the liver already, and is responsible to prevent these food particles to enter would your bloodstream. By doing it, the undigested food is treated as contaminates.

Liver lemon juice can relieve the liver with its workload. For some patients with fatty liver disease, and other liver disease, this means that the liver can work more effectively to process the food you eat, especially fat.

Additionally, lemon juice is rich of Vitamin C, which is an excellent antioxidant. As an antioxidant, it can cleanse your blood from various toxins.

Another benefit of a lemon juice is that it can also help removing gallstones from the bladder. Every time you mix a lemon juice with Epsom salts and olive oil, the bile produced by the liver is not used anymore. The pileup of the bile will pressure the gallstones outside of your bladder.

Lemon Juice

All in all, the only thing to say is that if you put a slice of lemon in a glass of water each morning, it could have a great affects on your liver. So get used for liver lemon juice!

A new research done in the University of Connecticut, investigated the benefits of green tea and its influence on fatty liver disease (steatosis).

The researchers found that green tea might stop fat build-up around the liver.

This green tea study has been done on mice, and if the results could be translated to humans, the conclusion would be that green tea extract might become a very beneficial in preventing a fatty liver.

The research took six straight weeks, and included 3 groups of mice. The first group didn’t receive any green tea extract; the second group fed with one percent green tea extract, and the third one with two percent.

At the end of the research, the two groups of mice who have been fed with green tea extract diet, had a decrease of 23-25 percent of their body weight, and the mice who didn’t receive the supplement, had only 11-20 percent decrease in their weight.

Green Tea Extract

The research also included testing the level of Alanine Aminotransferase (ALT) and Aspartate Aminotransferase (AST) enzymes in their bloodstream. The results have shown a decrease of the enzyme levels by 30-41 percent in the mice who fed with green tea extract, against 22-33 percent in the mice who didn’t fed with GTE.

Green tea is also known for its contribution for weight loss, which is crucial to prevent and cure a fatty liver disease.

A recent research done by scientists from the University of London’s School of Pharmacy, claim that Taurine could undo the liver damage done by alcoholism.

Taurine is a core ingredient in the bile and helps in the digestion of fats and the absorption of vitamins that are capable of  fat dissolvent. It is an essential acid that our body manufactures naturally.

The researchers gave rats excessive amounts of alcohol, and some amount of Taurine for one month.

They found that it prevented fat build-up around the liver, and more unexpectedly, Taurine reversed the liver damaged caused by alcohol.

Additional research done by scientists in Ireland, found that Taurine has similar effect in children with fatty liver disease due to obesity (Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver or NAFLD).

It’s worth looking at if you’re looking for new way to help with fatty liver treatment.

In addition, if you’re serious about natural treatment for fatty liver, I highly recommend the Natural Fatty Liver Solution guide from Duncan Capicchiano N.D. I helped quite a lot of my patients.